Andy Schmidt Pixar talk 2011

Andrew L. Schmidt is a senior animator with Pixar Animation Studios. He has worked in the animation industry for twenty years and has a long list of credits in both traditional 2D animation and CG animated films.
Andy discussed the making of Disney Pixar's 12th animated feature film Cars 2, and revealed some of the process and pipeline used at Pixar to develop their films. 

Admittedly, I wasn't overly enthused about the prospect of a talk about Pixar's Cars 2; Cars 2 didn't set my world alight. But Andy Schmidt proved my reservations were misplaced. The presentation was entertaining, insightful and inspiring.
Recording devices and cameras were strictly prohibited during the talk so I had to up my note taking speed to get all the good stuff. Enjoy...

Pixar do CG animation, but Andy reassuringly reminds that it is not the only type of animation that is good and should be done. He has experience with traditional animation and is fond of stop-motion and other forms of animation. The technique you use for your animation depends on the film you are making and what works and what does not.
Andy broke the ice at the beginning of his talk with a light-hearted look at Pixar studios. He began showing photos of the exterior and interior of Pixar studios built in 2000, followed by a shot of the hundreds of employees at Pixar.

"The building is just brick and mortar; it's more about power to the people."

At Pixar, they promote extra-curricular activities. They have a full bar in the animation department and their offices have their own personal touches. John Lasseter’s office is full of cute toys. The employees even got together and created an elaborate Micheal Jackson Thriller dance during Halloween. There was also an “ugly contest” towards the end of the production of Nemo where they would dress up in the most off-putting clothes and make-up.

"We work hard, but we have to play hard too."

Cars 2: Pixar's process for making films

Cars

"This was a dream come true for John Lasseter."

Cars combined a couple of John Lasseter’s greatest passions: cars and animation. He grew up around strong car and art influences because his father worked at a car dealer ship and his mother was a high school art teacher.
Cars was conceived after John had completed three feature films back to back. After he had worked on both Toy Story films and A Bug's Life he found himself in a situation where he felt he was missing out on key experiences with his children during their childhood. He decided to go on a road trip with his family across the US in a huge camper van and a lot of those personal experiences that he had while he was travelling inspired the idea of the movie, Cars.

JOHN'S RULES OF RELATABILITY:

• Telling a compelling story that keeps people at the edge of their seat
• Populate the story with appealing and memorable characters
• Putting that story and characters into a believable world - not necessarily a realistic world

Story
Cars was influenced by that family road trip and to some extent, Cars 2 was also influenced by a road trip. When John was doing publicity for Cars, he was going to different countries and he felt “like a fish out of water.” Then he asked himself, "What would Mater do?" And that was one way the story started to develop for Cars 2.

Another development was an early concept for the character, Finn McMissile. When they did Cars, there was a scene that was cut where McQueen and Sally go to the movies for a date. They see a spy movie and there's a character there called Finn McMissile. This was developed by Joe Grant and Rob Gibbs two story writers at Pixar. This landed on the cutting room floor, but at the same time it was too good to pass up, so they kept this character alive for the sequel.

“Another impetus in Cars 2 was the case of mistaken identity.”

The idea of this bumbling character travelling around the world was influenced by the Hitchcock mistaken identity character as seen in North by North West, The Man Who Knew Too Much or Foreign Correspondent.

Believable World

With the believable world, the environment is going to affect how the characters move such as the kitchen environment in Ratatouille or underwater environment in Finding Nemo.

Memorable Characters

There were already characters from the previous Cars film such as Doc Hudson, McQueen, and Luigi but Pixar needed to introduce new characters. McMissile, voiced by Michael Caine, was a slow mechanical type of car using 1960’s technology. With the female car, they tried to strike the balance between curvy sexy female without being sexiest. Another key character was Francesco, voiced by John Turturro. He was the cocky athlete or “the movie star who likes to walk around with his shirt off.” He was an open wheeled F1 racing car to indicate no sleeves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWGj5-nefXE&sns=em

There were many logical loops that Pixar got stuck on with the cars such as “Why do they have door handles? Who’s inside the car?” or “Why is Francesco kicking a football? He doesn’t have feet!”

Pixar’s Production Pipeline

It takes about 4 years for Pixar to make a movie from beginning to end. All of these phases in production are supported by a number of people who develop the tools and keep things running.

Development – Story – Art (broken down into Character and Sets) – Model – Layout – Animation – VFX – Lighting – Render 

Development – This is where all the fun research takes place. Members of the Pixar team will travel to various locations to collect their research first-hand. For Nemo, they went Scuba diving. For Ratatouille, they did a lot of research in busy Paris kitchens and even took cooking classes. They would study behavior and where and how objects are situated/placed within the environment. In Up, they brought in an Ostrich to study how the large bird, Kevin, would move. For Cars, they took part in motor sport racing to experience the feeling of g-force and how much strength and balance it takes to drive these vehicles at these high speeds. This meticulous research was essential for creating believability in their films.

Story – After collecting all the research, they would get down to writing the story. Sometimes they would employ story writers but usually Directors at Pixar, such as John Lasseter, would write their own material. For Toy Story 3, they hired the Oscar-winning writer behind Little Miss Sunshine, Mike Arndt. Storyboard artists would efficiently draw sequences based on the script and pitch it to the Director. Previously, such as in Cars, Storyboard artists would use traditional pen and paper to draw the sequences but this has now made way for a digital method using tablets. Digital storyboarding has been found to be a more efficient than traditional storyboarding although Andy admits he misses using paper.

• Art – With reference to the Development and Story phase, artists will begin creating tons of drawings and designs. They would use a range of different art mediums such as pen, pencil, watercolor, digital art and clay for sculpting. Designs will develop and improve based on continuous feedback.

• Character – Once the character designs are complete, all characters are sculpted to see whether their appearance and expressions maintain their appeal in 3D space. 

• Sets – “The biggest hurdle of Cars 2 was the sets.” 

Entire environments were built of London, Paris, Porto Corsa (Italy) and Tokyo.

In Cars 2, they already had all the complete character designs and models from the previous movie so they decided to use ‘Car-ification’. This is where elements of the car design would be injected into the designs of the environment such as grills and headlights. The effect will be similar to how you can sometimes make out familiar shapes in clouds and rock faces.

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