Ratatouille

One of the films that I'm going to look at for my extended writing piece is Ratatouille. As I'm going to be researching into appeal and performance, Ratatouille is a really good film to look in to as Pixar managed to make a rat appealing to the audience. A lot of it was down to the design of the characters as this is the immediate thing an audience would see, they needed to take previous misconceptions away from rats and portray them as something cute and appealing.

"If the visual qualities of character get the viewer’s attention during the storytelling, that’s appeal." 

With Emile it was a lot easier to make a chubby rat more appealing as this in itself makes something a lot more cute. Adding the type of personality that Emile has also adds to the appeal, clumsy yet friendly and most interested in his food. Through personality traits this can influence the animation style and performance. The 12 principles of animation will always play a bit part in any animation work, arcs, follow through, overlapping action, arcs, exaggeration, appeal, solid drawing etc - they all create a more realistic performance but in a stylised way. Animation performances can be extremely exaggerated but the characters still need to be believable and connect with the audience. For Ratatouille, one thing to pick up on is how the rats run, it's very quick but has a rhythm to it. The animators studied real rats and how they moved and interacted with objects, by understanding the real motion they could then take this and adapt it to produce a performance that expressed personality and charm.

Knick Knack

knick knack from aplady on Vimeo.

Another animation that worked with simple colours was Knick Knack by Pixar. Now this was creating in 1989 so that could be a reason for the basic colours, however saying that when you look at each of the characters, you can tell that they are made from plastic so surely the block colours would suit them more and portray plastic far better. 

The background however, consists of different colours just to make it more interesting and to possibly break up the space. I think I will have to experiment with putting some clouds in the background of my scene, however I have to remember that it is in a desert and it's meant to be really sunny. I have to be able to keep it within that theme and atmosphere or else it will deter away from the original idea.

When looking at the animation for each individual character, they have simple movements to coincide with their actual design and anatomy. Nothing too drastic otherwise it would take away the believability of it all. I had thought about making my cacti in my animation move up and down to the music as the train passes it, when looking at Knick Knack they have similar movements so I could use this as reference. Due to time constraints however I will have to see whether or not I get round to doing this, if not before the deadline, I will definitely return to it to add in the extra movements to see what impact it could have. Obviously it would add more characterization, however it may not necessarily work as it may be too much, possibly distracting? but I guess I will only know if I try.

The Incredibles

There is one scene in particular from The Incredibles which until now I hadn't even thought of referencing. I had completely forgotten about how the above scene shows the RV landing down onto the road and the actions that follow it. My train is almost doing the same action of landing down from quite a height. They rev the car in order for it to gain speed and traction once it hits the road and due to the speed at which they are travelling, the hit the ground with some great force and the RV swerves left and right as they try and take back control of the vehicle.

With my train I need to think about the speed in which it is travelling, the more speed, the longer it is going to take to slow down so I may need to review my animation and adjust this. I originally thought that the train would be constrained to the tracks, however after seeing this I think I can make my train bounce a bit more as it hits the ground, just to add a bit more exaggeration and to show the speed and height at which it was travelling at.

Pixar

After having a look at CGI landmarks - films that have stood out from the rest either by the software they have used or how it has been produced, the first studio I have to look at is Pixar and in particular John Lasseter. Even before Pixar was established John Lasseter was creating his own short films trying to make an impact with his work in the up and coming 3D community. In 1984 he created 'Adventures of Andre & Wally B', this was the first animation to use motion blur and squash and stretch. At the time the modelling was very basic and limited to purely geometric shapes, however Lasseter pushed the tech team to create something a shape that was more manoeuvrable. By creating a 'tear drop' shape this allowed for squash and stretch to be incorporated more easily. For it's time I think it's pretty amazing, it's not just the animation that has been paid close attention to but the story as well. This goes for every Pixar short film and feature length film created after this.



I think the most iconic short they have made, which ended up being their logo was 'Luxo Jr.' This was the first CG animation to use shadows and the story line really gets to people. The way the lamps convey their emotions through just movements is really clever, you feel that you can actually relate them to a real parent and their child. In the space of 2 years, the movements of the characters have become much more fluid and natural. It makes the whole thing more believable. It's quite astonishing to see the difference only after a couple of years, this shows how fast technology was beginning to progress.



'Toy Story' was the first feature length film to use computer animation. I remember watching this when I really young, as a young child you get engrossed into the film as you're amazed by the thought that toys can come alive, you start to think if yours can have their own lives too. Growing up this always stuck with me, the story I never found boring or that I have grown out of it, if anything I have appreciated the film more as I now understand the amount of time and effort that went in to creating a feature length film in 1995.

The Pixar Touch

I have recently just finished reading the book: 'The Pixar Touch'. It's basically a chronicle of the history and evolution of Pixar Animation Studios and the key people who helped shape the company as we know it today. I bought this book as I have a huge love for Pixar and their films; I had previously been watching videos and any documentaries I could find about the company to find out more about how they came about. However when I came across this book I thought it would be quite interesting to read how someone else would portray them. Through reading this, it not only has opened my eyes to how much Pixar have grown over the years but also the conflicts and problems they occurred along the way. It has also given me a more in depth knowledge to how they started out with a basic technology and progressed it into something that we now take for granted.

The book itself is broken up into chapters, each concentrating on a certain part in the 'Pixar story', whether that be the ultimate beginnings, a specific person, company or film - each chapter is concise and very informative. The first chapter concentrates on a man called Ed Catmull, from a young age he looked up to Walt Disney as inspiration and drew many flip books which he hoped would be in preparation for a future career in cartoons. But as he grew up he realised that his drawing skills would not get him there, however computer animation might. The fact was that computers at that point in time could barely put out still images so this would have been a problem. In 1972 Catmull produced a short animation clip for a graduate course project (See the blog post below), it was amazing for its time and this clip would then be incorporated into the 1976 film 'Futureworld'.

From watching the video itself, you got to see how much work went into making the actual animation, however by reading you get more of an in depth look into the production it. The whole book itself, once it starts going in depth about the films Pixar begin to make, offer you an insight into how much work goes into making each film. Take 'Finding Nemo' for example, Andrew Stanton (director, screenwriter and producer) drafted a version of the story and presented the pitch to John Lasseter during the production of 'A Bug's Life', which was around 1996 - this was 8 years prior to 'Finding Nemo' to actually be released. Most Pixar films tend to take 4-5 years from start to finish, most of that time being spent on the story. Not only do they spend a long time editing the storyline of the film, but to give the artists, animators and engineers reference, they had a twenty-five gallon fish tank bought in filled with a range of saltwater fish. Some members of the team flew out to Hawaii to study the environment underwater, professionals in the field came in and gave talks to the production team; and even two members from the art department climbed into a dead gray whale to prepare for the scene where Marlin and Dory become trapped inside a whale.

The amount of effort and commitment the whole of Pixar put in is incredible. Each film that they bring out pushes the boundaries of computer animation further. Everything they have accomplished is an inspiration and having grown up watching their films I have become more and more engrossed into the animation side of things. The dream one day, would hopefully be to work for them as an animator, but at this moment in time they are my motivation to achieve the best I can. This now, world renowned, successful company started off as nothing, so if they managed to pursue and fight for what they wanted to do, why can't I?