Digital animation and visual effects studio Animal Logic has installed two Baselight grading systems in its Sydney head office. The company–with credits ranging from The Great Gatsby and Moulin Rouge to Captain America: Civil War and the series of LEGO® movies–also maintains operations in Los Angeles and Vancouver.
Animal Logic has replaced its existing DI suites with a Baselight TWO grading system as well as a Baselight ONE, each with Blackboard control panels. There is also a Baselight ASSIST station for file preparation and rendering of final deliverables, and all systems are linked to a 160TB FLUX Store, FilmLight’s high-speed media server with full multi-GPU rendering options.
“Baselight has always been in Animal Logic’s peripheral vision. There is an increasing sense that it has become the new industry standard with a very reliable toolset that most colorists can just jump on and use,” said Alex Timbs, head of IT at Animal Logic. “This proven toolset, combined with the FLUX Store, provided a turnkey solution entirely configured by FilmLight so we could just slide into production with ease.
”And having one trusted company handling software releases, hardware and complex storage,” he added, “means we can shift the focus away from experimenting with and problem-solving different hardware and back to our creative work.”
Bram Tulloch, global editorial and DI engineer at Animal Logic, agrees with the importance of Baselight as the finishing tool, which also brings efficiencies through FilmLight’s BLG workflow.
“Our requirements are very different from the traditional VFX pipeline – we’re not dealing with live action content so we require more from our solutions,” he said. “We tend to work towards a photoreal look in almost everything we create, and that certainly requires a very complex and accurate set of tools. Baselight gets things through the pipeline faster, and the BLG workflow offers everyone the ability to get involved in the DI from the early stages.”
