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Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

How Fathom Helped Bring This Movie Director’s Vision to Life
  • Guillermo del Toro

    Client

    Guillermo del Toro

  • Entertainment

    Industry

    Entertainment

  • PolyJet

    Capabilities

    PolyJet

3D Printing Expertise
Consultative Planning
Strict Quality Assurance

Bringing This Iconic Stop-Action Character to Life – With Additive

With an adoption of additive manufacturing, Fathom’s multi-step approach delivered custom, value-added solutions to achieve filmmakers’ creative vision.

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The Problem

  • The award-winning Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Pinocchio) reimagined stop-motion animation, incorporating mechanical components for many of the puppets to provide facial movement and lip sync when moved frame by frame.

  • This innovative approach to puppet fabrication paved the way for a more flexible performance that enabled Guillermo to direct this film in a unique way compared to previous stop-motion features by breathing life into the puppets as if they were live actors.

  • The use of stop animation required strict continuity for the mechanically operated puppets, especially for the intended shapes and colors of Pinocchio’s nose, head and eyes as well as Spazzatura’s muzzle.

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The Solution

Fathom employed a multi-step approach to achieve the creative vision for this animated feature. To ensure maximum precision for each print, Fathom defined print diver settings, controlled material batches, and quality control processes as part of the production plan. Voxel-level 3D printing also enabled the creation of color models in a 3D digital landscape, providing a seamless conversion to a 3D printed model with texture mapping. Color matching and texture was complex while calibrating the different machines was laborious, requiring an extensive validation process.

The Results

  • Fathom’s broad 3D printing capabilities and in-depth knowledge of current software tools created a manufacturing pipeline from animator to technology specialist to the studio.

  • The 3D printing techniques employed in the making of Pinocchio successfully conveyed the emotions of the characters and helped the animators achieve the nuances they sought.

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3D Printing Expertise
Consultative Planning
Strict Quality Assurance