You do red, I’ll do blue
I watched one of the production diaries from The Hobbit recently, and now I need your help: is this—that’s a link that will take you to about 8:30 in the video—for real?
It’s not a real technique that they use every day, right? I think it’s just a little tongue-in-cheek joke for the video. It has to be.
If it’s real, it is the greatest thing I have ever seen in a production diary. Not just for the technique, but for the Bert-and-Ernie banter between the two master Middle-Earth renderers, Alan Lee and John Howe, sitting side-by-side, peeking at each other’s picture, sketching… well, you’ll see.
Speaking without any actual knowledge, I think this has to be a joke, as you propose. Two large images side-by-side like that would be very hard to get to “merge” into a single 3d image at that distance. So I don’t think you would be able to perceive & adjust the 3d while sketching.
If they were both sketching on the same piece of paper, it would be more plausible.
I also think it must be a joke, and it’s a totally awesome joke.
I LOVE that they took time out of what must be a production of just unimaginable scale, that spends hundreds of thousands of per hour, to do this hilarious little scene.
I do this for a living and yeah, it’s a joke. Funny stuff.