The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Benjamin Gates (Nicolas Cage) must follow a clue left in John Wilkes Booth’s diary to prove his ancestor’s innocence in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Contribution

Two major tasks were assigned to me in this film: the creation and conceptualization of the Hero Dragon under the supervision of director Jon Turteltaub and creating a very unique morph between characters framed at full screen.

A very unique effect was needed for this film. A nonlinear morph from one character to another in full-frame without adding any distracting elements like smokes or flares.

Using almost every technique available I was able to achieve the effect. Starting with a smart mesh, then rigged and finally running a dynamic simulation on top. This enables me to get the skin to do the desired effect. Another layer that required almost the same amount of work was the morph of the hair. For this, I use the skin as the driving surface and then created another dynamic rig to drive the change in the hair. The setup was finished with the creation of a rig so the animator could be animated as needed and then the dynamics could be turned on for final effect.