The introduction of Sven was originally planned to be at sunset to create a fantastical element to the character.

A shot in which Sven was to have an huge shadow over the crowd from a golden sunset making him a hero like character. Sadly the time of day switched to midday and ended this idea.

This shot was meant to have very strong godrays that would play will in stereo. Godrays can add depth and perspective, we planned to them in the foreground, midground and background.

Twilight in Adelieland, was a great way to show the audience the time factor. It was to mark a clear point that it had taken a full days walk from where the little emporer penguins started. Using Vue software switching times of day and creating new skydome atmospheres was quick and easy to do.

Night time in Emperorland: these concepts were for shadow and mood. It was to show the progression of a cold hopeless moment being warmed with hope by the characters heart song.

Part of the Story Driven Pipeline was to paint over the pre-vis stills so that the Director knew which shot he was looking at. One of the issues with the first Happy Feet was that much of the concept art was painted out of context to the time of day and angle of the camera. Hence what the Director approved as a concept frame was not necessarly going to be seen in the film at that particular time of day.

Emperorland shrouded in darkness.

Gloria's song breaks the darkness.

The song also brings the light of hope.

The Aurora is the light of hope the lights up the night sky.

Final Shot in the film several years later.

Krill asleep at night under the aurora, the angle of the light rays from the aurora was used to position highlight the characters.

The biolumenescent jellyfish also needed a look frame for lighters to aim for.

In this sequence it was important to show relationship with the size of the oppressing clouds, shadows and characters. It was symbolic of what the characters were going through, we needed to get a visual idea of how it would play out and convey it to the diretor.

Shadow placement concept... not amazing to important to the story.

Skua POV with oversized shadow looking down framed by clouds. Again not impressive art but a needed story point.

I created all the skydomes for pre-vis to cover all the times of day.

My plan was to create an end to end lighting pipeline. Using e-on's Vue software I aimed to create Vue atmostpheres for all the times of day and create 3d rendered concept art. Onced approved I would bake out the atmosphere into HDRI spheres and hand them of to pre-vis and final production rendering. After this I would take the final lensing camera and render out 3d stereoscopic frames for the final film.

 

Morning sunrise over Adelieland: the great thing about Vue is its ability to render true atmospherics such as fog, haze and air density.

Midday clouds over Adelieland: this was an animated cloud render in stereo which showed the potential to have clouds coming over the set making you feel like you were there.

Sunset on Adelieland.

Vue animated cloud renders were promising but render times were large and difficult to perfect and control. Also the cameras never locked off until the final months making it impossible to reach the required level of realism within the time and resources.

Vue render to Photograph comparison.

Shadow compasses I created to show production and lighting where the shadows should be coming from. 

These shadow compasses were created in Maya and rendered in Mental Ray.

Some artists had a tendancy to place the sun directly in front of the camera to make their shots look better but would eventually make the sun appear in several places in as many seconds hence the reason to enforce sun position

Vue is definately one of the best tools for any visual development artist to have.