HP, besides enjoying the fact that they’re number one in workstations, also enjoys a fruitful and long collaborative relationship with DreamWorks. Recently, I came across a video that offers some revealing insights into the making of their holiday 3D motion picture Rise of the Guardians, an animated fantasy adventure film based on William Joyce’s book series The Guardians of Childhood.

The video, called The Tech of DreamWorks’ Rise of the Guardians features interviews of animation superstar producer Jeffrey Katzenberg who says that the film is by far the most visually complex production that Dreamworks has ever made. Aside from other interviews with key people at Dreamworks, there are some impressive scenes from the film as well as a look into the HP hardware that was used to create it. You can watch the video below:

To create the level of visual richness in the animated film which some have called stunning, DreamWorks Animation used HP Converged Infrastructure technologies that included HP Cloud Services, HP Z Workstations, HP DreamColor displays, HP Remote Graphics Software, HP Networking and HP Proliant server solutions, Managed Print Services and digital rendering resources. Past animated feature films by DreamWorks include the franchise properties of “Shrek,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” ”Kung Fu Panda,” “Madagascar” and “Puss in Boots.”

The DreamWorks Animation render farm spans across three geographic sites and is the most powerful ever used for a studio production. Interestingly, Rise of the Guardians required more than 65 million render hours and more than 250 terabytes of disk storage were used in the film.

It should come as no surprise that I am enthusiastic about HP’s workstations, finding them ideally suited for heavy duty production and post work. If you haven’t done so already, watch the recent documentary video about the tour I took at HP’s Workstation Labs in Fort Collins, Colorado.