Case Study: The Pixar Story

By Connor Molde Comptuer Games & Interactive Media Year 1

Contents

Section One: Introduction

Section Two:

Page 1

About Pixar Page 2

Section Three: Drawing Page 3

Section Four: Colour Scripting Page 4

Section Five: Sculpting Page 5

Section Six: Modeling Page 6

Section Seven: Animating

Section Eight: Rendering

Section Nine: Process Summary

Section Ten: Conclusion

Pages 7-8

Pages 9-10

Page 11

Page 12

Introduction

As part of my time based media assignment I have been asked to write a case study, which is based on an element within the Interactive Media industry.

I have decided to base my case study on the ‘Pixar Story’. This looks into great depth at how the company managed to create these full length feature movies such as, Toy Story and Monsters Inc.

One aspect of the ‘Pixar Story’ that I am in particularly interested in is the process they undertake to create a movie. I want to look all the way through the process from the original designs to how they brought them to life on screen.

My aim is to take what I have learned from this case study and implement some aspects into my own design process for future assignments on the course.

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Pixar was a combined dream of three men who wanted to revolutionise the animation industry into something completely different using 3D. These men were ‘Ed Catmull (Creative Scientist)’, ‘Steve Jobs (Visionary Entrepreneur)’ and ‘John Lasseter (Talented Artist)’.

They wanted artists and scientists to work together to transform 2D drawings into their own 3D worlds. These men believed that scientists were just as good story tellers as the artists. Pixar’s thought process was that art challenged technology and technology inspires the art and combined they can be the key success to revolultionising the animation industry.

Pixar followed a well thought process, which took their original designs and brought them to life on screen.

This process was also used in the making of all their feature-length box office hits, such as ‘Toy Story’, ‘Bugs Life’, ‘Monsters Inc’, ‘Finding Nemo’, ‘The Incredibles’ and many more.

This image shows a sketch of the logo for the animation company ‘Pixar’.

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About Pixar

Drawing

Firstly, the overall director of the film (In Toy Story’s case this was John Lasseter) would work with the art department and come up with thousands of drawings. However, 90% of these drawings would not be used as an idea for the movie. The visuals are rejected and improved on because there is a better idea. However some of the designs could be used within the movie but in another form.

Between the overall director, story artists, conceptual artists and other people within the art department they would work together to create a storyboard, which shows a visual of what will be happing in different scenes of the film. The story board could consist of 1000’s of drawings on a board and they visually tell the overall story of the film.

This image shows a sketch of the character Woody in the animated film ‘Toy Story’. The sketch was created by Pixar’s character artists.

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Colour Scripting

They would also create a ‘colour script’, which produces the tone, mood, colour ideas, costume ideas and setting ideas (environment). This helps show the emotions of the characters throughout the film and not just one scene. The colour script process consists of very quick hand drawn versions of the movie that can be looked at on one board, which in comparison to a story board that has thousands of drawings over several boards is very small. The idea is to initially keep the colour script as simple as possible because the minor details, such as facial expressions are likely to change as the scenes develop, whereas a characters clothing may stay the same and therefore would be shown.

This image shows an example of a colour script from the film ‘Toy Story’. The image consists of the two characters Woody and Buzz.

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Sculpting

The second stage of the process is ‘sculpting’. This stage would really be going on at the same time as the drawing, as the character artists would work hand in hand with the sculpture artists to create a clay 3D version of each of the characters. This process could take a very long time as they want to create a sculpture, which is exactly how they want the character to look on screen. For example, the sculpture artists said it took almost eight weeks to perfect one of the characters within the film ‘Monsters Inc’.

The sculpting stage was seen to be very important throughout the design process because you could see minor details of the characters within the clay sculptures, which were added as extras from the original drawings. The character artists would then see the sculptures of the characters and would have better ideas and make adjustments. They would then go back to sketch the character again and add the extra detail. This is why it was very important for both the character and sculpture artists to work together, because they knew exactly what is needed to create the final look for each of the characters.

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This image shows an example of a sculpture of the character Sully in the animated film ‘Monsters Inc’. The model was created by Pixar’s sculpture artists.

Modeling

The next stage of the process was believed to be what paved the path for the new computer animation industry. The ‘modeling’ process was the first real step which saw the scientists and the artists work together.

However, adding a 3D perspective can add such a great sense of depth to an image and gives people so much more detail and makes imagery more visually appealing.

The modelers would look in great detail at work created by the sculpture and the character artists’ work. This process would have been achieved by the modeler taking the 2D image and using it as a plane for the model. They would then need to take all the data from the 2D visuals and put them into the computer. This was done by the use of geometry and trying to recreate all the different elements of the designs, such as hair, skin, surfaces, clothing and many more. In this case geometry is data, which is broken down into millions of little triangles. These geometric shapes are imported into a 3D space creating a 3D mesh.

Pixar use 3D modeling for two main uses. The first is ‘creating volume’, which means you can use 3D modeling to create models which have volume, for example; characters, character props, architecture and environment. The second main use is ‘creating surfaces’, which means you can use 3D modeling to create a visual representation of surfaces such as, walls, water and glass. It follows the same principal; however, these circumstances of 3D modeling don’t usually show depth.

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This image shows a 3D model of the character Mr Incredible in the animated film ‘The Incredibles’. This 3D model was created by Pixar’s 3D modellers. The image is in ‘wireframe’ mode, which allows you to see the geometric shapes that make up the model.

opens the cardboard box, the animator would try doing this in several different ways trying to get the right persona across for that particular scene.

Within Pixar, the animation department believe the seven most difficult elements to animate are humans, hair, fabric, hair under water, fabric under water, hair blowing in the air and fabric blowing through the air. It was these elements, which made the film ‘The Incredibles’ so hard to make. However, they believe they have interpreted all these elements into that film and it was the use of them that made the film such a success.

Pixar really liked the idea of animation because they loved bringing inanimate objects to life, whilst still maintaining the integrity of the object. This was done by using movement, physics and adding personality. Pixar believed that the best thing about animation is trying to capture exactly what the audience should be feeling at a certain part of the movie. For example, if trying to give the audience a sense of sadness you would make the characters seem sad.

Animating

The process then continues with ‘animation’. This is the part of the process where you start to get a good feel for what the original sketches and designs look like when brought to life.

Pixar use a piece of software called ‘Marionette’ for animation and character rigging. This is their own software and cannot be purchased, as they believe it is this software which gives Pixar their own brand of style of animation. Therefore letting other companies use it would not make them as unique and the software is probably a lot better than any industry standard or other that is available elsewhere.

Marionette is very high tech software, as it allows animators to select each certain mesh and move it without any curves whereas, other industry standard software such as Maya, you would use curves. For example, if you were animating the eyes of a character’s face, all you would have to do with Marionette is select the eyes and control the position.

The software also specialises in useful key framing and advanced movement. This allows characters facial expressions to be partly controlled by the pitch and tone of the voice actors.

Animators would reenact the part of the film there are animating as if it was a play (theatre). They do this because they want to express themselves in a way that best expresses the way in which the character should be animated, so it fits perfectly with the style of the audio. For example, in ‘Toy Story 2’ when Woody

This image shows a final render of the animated film called ‘Toy Story’. This still image is part of the animation of the character ‘Woody. The

animators would act out this part of the film so they

could find the best way to express the character

within the scene. They would do this for most scenes within the film.

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This image shows a scene of the animated film called ‘Finding Nemo’. Within this image you can see process of animation; this is done in various different ways, such as moving the characters, changing their facial expressions, changing the camera position and angle.

with minimal setup and makes expensive effects a production reality, and ‘deep textures’ which allows the film to show problematic effects such as depth of field.

Another advanced feature within Renderman is called ‘displacements’. This allows the film renderers to add visual complexity very easily by adding displacement shaders, which can generate small objects. These would be used in many different scenes of the film and could create many types of looks. An example of using displacement shaders was in the film ‘Wall-E’, as the challenge was to create a world full of debris and garbage. The displacement shaders were animated to create a wide variety of special effects.

Motion blur was another advanced feature used within Renderman. Motion blur is a result of objects moving during the exposure of the film. The faster the exposure less things would blur. Nowadays, audiences are very familiar with motion blur as it is a trend within the film industry, which is crucial in creating convincing visual effects. If Renderman did not use motion blur the effect within the video would look unnatural as objects would simply move across the screen and as the viewer you wouldn’t get a realistic sense of speed and movement.

The final advanced feature within Renderman is ‘hair and fur’. Originally Pixar modelers and animators believed using hair and fur was the hardest element to create because it is very difficult to study the movement as it is very random and will always change. Therefore, Pixar spent a lot of time thinking about the process of hair and fur and now Renderman excels at creating very high quality renders of these elements.

The setting-up of Renderman could not be easier as you can render directly from ‘Autodesk Maya’ (software used for 3D modeling and animating). Renderman is now capable of creating highly realistic and believable fur with unique features like deep shadows.

Rendering

The final and probably the main part of the process is the ‘rendering’, because it is at this point where you really get the great satisfaction of the original 2D visuals being brought to life in a 3D world.

Pixar created a piece of software called ‘Renderman’ for the creation of photo realistic special effects. This allowed film makers to tell stories that could not be told in any other way. This software has advanced features that are believed to be what gives Pixar the edge when it comes to rendering within the industry, because it gives them the best use of some of the high tech tools.

One of these advanced features was called ‘Hybrid Rendering’. This is a render, which with the latest advancements in ‘RAY Tracing’ (a technique of tracing the path of light of an image through pixels). This feature has also implemented the traditional features of Renderman, such as motion blur, memory efficiency and flexibility.

I think the idea of using both the original and advanced features in Renderman is a very good idea because it gives Pixar the latest and best software. This can help create top quality effects, but it will also make them the leader of visual designs within the rendering industry. However, they still keep to their old style of rendering, which I believe is important for Pixar because it shows a sense of tradition.

Some of the advancements that the hybrid renders use are; ‘versatile re-rendering sty stem’ which is used to increase the productivity of shaders and lighters within Renderman, ‘physical plausible shading’ which delivers highly realistic lighting

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This image shows a final render of the animated film called ‘Monsters Inc’. The rendering of the film was done by using the software ‘Renderman’. Within the software there any many advanced features and one of them specialises with fur. I believe this is why the film was good, as the final render makes the movie visually attractive.

Personally, I think the overall process Pixar developed is very good as they have several different sections, all of which specialise in creating different elements of the film. I believe this to be very important because if you want to create a very good quality film you need specialist people working in their field of expertise.

Also, as the process of creating a film is broken down into so many different stages all the people involved would feel a great satisfaction when the creation of the film is making its way to the end of the process, as you get to see what you originally contributed come to life. For example, the character artists would see their 2D visuals come to life in a 3D world.

If I was part of Pixar and was involved in creating a film, I would like to join in on the modeling stage of the process because I believe this is what is the starting point in turning visuals into realistic objects by adding an extra dimension to what was originally a 2D image.

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Process Summary

Overall, I am very happy that I decided to analyse ‘The Pixar Story’ for my case study as I believe it is very interesting and I have learnt a lot a vast amount of elements within the interactive media industry. The main aspect of the case study which I believe was the most interesting was looking at the process, in which Pixar used to create each of their box office films (such as ‘Toy Story’, ‘Bugs Life’, ‘Monsters Inc’ and ‘Finding Nemo’) and how all the different departments (visual artists, sculptors, 3D modelers and animators) would work together to create the overall film.

When I come to creating future assignments I am going to inherit this process, as I believe that it is very successful in creating a good quality piece of work. I will also be able to see the progression of my assignment as I go along by using the same process as Pixar.

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Conclusion