She’s in touch with texture

Apryle Knobbe

Digital artist at Sony Pictures

Animation

“I’m a senior technical director, but I am kind of specialized. I am a texture paint lead.”

Current credit: Sony’s computer-generated animated film “Open Season,” now out on DVD. “I was pretty much the digital paint supervisor because I covered not only texture painting but matte painting backgrounds. We’re kind of a jack-of-all-trades.”

Job description: “The title comes from old model shops where they would physically construct a prop or a model to go into a movie. Usually the model was really coarse -- it might be a miniature building built from a box. Then a texture painter would come in and add details and paint to make it look like a real building. So you would basically convert a cardboard box into a brick building with little painted windows. We’re doing that but doing it on a computer, as opposed to painting an actual physical object.”

Tools: “We use Photoshop -- everybody kind of knows and uses it -- to do a flat piece of artwork, and then we use a 3-D package that [lets us] paint on the 3-D surface. It is just like having a model in front of you in the computer and you can rotate it and turn it. And you have a digital paintbrush where you can go in and paint on it.

“With Elliot [the mule deer] in ‘Open Season,’ we could paint on his 3-D body just as if we had a 3-D figurine in front of us. They also do what they called pelting. They peel his hide off [in the computer] and we can cut it into pieces and paint it in sections. It is like if you pelted an animal, peeling off his hide and laying it flat so you can paint it 2-D if you choose to. We jump back and forth doing it one way or another depending on the preference of the artist.”

Starting point: “Often we start with the pelt and throw color on it. Then we add small details on the 3-D model. It is a little easier to get into the eye area in 3-D; when it is pelted, often you can’t tell how it is going to fold into the eyeball. We might start off with the 2-D and go back to the 3-D.”

Background paintings: “There is a big valley with cliffs in the movie, and we knew that we would have a lot of scenes [there] and the camera would be moving all over the place. So doing that primarily only in 2-D would be limiting. You would be making hundreds of paintings as opposed to a few. It’s like old stages or old movies when they would have a backdrop and have physical objects in the foreground. So that valley was built in the computer as a 3-D model and then everything was pretty much texture painted and rendered 3-D, which means they put a camera in and they applied lights.

“Around it, there is a sphere. The sky and clouds and distant mountains are painted and placed either on cards or on this globe. So instead of having a flat stage, you have taken an entire soundstage and built a world around you with computer graphic objects in the foreground, and then in the distance is the flattened artwork painting.”

Texture: “Elliot’s nose may be smooth when they model it and we will go in and paint it. It’s like when you have charcoal drawings and they are in gray scale, dark for shadow and white for light. We will paint a gray-scale map that is lumpy to give the illusion that there is dimpling on the nose like a dog’s nose. We do it with paint and we paint it as a map, and that is placed in what is called a shader which is basically saying, ‘Take this gray-scale map and where it is black I want you to indent the surface. Where it is light, we can bring it out.’ Boog the bear has 17 layers of textures.”

Character changes: “That happens with almost every type of show. A good example is the squirrel, McSquizzy. We got him so far and then they decided they didn’t like his shape. So we backed up [and started over].

“As the show got more involved, the plotlines did change. The ducks weren’t exactly a primary character in the beginning, so we didn’t develop them. Then they got written in a little bit more and became more primary characters. We backed up and readdressed the characters, made them more involved.”

Details, details: “It is more difficult to go back and add detail later because you may not have the manpower or the time to do that. We really try to paint everything as if you were on top of it. They may say this truck is going to be off in the distance, but we’ll paint it as if you are gong to get into it and drive it down the street.”

Background: “I have an undergraduate degree in the arts. I was primarily a painter. I got involved with computers because paint supplies are very expensive and if you can compose the things on a computer, your paintings, it becomes much easier. Apparently I had a knack. Eventually I went to grad school for computer graphics and the arts at Syracuse University.

“Sony called me after my last final at Syracuse and I came out here because it snowed in Syracuse and I couldn’t take the weather anymore.”

Resides: “My mom would shoot me if I don’t tell you I’m a Texan, but I live up in Agoura Hills.”

Union or guild: None

Age: 38

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-- Susan King