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Production Focus : Honda by Micheledauria |
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Interview with Donglu Yu |
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Interview with Phil McDarby |
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Pixar 3d Short : Tokyo Mater |
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Production Focus : Stormbirds |
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New Autodesk Applications for Mac |
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Macworld Digital Art Gallery |
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Little Big Planet by Nexus |
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Short movie : Surviving Sid |
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ITS ART Vol 03-2008 Available |
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Making Of The Alley by Roy Stein |
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Filterforge for Mac |
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Dove By Psyop |
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Short Movie : Fame Mask |
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Interview with Marc Brunet |
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Making of Vettel and Webber in Singapore |
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Focus : Bakers Precious Biscuit |
What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn off the last robot?
That’s the intriguing and whimsical premise posed by Disney•Pixar’s extraordinary new computer-animated comedy set in space, “WALL•E.” Filled with humor, heart, fantasy, and emotion, “WALL•E” takes moviegoers on a remarkable journey across the galaxy, and once again demonstrates Pixar’s ability to create believable worlds and set new standards for storytelling, characters, and state-of-the-art CG animation. IT'S ART had the occasion to talk with Neil Blevins again, this time about his work on Pixar's latest, WALL•E. Here is what he had to say...
IT’S ART: Neil, can you tell us about your job at Pixar, from your first day at the studio to today? What positions have you had since you've been at Pixar?
Neil: I've done a number of jobs here at Pixar. My first was as a part of the Second Unit on the Incredibles, I created 3D/2D hybrid backgrounds for a number of sequences (these days, this is generally referred to in the industry as "Digimatte"). Next, I worked on the FX team doing explosions, water and electrical effects. I also did some FX for the short film Jack-Jack Attack. Since then I've been a part of the sets team, modeling and shading environments for Cars, Mater and the Ghost Light, WALL•E and for next year's film Up.
IA: Did WALL•E change in any way your pipeline/process, the way you used to work?
Neil: Each film at Pixar presents its own sets of challenges. For this film, it was its epic scale. The sets for this film were not small, self contained rooms. We had to have tons of trash that went as far as the horizon, and even the interiors had thousands of objects in them. A lot of work had to be done to find inventive ways of reducing the complexity in the background. The rest was just a lot of hard work making all the necessary sets.
IA: You worked on one of the main sequences at the beginning of WALL•E where we can see the piles of trash. Can you tell us about the brief you had on this sequence? What were the important points to focus on?
Neil: The idea behind the beginning of the film, after the opening planet flyby, was to first show the atmosphere on earth, brown and smog like. This was followed by what appeared to be mountains, but as you got closer to the mountains you realized they were in fact mountains of trash. As you approach the city you see things that appear to be skyscrapers and again, as you get closer you realize it's a mixture of skyscrapers and giant trash towers. A lot of the story was told in those opening shots just by the way the environment revealed itself. In the same way that the animators had to tell the story without words, we had to help tell the story with our environments.
IA: In this sequence we can really feel how the directors wanted to introduced a sort of confusion between the buildings, the piles and the mist. In what ways did you and the team you worked with approach these points?
Neil: Well, it was very chaotic, but it also needed to be orderly. You wanted to see that the world was a huge mess, but you also needed to be able to read what everything was at a glance so your eyes wouldn't get lost in the mess. So, as well as huge piles of random trash, you needed plenty of dirt and other more uniform types of detail to give the eye a bit of a rest.
IA: Can you speak about any other parts of the movies you've worked on?
Neil: I got a chance to work on the worksite environment, which was the area WALL•E first goes trash diving. I worked on some of the space sequences, like modeling and shading the lunar surface and the satellites. I also got to model and shade part of the spaceship interior.
