Deconstructing Destruction: Making and breaking of ”Frozen 2”’s Dam

Abstract

In ”Frozen 2”, a key story point is centered around the destruction of a large dam. The scale and scope of this effect necessitated the development of a cross-departmental, effects-driven workflow. Effects were introduced and planned at the layout stage before animation to choreograph the dam collapse sequence and to enable the animators to have the character react to the destruction. During this show, we also further developed the ILM workflow integration at Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS) [Harrower et al. 2018].