Behind the Scenes of A Bug's Life

Pixar's movies are not only appealing because of the characters they incorporate, but they also are known for their visual dynamism and graphic design in their scenes. While working on A Bug's Life, Bill Cone conducted a pastel study of underground light to help him create the world where the bugs reside.  The team was obsessed with creating a sense of hyper realism.  They made sure that each frame was designed to direct our attention to the key information, no matter hectic or detailed the rest of the scene is.  The goal was to make the movie very visually interesting but to not have it take away from the story.

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As with all of Pixar's feature films, the voice actors of the movie were famous names that would be familiar to audiences.  The film's main star was Kevin Spacey, who played the villian, Hopper.  Audiences had just seen him in The Usual Suspects, where he played a cold personality.  The film's hero named Flick was voiced by Dave Foley with his high pitched happy tone.  The two voices' tones here contrast very clearly, so it is clear who the audience is supposed to like and not like.

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Similar to Toy Story, A Bug's Life has a very energetic and upbeat rhythm, where they create a very smooth tone of emotions.  Moments of humor flow easily into moments of terror or fear to combinations of both, where no scene ever seems forced or out of place.  The characters in the movie cover all types of personalities or good and bad that can easily be related back to humans, which makes the movie so lovable.  The good bugs are all young people who sometimes look to help or guidance from their elders.  Dot is cute and determined to fly.  Princess Atta is a perfectionist. Flik is the young hero.

Something else to note is the contrast between good and evil and how the animators chose to portray these two stereotypes visually.  Because Flik is the good guy and the hero, his body is rounded,  his eyes are huge, he is a pastel color and his look is very unthreatening.  This can then be compared to Hopper, the villian, whose body is scarred and it looks like he has exoskeleton armor.  His eyes are very small and his skin is rough looking.  Pixar tends to exaggerate "cute" qualities when trying to sway the audience to root for a character or believe they are a good guy.

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Works Cited:
Clarke, James. The Films of Pixar Animation Studio. Kamera Books, 2013.

More on Toy Story

In creating the main characters for Toy Story, the animators were interested in relating the characters to current pop-culture icons such as the cowboy, the astronaut and the American idea of the frontier.  Lasseter noted "because of the popularity of Jurassic Park, we knew we had to have a dinosaur." Lasseter also explained that, originally, Buzz was supposed to be named Lunar Larry and was supposed to be more of a silly character.  With Tim Allen's vocal performance, they then decided to switch Buzz to a more bossy type character.  This was when it first became the typical trend for Pixar to use TV stars, movie stars and singers as lead roles in their animated films.  This offered familiar voices to the audience, and made the films even more lovable for fans.  This is shown when Tom Hanks played the voice of Woody, and brought warmth and sincerity to the character.  This is probably because he had stared as classic, lovable roles such as in Forest Gump, Splash, Big and Sleepless in Seattle.























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As the character of Woody was being developed, the animator Jeff Pidgeon originally designed and sketched him to be more troubled looking and comical than the final draft.  Interestingly enough, Pixar used more famous actors as their voice actors in their earlier films than they do now.  Now, their name has become more famous and more popular and use of famous actors in their movies is not as necessarily important.

 Works Cited:

Clarke, James. The Films of Pixar Animation Studio. Kamera Books, 2013.

Behind the Scenes of Toy Story

The goal while creating the animation of Toy Story was to create something new and unique, along with something familiar.  One of the challenges the animators faced was creating believably illuminated and shaded surfaces, such as animal fur, bedclothes and surface textures of the toys.

As you have probably noticed, Toy Story characters all have a very shiny look that reflects light.  This was no mistake!  This was a common and smart decision by the animators because at the time, plastic-looking surfaces were easily achievable on the computer.  The first time that Pixar was able to create a believable illusion of human skin was in 2004 when The Incredibles came out.

In Toy Story, the writing team consisting of Joss Whedon, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, Alex Sokolow and Joe Ranft, constructed the movie's storyline.  The screenplay development happened at the same time that the animators were starting to create the characters.  The way the team created the film helped them figure out how to best connect the dialog to the characters and artwork they created.  Once the team began to narrow the focus of the screenplay, they began the process of mapping out the story by using hand-drawn storyboards.  This way, drawings and painted character designs were also used as the basis for the sketch of the characters which were then scanned on the computer.

When they started to create the screenplay, some elements of the story naturally had to be cut out.  Pixar then used some of these elements for later films, as they do often.  An example of this is when Toy Story was supposed to have opened with a Buzz Lightyear cartoon.  Because this prologue was abandoned, the animators added this to the begging of Toy Story 2.

During Toy Story's production, Disney kept bugging them about adding the eight musical numbers they had suggested they added, to where the characters expressed their hopes and fears.  Pixar explained that they just preferred to use dialog to communicate the character's feelings.  John Lasseter, part of the animating team explained; "we wanted to create a sense of nostalgia for the adults in the audience."  Pixar's films are usually created using bright and radiant colors.  For Toy story, they were influenced by the American painter Maxfield Parrish, who was famous for his hyperreal paintings, which appeared to shine with an "inner glow."


Works Cited:

Clarke, James. The Films of Pixar Animation Studio. Kamera Books, 2013.

Attempt at Realism

Finding Nemo

Along with many of the other Pixar films, Finding Nemo involves bright and uniquely styled animation technique.  During the making of this movie, the animators faced the challenge of finding new ways to make fish as expressive as possible.  Their goal was to make them look appealing and loveable, while also paying attention to the physical and optical laws of nature.

In order to represent life under the sea in a realistic way, the animators in Finding Nemo constantly paid attention to creating a sense of density, distance and the use of sunlight.  When the movie came out, in May 2003, John Lasseter commented that "Our only challenge was to let the audience know that our ocean is caricatured.  We wanted them to know that this wonderful world doesn't exist, but then using the animation tools that we have in computer animation make it look totally believable.  Our goal is always to make things believable, not realistic.  By stylising the design of things, adding more geometry and pushing the colours, we were able to create a natural and credible world for our characters."

Finding Nemo is beautifully animated with pastels, while it also makes attempts at making the fish look as real as possible.  The backgrounds in the movie are equivalent to the wilderness backgrounds in films such as Princess Mononoke and Bambi.  Ralph Eggleston was the film's production designer offered some first hand insight; "One of our first priorities was to make the fish seem appealing.  Fish are slimy, scaly things and we wanted to make the audience love our characters.  One way to make them more attractive was to make them luminous.  We ultimately came up with three finds of fish- gummy, velvety, and metallic.  The gummy variety, which includes Marlin and Nemo, has a density and warmth to it.  We used backlighting and rim lights to add to their appeal and take the focus off their scaly surface quality.  The velvety category, which includes Dory, has a soft texture to it.  The metallic group was more of the typical scaly fish.  We used this for the schools of fish."

Pixar also uses lighting and shading to create the allusion of realism.  Dylan Brown, the supervisor of Finding Nemo, commented that; "another big factor was timing.  With characters like Buzz, Woody or Sulley, you have an earth-based gravity.  But fish underwater can travel three feet in a flash.  You blink and the thing is gone.  We were wondering how they did that and studied their movements on video.  By slowing things down, we could figure it out.  Our timing for very crisp as we learned how to get our fish characters from one place to another in the course of a frame or two.  We always tried to incorporate naturalistic fish movements into the acting.  By putting things like one-frame darting and transitioning from one place to another into our acting, the characters became very believable."






Clarke, James. The Films of Pixar Animation Studio. Kamera Books, 2013.

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Multiple Climaxes

Finding Nemo

Multiple climaxes occur in "Finding Nemo", when you finally think the movie is over!  When Marlin is reunited with his son, Nemo gets caught in a net and convinces a school of fish to swim to the bottom of the ocean, showcasing the lessons he has learned about teamwork throughout the movie.  This also shows that Marlin has let go of his need to control Nemo, because he gives him independence in this situation.  It seems a bit much, and occurs often throughout Pixar movies, almost ensuring that the lessons intertwined throughout the movie are brought home.
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WALL-E

The ending "WALL-E" is very hectic and chaotic, where the climaxing scenes seem to happen on top of one another.  While all the action is happening and WALL-E and EVE have to stabilize the the spacecraft, WALL-E is also wounded.  Here, their friendship is brought to the true test where EVE has to be there for WALL-E and fix him.  This brings home the themes of friendship.




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Works Cited:  Taylor, Drew. “The 5 Worst Things About Pixar.” IndieWire, 18 June 2013, www.indiewire.com/2013/06/the-5-worst-things-about-pixar-96871/.

Strong Female Leads

Brave's Merida Merida is the main character in the movie Brave.  According to Kevin O'Keeffe, in his article All of Pixar's Films Rated By How Feminist They Are, until Inside Out, this was the first Pixar movie with a sole female protagonist.  Merida is a Scottish princess who enjoys archery and horse back riding.  Her mother tells her that these hobbies are not appropriate for princesses and that she needs to get married.  Merida rebells against her mother because she is determined to go on her own path and be independent.  She does not like to be controlled. This is a big turn for Pixar because they finally introduced a strong female as the protagonist, with no other male characters over shining her.

Toystory 2's Jessie Jessie is a very important character in Toy Story, as she is very brave, athletic and is always there to help the gang with every mission they embark on. Jessie is not the main character, as Woody and Buzz tend to over shine with their roles, but she is still iconic because she was one of the first brave and strong female characters in Pixar animations.  Although Jessie has had a tough past, she has become very independent over time and is very courageous, loyal and dedicated to her friends.  

Finding Dory's Dory In Finding Dory, Dory embarks on a mission to find her parents.  She is all by herself, and very determined to find her family, even though no one is willing to help or pay very much attention to her.  Dory has short term memory loss, so is constantly struggling to remember where she is or who she is with.  Although in Finding Nemo, Dory never quite evolved past  just being forgetful and sweet, she is now has evolved into a very determined and brave character who never gives up even when discouraged by others or not taken seriously.  This is very inspirational because even though Marlin and Nemo help her in the end, she is a female almost entirely by herself, which is not entirely common in animation.

The Incredible's Elastigirl In The Incredibles, Elastigirl is very brave and always ready to fight for her family and people she loves.  Although Elastigirl is sexualized in the movie by her tight outfits ect., and plays the domestic role of the stay at home mother, she is strong in the sense that she puts her family before herself.  Even though she plays the role of a mother, she also doubles as a super hero.  The movie's focus is essentially focused around her husband Mr. Incredible, but she leads her children on a mission to save him... which is the oppisite of the danzle in distress phenomenon.

Works Cited: Kevinpokeeffe. “All of Pixar's Films Ranked My How Feminist They Are.” Mic, Mic Network Inc., 26 Oct. 2015, mic.com/articles/120880/every-pixar-film-ranked-by-how-feminist-they-are.