The Fabulous Disney Babe
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It took Tim Burton to open the door. With the stop-motion film The Nightmare Before Christmas that Burton and Henry Selick made for Disney, the opportunity presented itself for Pixar to make a pitch for their own Disney collaboration. John could FINALLY hire another animator, and he'd learned from Ed that to get the best, you hire people who are better than you. Walt Disney did it with design and animation, and John decided he'd follow those good examples. He hired the best he could find: Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter out of CalArts, the supervising animator for Toy Story and Creative Director for Monsters, Inc.
With the foray into feature-length films, however, John didn't want to abandon the short film. Not only did these help Pixar get its start, but they were also practical formats for experimental procedures that they could try out new methods in without compromising the hugely-budgeted features they had planned. They're also good for young animators in training. John says he's very proud of the fact that they continue to produce excellent shorts.
One of his artists, Jan Pinkava, http://www.mujweb.cz/www/Jan_Pinkava a Czech who grew up in London and emigrated to the U.S., had a photocopied ad framed on the wall of his office at Pixar. Curious, John approached it and was shocked at what he read: "Be Like John Lasseter!" It was an ad for a school teaching computer animation, where this artist had studied.
Jan won an Oscar(TM) for his direction of Geri's Game in 1998, and, more importantly to the techie side of computer animation geeks, developed a lifelike organic cloth for the film. This development opened the door for the fabrics of some of the toys in Toy Story and Toy Story 2, and for Sulley's fur in Monsters, Inc.
For the Birds (c) Pixar
For the latest short, many animators came in and pitched ideas. Ralph Eggleston, a dear friend of John's, pitched an idea that had them all hysterical: For the Birds. (Watch a sneak peek of For the Birds)
For the Birds is presently playing in front of Monsters, Inc. As a finch lover, I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts those little birds of a feather are finches. In computer animation, one shape doesn't "know" that another shape is there, so surfaces don't react to each other the way they do in real life. When there's an intersection of surfaces, it looks weird and, as John says, "pops the audience right out of the film". One of the most painstaking parts of computer animation is making sure that one surface is not going through another. It's not "sexy" like the fur on Sulley, but it's just as important.
The revolutionary thing about the birds in For the Birds is that they Squash and Stretch. Squash and Stretch is one of the basic rules of animation, especially in the early Disney shorts. When a character is pulled, they stretch out. When pushed, they "squash". They also developed a new system for the feathers.
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Michelle Smith can be reached using the Talkback form below or by emailing her at [email protected].
The Fabulous Disney Babe's column is posted every Friday and when ever else she has something to say. For more on Michelle's background, see her first column. She also offers The Fabulous Tour: Disneyland Secrets and Stories. Click here for more information.
The opinions expressed by our Michelle Smith, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future plans of the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted January 18, 2002