Develop 2010: Want to know how Pixar make their magic? Then allow us to break it down for you with the help of Andrew Dayton.
Bold, vibrant and brilliantly effectual. The colours depict scenes from animated films, a cowboy and space ranger silhouetted against a desert sunset, the softly lit clearing of a jungle, a cheerful rat captured in his eureka moment… crowd them all in one place and you’d have enough images for a year-long exhibition. These images are visual touchstones for how the films should feel at a particular moment. And they’re just one part of the mammoth production pipeline at Pixar.
Andrew Dayton, technical director at Pixar Animation Studios, took us through the many stages of conception and creation that go into their award-winning films at Develop 2010.
At a campus in Emeryville, California, that once had more fibre optic cable between two buildings than all of China, multiple departments work in parallel on a number of projects. Once the editorial department are happy with the story, the storyboard is where the process begins, rough image cells accompanied by text. The all-important task of designing the worlds and setting the tone for the films falls to the art department. They produce the alluring images discussed above.
In preparation for the demanding animation and rendering to come, Pixar employ a process called previsualisation to test angles and camera moves to see what works best. For instance, slight camera shake was added to Wall-E to give the feeling of being deserted in a hazardous environment. Other sequences, such as Up’s storm scene, are mocked up in rough digital form to give animators a template to work from.
The departments responsible for bringing everything from blue-haired monsters to superhero-exterminating robots to life are the character and animation departments. Clay sculptures of characters are made to give the team real world reference for their size and articulation. Modellers then turn them into computer-generated 3D models – some have spent six months working on a single character. Hair and fur alone takes months, Dayton says it’s handled by their “hair queen.”
Dayton, who spends at lot of time modelling, says “90 percent of modelling is easy. The last 10 percent, which is the polish, pretty much takes up most of my time.” Detail is what makes the characters and worlds believable. Shading and texturing are used to dress sets procedurally or object-by-object – touches, like worn and peeling paint on a window frame, are what make the world feel lived in. Lighting and rendering give the animations that photorealistic look.
A video clip of director Brad Bird expressing his displeasure at one of the dailies from Ratatouille showed the iterative steps the animation process goes through. Animators are digital puppeteers, taking assets from the other departments and making the characters act through their body language, facial expressions and interactions. They film themselves as reference for their CG performances. By adding and altering specific details they bring the visual drama and comedy to the films. In the aforementioned clip, Bird wanted to see more history behind the character’s living space, so an animator added subtle touches like clutter obstructing the door to make pulling his bike into his tiny apartment more comical and a hole in the wall that the bike had bashed in over time.
A montage of clips from Ratatouille and Toy Story 3 showed the whole process from storyboard to screen. Dayton’s presentation didn’t include the dialogue or music recording, but his whistle-stop tour of the studio’s main departments gave some insight into how they create their CG worlds and characters.
Pixar have had their share of hardships, with both Toy Story 2 and Ratatouille being reworked, but, so far, Newt is the only project they’ve cancelled. With Toy Story 3 already enjoying universal acclaim and Brave (which Dayton says will be their “most visually stunning film yet”) on the horizon, this pioneering animation studio looks set to continue to touch the hearts of millions.
Read our Toy Story 3 review here.
Aaron Lee
Photo: Aaron Lee (body)
Tags: animation, develop, disney, pixar, ratatouille, toy story, up
