Whether telling a great story or listening to a great story being told, the images that soar through our mind are pure magic. We are able to visualize characters in a make believe environment as if we are watching the story unfold on the big screen at a local movie theater.
As we shared in the previous summary of Basic of Animation, the mantra at both Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios is that it starts with a great story. Once the baseline for the story is established, the production team translates what was held in their imagination into conceptual art. One of the key areas of production is character development. Each character goes through quite an evolutionary process before we see them on film. By the time the film is released, it’s hard to imagine the characters looking and sounding any different.
For the second session of Basics of Animation, we had a panel of five Pixar artists leading the discussion. The artists included Ricky Nierva (Art Department, Animation Department, Production Designer), Matt Nolte (Animation Department, Art Department), Jerome Ranft (Art Department, Actor, Visual Effects), Natalie Lyon (Casting Director, Casting Department), and Kevin Reher (Casting Director, Producer).
Kevin Reher opened the discussion and introduced Ricky Nierva, a CalArts graduate and Annie Award winner for Finding Nemo. Ricky shared his love for drawing and his deep love for his job in design. Ricky highlighted the evolutionary process of character design using content from The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation book by the infamous duo of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Using an image that showed the design progression of Kaa from The Jungle Book, the question of knowing when is answered with a strong, “we got it!”, to mark the final design of Kaa.
As a film progresses through production, which usually takes around four years, knowing when you have the right design for each character is key. With the extensive research that the production team commits to, they do become experts and strive for believability and authenticity. Included within Ricky’s presentation were conceptual designs of a few characters from films that he was directly involved in. Including Sully from Monsters, Inc., Bruce from Finding Nemo, and Carl Fredricksen from Up.
It was interesting to hear how the artists use the shape of a square to design Carl Fredricksen and how Spencer Tracy was a huge influence for the character design. Russell’s design was similar to the shape of a “top” and with the same personality to support such a dynamic object.
Ricky closed his portion by explaining how inspiration is everywhere and how important it is to draw like a child. Pure drawing comes from the soul.
Another CalArts student who was heavily influenced by Bill Peet, Matt Nolte, was then introduced. Matt has been with Pixar Animation Studios for ten years with most of his career being spent on Brave. Matt summarized his love for art in stating that art is observation. Matt leverages drawing as a journal for his life and he feels he became an artist because of his love for bird watching. Contrary to what some may think, Matt says that Pixar uses traditional animation media just as much as computer.
Matt then began sharing concept art from his work on Brave, including Queen Elinor as a bear and Merida’s horse, Angus. For the Queen Elinor as a bear design, Matt studied a polar bear at the zoo because he felt that the polar bear was more regal. In reviewing Matt’s conceptual art for Queen Elinor, Director Brenda Chapman surprised Matt with how much she liked the design for Merida, as she was looking for a more rugged look. Matt was a little intimated now that he was asked to design Merida but trusted his experience, love for art, and leadership from Brenda Chapman to rise to the challenge. When designing Merida and Angus together, Matt explained, “Merida is me and her horse is her mountain bike.” Another reminder us of how he uses drawing as a journal.
Once a character’s design is agreed on, Jerome Ranft, brother of the late Joe Ranft, will sculpt a character maquette. In Ricky Nierva’s opinion, a sculpture is where the rubber meets the road. Jerome has quite a bit of history with The Walt Disney Company, with his first gig being The Nightmare Before Christmas. Jerome spent a number of years as a freelance sculpture working on various projects until being contacted by Pete Docter to assist with Monsters, Inc. While describing the process of how molded clay goes to mold makers and made into resin, Jerome was sharing various images of character sculptures that he had worked on. He was also sharing his heavy involvement with Walt Disney Imagineering which included projects like Cars Land in Disney California Adventure. Jerome art directed most of the characters in the dark ride portion of Radiator Springs Racers. Jerome also worked on the design of Gusteau’s archway leading into the new Ratatouille section of Walt Disney Studios in Disneyland Resort Paris. As Jerome is assisting Walt Disney Imagineering with the development of future attractions, Jerome is focused on protecting the integrity of the characters in the park.
Casting for these characters plays a very important role, which has been considered the hardest acting job out there. Once a film is decided, a cast is chosen and can come from many different sources. Natalie Lyon and Kevin Reher look for good actors with humor and personalities that are fun to animate, no Saturday morning cartoon actors. Natalie and Kevin showed how the Studios animate their characters and use audio clips from unrelated movies for the early development process. They also showed video recordings of the actors reading their scripts and explained how the animators would use these recordings to study the actors’ personalities and mannerisms. A clip of Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter sharing how they work with the actors to try to record the entire film in one session, which could take four hours. And actor Tom Hanks sharing how, when he thought he has performed a certain line in every way possible, the film’s director will think of one more way to try.
The auditioning process can be very exhausting, as well. Imagine choosing one out of five hundred kids who auditioned for Russell or Natalie Lyon’s latest project of choosing that perfect actor out of twelve hundred kids who auditioned for the role of Arlo from Pixar Animation Studios’ 2015 film, The Good Dinosaur.
From design to casting, character development is a very comprehensive process that needs to run its full course in order to support the vision of the story and the storyteller. When the audience can view a film without thinking twice about how a character looks or what it sounds like, then the years spent on designing to support the story has truly paid off.