Andrew Shmidt - Pixar Animation Studios (Part 1 - The Pipeline)

I apologise for the lack of any posts the past month, here at last are the notes from Pixar's Animex presentation by Andrew Shmidt.  The focus of the event was the most recent feature release "Up" which Andrew had animated on. Andrew Shmidt is a senior animator at Pixar and has 20 years of industry experience, initially a 2D animator, Andrew began his career in 1990 at Amblimation Studios working on features such as Fievel Goes West and Balto.  In 1996 he moved to Los Angeles and worked with Dreamworks on projects such as the Prince of Egypt and The Iron Giant. In 2000, Schmidt moved to San Francisco and joined Pixar Animation Studios where he has worked on Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-e, Up and Toy Story 3.  He has also animated on various Pixar short films, including supervising animation for Partly Cloudy.

Up, if anyone hasn't watched the film, is the tale of an old man Carl Fredrickson who's promise to fly to paradise falls with his wife was never realised while she was alive.  Carl, adamant he keeps his promise, attaches thousands of party balloons to his house and ventures to South America.  An incredible adventure ensues with a host of memorable characters.  Pete Doctor had his directorial début with Monsters Inc and was director for the 2nd time on Up, the feature was derived from the initial idea of a floating city developed by Bob Peterson a fellow lead animator on Up.  The image of a grumpy old man holding balloons had great contrast and drove pre-production of the project in the interesting direction of an isolated floating house.


There are a few Rules of Reliability that Pixar follow when developing a feature:

• Tell a compelling story that keeps the audience engaged.
• Populate the story with memorable characters.
• Put characters in a believable environment.

Up is set in the Tepui mountains of South America and the film boasts a fictional exaggerated waterfall called Paradise falls inspired by the Angel Falls.  The Tepui were visited by lead members of the creative team where their personal experiences and first hand perspective of the environment could aid the projects artistic portrayal.  The world of the Tepui held many alien shaped rocks and plants that directly influenced the design of the world and characters in the film.

Once concept art is in great abundance the story is of the main focus and digital storyboards are used to pitch the progress of the narrative.  Andrew brought up a breakdown of the story driven process that is Pixar's production pipeline:

1. Idea Development, collaborative collection of thoughts gathered for the project across the creative team.
2. Concept Art, traditional skills such as storytelling, drawing, painting and sculpture are used to communicate ideas, keep things informal and encourage experimentation. (story determines what to put in the film and technology responds)
3. World, Character, Story, The story process is moved forward by designs for the world and characters of the film. The world has it's own rules, that limit what the character can do, building unique worlds is at the heart of animation. Characters have things they want and need, that push the limits of the world, they should feel like they live beyond the frame of the film.
4. Design, Everything is design, cycles of planning and implementation are alternated, Pixar avoid "waterfall design" where all design is complete before implementation begins.
5. Timeline & Departments, A four year design process, planning for all four of those years with Story, Art and Editorial. technological Implementation for the last 2 years involving-

• Editorial
• Modelling, Articulation, Shading, Digital Painting
• Layout, Set Dressing, Animation, Lighting
• Rendering

     6.  Story, Art & Editorial, 3 departments are the focus of design-

• Story creates storyboards, drawings that are a comic strip version of the film's important moments.
• Art creates inspirational images, character and set designs, colourscripts and lighting pastels.
• Editorial creates story reels, rough drafts of the film made up of storyboard drawings, scratch dialogue and borrowed music.

     7.  Implementation - Objects, Everything in the film,        

• The shape and surface are created separately for every object.
• Modelling and Articulation deals with shape and how the shape moves (primarily 3D skills). ---M----Articulation or rigging provides the hinges in the model allowing it to be positioned.
• Shading and Painting works on surface (primarily 2D skills)

     8.  Shading & Digital Painting,

• shaders produced to provide surface deformations and colour
• digital paintings used to rough up textures and add naturalistic detail.

     9.  Shots (Layout, Set Dressing, Lighting), .

• Layouts set up the basic blocking for character and camera movement, informed by the storyboards and story reel.
• Set Dressing makes sure each shot is well framed by set and props
• Lighting lights the shot to focus the action and to help create mood, informed by concept art, colourscripts.

   10. Animation, the rigged character models are put into motion.

• Animators break down the performance into poses
• Each pose attempts to capture the character's thoughts and feelings.

   11. Rendering, Final step of Implementation

• the film consists of roughly 120,000+ rendered frames 
• layers include- Key lights, shadows, occlusion, character, reflection, irradience, beauty layer
• all layers are applied to a final composite.

I hope this pipeline has helped shed some light on the Pixar production process, the presentation had a great deal of information to get down on paper so I shall continue with Andrew Schmidt's notes in my next post which will shed more light on the technical detail and inner workings of the studio.

Ken Wong - Spicy Horse Studios

Ken Wong's best known for his work on the American McGee Games Franchise.  His talk focussed on the concept work created for "Alice 2" coming soon to PS3 and XBOX 360.

Spicy Horse are situated in Shanghai where a team of 70 have been working on the project for the past 2 years.  Ken explained how the difficulty of creating a game of this style is that in the east it is not common place and tends to take artists completely out of their comfort zones.  the following are important aspects of the design Ken sought after:

• Victorian/Gothic
• Visual Motif
• Steampunk
• Alchemy
• Theme
• Tone
• Colour Use
• Rendering Style

The characters, props, costume, architecture and environments all required heavy research and reference.  The goal was to achieve a unique and dark universe.  with influence from Mark Ryden of Brothers Quay as an example and Zdzislaw Beksinki's works.  Ken's "Dark" needed to have

• Corruption of Innocence
• the Edge of Ridiculous
• Abuse of Power
• Uncomfortable use of colour
• the Dark side of sex
• Impairment of senses

All of the outlined factors that contributed to the world of "Alice" are brilliant inspiration for my personal projects and I'm sure for many others so I hope this can help. The lessons learnt during this talk were that Painting and Design are different and brainstorming is vital for strong development of ideas.  I need to put more story and function into my drawings and show depth.  Frequent sketching is incredibly important to the strength of a drawing and Ken himself only moves a drawing into the concept art stage after 5 or 6 attempts in sketch form.

I am currently working on a selection of concept works for a group project so this talk by Ken was really helpful. Its a great buzz to see how a simple drawing can change entirely when studios like Spicy Horse move them into colour. 

Jim Zubkavich - Udon Entertainment

Jim Zubkavich gave an Animex talk on his digital art North American based company "Udon" who amongst other clients have worked with DC Comics, Marvel and Capcom especially with the Street Fighter franchise.

  Their works are heavily stylised digital paintings used in marketing and concept within the games/film Industry and recently printed "art of " books. His artists on payroll span the globe and for this reason has a 24 hour workforce. Jim mentioned how the obvious language barriers and distance take a toll on business relationships however the increased work flow through a 24/7 team outweighs these limitations. Examples of Udon's prints can be found through udoncrew.deviantart.com/art


Their works are predominantly although not entirely Anime in style due to the extent of the Japanese market they work with.  Jim's talk was inspiring to all of those looking for careers in the digital animation and art industries, he  explained how being persistent when approaching companies is extremely important to being known in the industry and to showing improvement in your Showreel/Portfolio.  Here are a few other key bullet points he shed light on :

• If you are dedicated you "CAN" get there.
• This chance won't be your last.
• There's no fixed point in life you will succeed at. 
• A creative job brings with it enormous fulfilment and an ever-changing outlook.   

Overall Jim's talk was exhilarating and gave me a fresh and more relaxed outlook on employment in the digital arts. His company Udon was mentioned to be looking for new artists so any budding matte painters or digital artists should apply. http://www.udonentertainment.com/blog/

I myself dabble and hope to get more experienced in the field.