in conversation with elyse klaidman
Presented as part of Pixar: 20 Years of Animation
28 June 2007
74 mins
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As curator at Pixar Animation Studios and Dean of Art and Film for Pixar University, Elyse Klaidman talks about the artistic processes behind Pixar's films.
Elyse Klaidman: ...yeah when I listened to the introduction and I hear all those things that I supposedly do, it shocks me. First of all I do them with a team of extraordinary people at Pixar, which is what makes Pixar a magical place, that nothing is done by one person. It is all about collaboration. And also while listening I thought, "God, if I was sitting out there in the audience, 15, 20 years ago thinking, 'gosh how do I get a job like that'." I have to tell you how I ended up doing these things that I do at Pixar and it was not by design or plan; it just kind of happened and I followed some of my dreams and passions and fell into some wonderful places and met some wonderful people.
The other thing I would like to just say before I start is this should be totally informal. If you have a question in the middle of while I am speaking, raise your hand. I think there are microphones around, right?
Essentially after I just give you a little brief intro, I am going to show pieces of artwork that are in the exhibit and talk about how they influence and inspire our filmmaking process, but also just talk about the artwork, because I love the artwork, but really at any time stop me, say something, correct me, whatever.
So I studied fine art. I worked as a painter, and painters mostly have to figure out how to really make a living on the side. And I did a couple of different things. I was teaching. I have taught kids from two to people in their 90s. I have taught drawing and painting and color and all kinds of things. And I also worked in a gallery. I ran a gallery for about five years. And when I was painting and I was teaching drawing workshops out of my studio and a woman came in, she was a painter, she said; she introduced herself and said, "Yeah, I am a painter and I have a job. I actually have health insurance and I get paid every week and I work at this place called Pixar." I had never heard of it-"Toy Story" hadn't come out yet.
About six or eight months later, she phoned me up and she said, "Hey the President of" - no she didn't say the President - she said, "This guy from Pixar is going to call you. He is kind of a geeky engineer type. His name is Ed Catmull." He was the President of Pixar but she failed to tell me that part. "And he wants to someone to teach drawing." I thought great, my husband and I had just bought a house and we had a one year old and neither of us had a job. So it sounded like a really good thing.
So I spoke to Mr. Ed Catmull and he invited me to the studio. I had done no research about Pixar. I really knew nothing. "Toy Story" had come out at that point, I had not seen it, I didn't really care, I didn't know very much about animation. I liked going to movies but that was it.
So I walked in there and Ed took me around; he spent about an hour showing me Pixar and walking me through the halls and introducing me to people, and it was with such love and passion. And I thought "Why is he being so nice to me; I mean he doesn't even know who I am, I am this poor artist." And he was just lovely and had this, again, passion for what he was doing. So they hired me to teach a drawing class and the idea behind that Ed said was he wanted anybody in the company to have the opportunity to learn about observation, to learn how to draw is really to learn how to see.
And Pixar is made up of people who come from all different backgrounds, some of them from computer graphics and technology and engineering and some who've worked as fine artists or animators and stop-motion or 2D or people who have accounting degrees or live action background, really a wide mixture. And if everyone has the opportunity to learn how to draw and to see and observe, we'll maybe be better at telling our stories and creating characters, developing worlds and communicating with each other.
So that is what I did. I taught drawing. One of my other memories is the first drawing class I taught. There was this bunch of very nice guys in the class, mostly guys. and I got to the point where I teach perspective and when I teach perspective, I do it in a very simple way, not complicated. And I am explaining to these guys about perspective. I found out later that people in that room were all of the geniuses behind the technology of Pixar. I was like oh my god, how did I survive that?
So I started by teaching drawing and then they wanted someone to teach color and design and it grew from there. The other side of my job that is fancy-sounding curator's job was borne out of the fact that I was a frustrated painter who was working at a company and not having enough time to paint. So I thought "Well gosh, there are lots of us here at Pixar who are being creative towards this big collaborative art project, our films, but what about nurturing our own work?"
So I asked Ed if I could have a little space in the new building we were going to move to, to show artwork, sculpture, furniture making or drawings whatever anybody wanted to do. And he said, "Yeah, sounds like a good idea." And about three months before the new building opened, he walked me down these two beautiful massive hallway galleries and said, "How is this?" And I said, "Oh, I guess I have a new hobby at Pixar."
The first show we had was of all employees just contributing their own artwork and it was a wild, wonderful group show, but it soon became obvious to me that I couldn't sustain employee artwork and all that space and Monsters Inc. was about to come about. And I thought, "God, you know, so many people in the building -- I think there were probably 400, 500 people at Pixar at that point -- don't actually get to see these drawings and the paintings and the color explorations that are a part of our creative process for the film". And so I said, "Is it OK, can I put original artwork up in these hallways, frame it and make it look beautiful?" And that is when the in-house stuff started.
So as you can see, it was not my grand plan. I am very, very lucky. I get to work with extraordinary people and I get to look at beautiful art every single day. OK, blah, blah, that's enough. You can also raise your hand and say, "could you stop talking and show some pictures?"
[laughter]
Here are my colleagues. They have already raised their hand and asked me to stop talking.
[laughter]
So why are we having this exhibit "Pixar 20 years of Animation?" which should actually now be called 21.5 years of animation because the show has been touring for about a year-and-a-half. Have some of you had a chance to go down there yet?
Some?
OK. I hope you get a chance because the idea behind this--or John Lasseter's vision for this--was that we would actually get to share that artwork that we hang up in the hallways or that we keep in our archives or that we look at for reference with everybody in the world because it hasn't left Pixar before this exhibit. And most people when they think about Pixar they think about technology and computer animated films, and hopefully they think about great stories and fun animation and all of that, but they don't think about drawings and painting and sculptures and all the traditional mediums that we use.
So, the exhibit downstairs is really an exploration of that. And that's we are going to do. So I think what I am going to do is just show - I am going to start by showing a clip from "Toy Story." It is a really early animation test, so that's kind of fun to see. It is really rough and the characters don't quite look like the characters Woody and Buzz became. And that is a really important part of what we do because we start with ideas, and then this whole idea of drawing and painting them, we get them out of our heads and on to a piece of paper, onto something visual that the rest of our colleagues can look at and comment on. Pixar is a place that is open to everybody's ideas. The best ideas for the story are the ones that end up getting used, but sometimes we wander all over the place.
So, why don't we start with the early Toy Story clips?
These are actually from early development drawings of Woody, very, very early and Woody was actually a...what are they called?
...ventriloquist doll. And Buzz is that tiny little guy. Early animation test.
[Video Clip]
Ah ho, what you are doing?
I am Tampas from Mars.
Yeah, what is this Buzz?
Say, you weren't thinking of flying are you?
You know, Andy loves toys that can fly...
Really? Well then... to infinity, and beyond!
[music]
You know, Andy loves toys that he can find.
Elyse: So anyway, what you saw there was a very different looking Woody and Buzz. Out of this process came, first of all, looking at the big size-difference, that just looked weird. So some further exploration of these characters went on. Woody was a lot meaner back then, too; you can tell just by looking at him. And Buzz, Buzz was just a silly, happy guy.
This is a drawing by Bob Polley, one of our artists. What I love about some of the stuff you see downstairs is just the really raw feeling of it. You can almost see and feel the creative process. He drew something, then colored it in, then cut something out and put it on top of it. There's often little notes on the side, so it's really kind of a view into the way people think and draw.
So here's Woody, by Bud Lucky, another one of our wonderful artists and animators who actually just retired - he's our first person ever to retire from Pixar. Bud was in animation for 50 years and at Pixar for 15. What an amazing guy.
I don't know if any of you have seen the short film "Boundin'", the one with the sheep? Bud wrote that, directed it, drew all the pictures, wrote the songs, sang the songs, and voiced all the characters. So that's Bud Lucky.
So here's Woody, a little bit closer to the Woody we know and love downstairs. This is a simple drawing from something that's called a model packet. It's a really simple model packet. So in the beginning, when we start, we're trying to figure out how the character should look, and how that look would best represent who the character is. But at a certain phase, we need to give some clear direction to the artists and the technical directors who are going to implement these designs into the computer and build three-dimensional models.
So a drawing like this shows actual, much more correctly, the proportions and the sizes, and what that character needs to look like. Another thing that is a big part of the process is sculpting, and one of our sculptors, Jerome Ranft, is here. He's giving a talk tomorrow or the next day. Many of his sculptures are downstairs.
That work is really the transition from these two-dimensional drawings to the three-dimensional modeled characters in the film. So he'll sculpt them. He'll get these drawings from character designers, and he will sculpt. He'll sometimes shift them, and change the character design, and again, that's a collaborative process. This is part of the model packet. It think there's a couple of them downstairs.
Here is Buzz getting a little closer. My favorite part are the little eyes on the bottom. You know, just trying it out. What should that look be? To infinity and beyond. These are all Bob Polley's drawings.
OK. So this is a color script. I think color scripts are some of my very favorite artwork in the exhibition. What a color script is, it's the first opportunity for the director to see the entire film laid out in color. And essentially, laying out the emotions and the mood. I think some of the best ways to underscore emotion are color and music, in films.
So this was for "Toy Story." Ralph Edelstein, who was the production designer, Ralph Edelstein worked for quite awhile creating these pastels. They are downstairs. They are one of our most precious objects in the collection. He laid them out, and John looked at his film, the film he had in his head, just for the moods, and what was going to happen. They end up being a reference for the whole film.
Sometimes we develop them further, and into more detail. But the idea here is not to really draw out every action or the details of a character or scene, but again, the mood and emotion. And what I love is how abstract they are, really. How beautiful they are to look at. Quite a bit through this exhibition process, and certainly when it was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, there were a lot of questions about "Is this art? Why is this at the Museum of Modern Art? Why is this going to all these wonderful museums around the world? This is a big commercial company, it's probably just a marketing tool."
I think that creative work can be judged by itself - you just look at it, and you can decide whether it's art or not. I think the art world is always having to question "Is this art?" That's the way it's always been. I think when you look at these drawings and paintings, and in particular for me, these color scripts, there's no question that they're beautiful, they're skilled, and they are evoking for me, emotion and feeling. And yes, they're serving a very clear purpose in terms of the inspiration of the film.
This is just a closer look, but you guys get an even closer look, because you can go downstairs and look at them in detail.
OK, so I'm going to transition from that into "A Bugs Life." These are color scripts by Bill Cohen. I think Ralph's color scripts were in pastel, these are gouache paintings. They're tiny - they're this small, each one of the squares. They're downstairs. The reason I'm showing this one, besides the fact that I think it's beautiful, is to talk a little bit about the process of art and story going back and forth.
I don't know how much you guys know about the process, but we start with an idea, then a very small group of people, the director, the head of story, and some story artists work together to flush out, to draw out, to come up with the story. Sometimes there's a whole written script, sometimes there's just a series of ideas.
What our story artists do is they draw out the film. There are examples of story boards downstairs. We quickly put them into editorial, so we can see those storyboards in a reel, moving, so we understand if the timing works. Honestly, doing all of this on paper is a lot faster and a lot cheaper than doing it on the computer, and it allows you to be willing to experiment.
But what happens is it's not like the whole thing is figured out, designed, and implemented. There's a lot of back and forth. So in this process, they're still working on the "Bugs Life" story, and Bill Cohen was showing these color scripts to John Lasseter, who's directing it. The section in the second color script, the kind of gray foggy one with the grasshopper at the end, that was a new idea being introduced. It was an idea of the grasshoppers descending into the ants' space from the fog, or coming over... were they coming over the hill? I can't remember now.
I'm going to show you the clip, then I'll remember. But essentially, the scary grasshoppers coming out of the fog. From this drawing came that idea, and the story artists worked further on it, and it ended up being in the film.
There's just a close up.
You know, why don't we go ahead and show the clip from "A Bug's Life" before taking a look at the character design. We'll see some more squiggly stuff on the screen. Does anybody have any questions in the mean time? I've answered everything. These are early drawings of Hopper, which are quite different from the way Hopper ended up, but have sort of a lovely, fluid quality to them. I love the loose lines. He's scary, but he's not as scary as the ultimate Hopper.
Do you think that they can hear? OK. All right. Is that one of Jerome's, Adrienne? It's not, right? I don't think so. But it's wonderful. So this is one of the sculptures, one of the macats that's that traditional phase. It's not just an implementation of the drawing. Everybody at Pixar takes the creative process and the ideas to another level, is hopefully adding to it, or "plus-ing it", as we tend to say there.
Film Excerpt: [music]
That's it? But there's got to be more food on the island.
If we give up any more we'll starve.
I won't accept this!
Mother, it's not enough. What do we do?
I don't know!
[noise of footsteps]
Gasp!
[noise of footsteps]
[grunting]
You little termites! I give you a second chance, and this is all I get?
But Hoppper, we ran out of time!
Have you been playing all summer? You think this is a game? Well, guess what? You just lost! Not one ant sleeps until we get every scrap of food on this island!
Do what he says - you don't want to make him mad. Believe me.
Oh no, you're staying with me, your Highness.
Quick, to the clubhouse.
[music]
Hurry!
Shut up a minute, will you? I think I heard something over here.
Well then get over there and check it out!
Wait a minute... I think I found something.
[laughter]
Cool!
Hey, how do I look?
Like an idiot!
Well I don't know, maybe it will keep me dry in the rain...
You moron, we'll be out of here before it rains. Didn't you hear Hopper? After the ants pick all the food, we get to push the queen to remind them who's boss.
Then she's dead, they cry, boo hoo, we go home, end of story.
Oh, cool.
Stay here, I'm going to get help.
[scream]
Ahhh!
[sounds of a battle/escape]
Come on wings, fly, fly!
Ahhh!
Yes! Mmm.
Elyse: It's a scary movie, isn't it? I haven't seen that in awhile. I had forgotten. There was just a little bit of transition from the gray foggy scene to then the clubhouse. Did you notice how different the color was in that area?
I don't know how many of your remember "A Bug's Life," but one of the things that was really instrumental in this film, at a certain point in the early phases, they made a "bug cam". So they bought a teeny tiny video recorder, and put it on the end of a stick, and literally went exploring around the leaves and the grasses around where the office was to see what would it look like from an ant's perspective.
A key moment in the film is when they saw the translucency, the light coming through the clovers and the blades of grass, and the amazing color and translucency, in terms of how to design the look and the color of the film would be.
Here's Hopper getting... it's a painting by Tia Cratter. One of the other important aspects that happens in the painting process is defining the textures, the way the surfaces of all of the characters and elements in the film need to be described. Yeah, question?
[question inaudible]
That's a great question. It varies. Sometimes directors have an actor in their minds from day one. It just, ahh, that person would be perfect. And sometimes they don't. Sometimes they try out a lot of different people. I think also sometimes the character is already designed, and sometimes the character changes because somebody brings something to the performance. Usually less the design of the character changes, but the performance changes. Sometimes the lines change, or there's improve that goes on. I think that's pretty much how it is.
So here's more exploration of what the textures in the process in the 3D world of the computer, is called shading. This is crazy geometry math science stuff that I don't understand at all, but somehow these guys look at these pictures, and they create those surfaces. And there are other people at Pixar who could talk about that for a long time, and make it even understandable, but somehow it doesn't stick in my head.
This is part of an early design for a piece that's downstairs. There's a monitor with kind of a survey of the different characters from "A Bug's Life," and explorations, and they're drawn by various artists. And actually another artist is sitting in the front row here. Diane Cob. She and one of our other colleagues put together the beautiful monitor downstairs. So hopefully you'll get a chance to see that.
These are a lot funnier and happier than those grasshoppers were in the scene we just saw. OK, so I guess I'm going to transition here to "Toy Story." This is a pastel by Bill Cohen describing a little bit about the world. Have I gone into the whole idea of John says there are three things that we need to have to make a great film?
The first is story, of course, because if you don't have a great story to tell, then why bother? Who cares even how beautiful it is, or how technologically advanced it is, we care about telling great stories, or stories that we find entertaining. Sometimes it seems like all we do at Pixar is entertain ourselves, and that's good enough. If other people like it, then great, we're having fun.
So a great, great story, and then compelling characters. Characters that somehow we can all feel something about, relate to. Even the villains. They're real in a way that we care about them.
Then, a world that is believable. So obviously we're making animated films, and there's a lot of fantasy in them. We're not trying to make realistic films. Another one of my favorite Ed Capma stories, someone said to him once in an interview, so the goal here with Pixar is to make more and more realistic films every single time, right? That's what you're doing with the technology.
He said no actually, that's not true. Really realistic films exist, and they're called home movies, and nobody wants to watch those.
So that's not the goal. The goal is to use the technology to tell our story and to create a world that's believable, and the believable part is often greatly influenced by this art-making process in the beginning, where we're exploring all kinds of details. Details that you might not even notice in the film in a specific way, but you notice in a collective way or hopefully that it really makes the world feel like a world that exists, even if there are talking fish in it, which we know don't really exist but we believe that because the world is so logical.
So this was from the toys' perspective, Al's apartment building in "Toy Story 2." And here. Another thing that I love to see in these drawings and paintings is, we have to figure stuff out that you never see in the movies. So we have to really understand that world. So even if this isn't a shot in the film, it's important for our animators and artists and storytellers to know exactly where Al actually lives. So I don't think you see anything like this, but this was important information for us in the storytelling. This was an early design of Al's apartment, which isn't at all what it ended up looking like in the film.
This was one of the key pieces, I think for John in conceptualizing the feel of the film. It's a painting by Randy Barrett. There was something about the warmth and the color and the light going back to a kind of a nostalgia, a nostalgic period.
"Toy Story 2" is a story, basically of -- the story was inspired by John Lasseter's own life. John has an amazing collection of toys. He is a complete collector guy. In fact, he has so much stuff that we have all kinds of excess storage space in the archives and all over the place to keep it. He's just passionate. He loves these things, so he collects them, and people give them to him. He has five sons, and his sons were coming into his office and grabbing toys, and he was freaking out. "Don't touch that! That's a collector's item!"
And so he thought, "What's going on here? There's a story in this!" So that was when the idea for "Toy Story 2" was born, that here were these toys, and what happens to them after their children grow up? Where do they go? And the tough choice that Woody had to make between going and being a collector's item and continuing being Andy's toy. Anyway, this painting was sort of key in getting that look.
Here's some early studies for Jessie -- Jill Coulton. And the prospector, a wonderful, just sort of loose drawing by Dan Lee. And again, here's the notes on the side, and I think there's a phone number scratched out there. I think he was trying to call his bank or something. [laughter] So you know, there's a real -- I love the humanity and just knowing, seeing these artists working and living their lives at the same time.
I think it's time for that. Let's do "The Toy Story 2" clip, and then we'll move on to "Monsters."
Movie Dialogue: I am in the middle of something really important! [laughs] You, my little cowboy friend, are going to make me big buck-buck-bucks! [laughs] Buck-buck-bucks! [laughs] [music, sound effects]
Andy!
I can't believe I have to drive all the way to work on a Saturday. All the way to work! [sound effects][music]
What? Whoa!!! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ahhh! No, wait! Stop! Horsey, stop! Stop! Sit, boy! Stop it! Sit, I said! Whoa!
Yee-hah! It's you! It's you! It's you, it's you, it's you! It's really you!
What's me?
Whoo-whee!
There's a snake in my boot!
Ha! It is you!
Please stop saying that.
Prospector said someday you'd come. Sweet mother of Abraham Lincoln! The Prospector! He'll want to meet yeah! Say hello to the Prospector.
It...It's a box.
He's mint in the box. Never been opened.
Turn me around, Bullseye, so I can see. Why, the prodigal son has returned.
Yee-hah! It's you! It's you! You're here! It's you, it's you, it's you!
OK, I'm officially freaked out now.
Oh, we've waited countless years for this day. It's good to see you, Woody.
Listen, I don't know what...Hey, how do you know my name?
Everyone knows your name, Woody.
Why, you don't know who you are, do you? Bullseye...
That's me...Wow...Holy cow.
Announcer on tape of TV show: Cowboy Crunchies, the only cereal that's sugar-frosted and dipped in chocolate proudly presents!
(sung) Woody's Roundup. Come on, it's time to play. There's Jessie the Yodelin' Cowgirl...
Lookit! Lookit! That's me!
Bullseye, he's Woody's horse.
He's a smart one!
Pete, the old prospector.
Has anyone seen my pickaxe?
And the man himself, of course. It's time for Sheriff Woody. He's the very best. He's the rootin'-est, tootin'-est cowboy in the wild, wild west. Woody's Roundup.
[scene break]
I can't find it! It doesn't seem to be on any of these stations!
Keep looking.
Oh, you're goin' too slow. Let me take the wheel.
It's too fast. How could you even tell what's on?
I can tell.
Stop! There it is!
We made it!
Back, back, back!
Too late. I'm in the 40s. got to go 'round the horn. It's faster.
Wait, wait, wait. That's it!
Back! Back!
And look for the giant chicken!
Now, Etch! That's where I need to go.
You can't go, Buzz. You'll never make it there.
Woody once risked his life to save me. I couldn't call myself his friend if I weren't willing to do the same. So who's with me?
I'm packing you an extra pair of shoes and your angry eyes, just in case.
This is for Woody when you find him. (kiss).
All right, but I... I don't think it'll mean the same coming from me.
Mr. Buzz Lightyear, you just got to save my pal Woody. (coughs).
I'll do my best, son. OK, fellas, let's roll.
[end of film excerpt]
Elyse: I think maybe we should stop the clip. As much fun as it is, I'm not going to get through the next four films, so... [laughs] I love that movie; I could watch it over and over, so that was painful to have to stop.
OK, so we're going to move on to "Monsters, Inc." This is the, I think, first sketch that Pete Docter, the director of the film, made when he was just kind of saying these are the characters this is kind of the idea of what I'm thinking and this a year and a half, two years of character development happened afterwards and they kind of ended up pretty much looking like this. [laughs] But what you'll see downstairs is unbelievable! Explorations of possibilities! Because, what was this? This was the world of Monsters!
And what does that look like? It was a field day for the artists because they could just go anywhere, and that was what was so wonderful about, you know, the way we work at Pixar. And Pete's direction on this was just: "Go wild! Try every idea!" When I was putting together the exhibit for Monsters, it was the first one I was doing and it was, you know: "Wow!!" It was really hard to kind of call and say: "Which ones do we show? What's the story that we tell?"
What you see downstairs, there's quite a bit of Sulley exploration, because Sulley really did go all over the place. Mike had a few variations: he had a goatee for a while, he didn't have arms, I think, for a while, right? Sulley went all over the place and ended up more or less kind of like this guy.
So, how do you research the world of Monsters, right? The researching of the characters: you can go anywhere you want and try all kinds of things, but in order to create a believable world we had to have imagined where was this scare factory, where was this world, what kind of a setting would it be in? And so we explored all kinds of urban areas and a kind of more European flare, there was a lot of exploration of Venice and the canals. There was this idea that you kind of can see here of a more industrial, modern town with the more European old in the background being pushed out by the factories and the new world.
So, what was the exploration, what did they do, where did they go to do their research? Lucky, "Monsters Inc." folks, they were sent to Pittsburgh, and they got to go investigate steel factories, and they were looking at everything to make the world believable. And you can kind of see even in just this simple painting by Harley Jessup the back and forth between some of the shapes here and ideas for the design of the factory, looking at kind of the internal workings which ends up being reflected inside, at Monster Scare Factory.
One of my very favorite sequences in this film is the "Door Vault" sequence and it started out as this very simple idea of... well, each one of the children in "Monsters Inc." has to have the very simple closet door, right? We all have a closet door and that'll be easy enough to build, so that was something that didn't freak out the technical directors at Pixar, thinking about having to create it: "It's like a door, we can do that!"
But that evolved into the "Door Vault", full of hundreds of thousands, millions of doors, and this is an early drawing of that "Door Vault" idea by Glenn Kim. [pause] Additional drawings by Harley Jessup, kind of the complexity of the doors. And, you know, it's really fun for me to just look at the different styles that all the artists brought to the film and the different ways that those styles are actually realized in the final product.
Pastel by Dominique Louis... A lot of these downstairs.
These are about this big and they're amazing! There's a series of color scripts, I think there's about 40 of them in the frame--Dianne, do you know how many of those there are? And they're literally this big, and the detail in them is spectacular. So, don't walk by them. You can see that they're favorites because I put a lot of them in here.
Again, this is one of those teeny tiny ones and the amount of detail that... you know, the feeling that's clearly represented in these tiny pastels... the light! Dominique is a master of light, color and light.
This piece you will see as a part of the "Artscape", the actual pastels downstairs, but it's also part of the media installation created especially for the exhibit called "Artscape", which is a spectacular, crazy thing! [laughs] I don't know how to say it more articulately! It uses all of the artwork or a lot of concept and development artwork and at an extraordinarily high resolution on a very, very large screen. It takes you inside of the art and simulates, in a way, the inspirational experience that we have when looking at the art.
So you see a drawing or a painting and, as a storyteller, as a director, your brain is going to all kinds of places that aren't necessarily right there in that painting. And, Dianne sitting there, it's hard for me not to remember the many, many hours she spent working with Andy Jimenez, who directed this piece, cutting apart all of these doors in Photoshop. So, when you see "Artscape", think of Dianne. [laughs] And her toil and her extraordinary work!
Look at that, isn't that pretty? [laughs] God!
And then I think we'll just show the clip of that, quickly.
Hopefully you're getting a chance when you're kind of going through this quickly and then showing you clips, but the correlation between what you're seeing in both sides is actually happening a little bit in your brain. Sometimes what happens is we just get so taken with the story in the movie that we don't think about that stuff, which is ultimately good. You should be watching and enjoying the movie but take a look at the "Door Vault" sequence. I think there's also a "Walking to Work" sequence.
Yeah, I don't know which one is first. If the "Walking to Work" sequence is first maybe we should go past that and go to the "Door Vault"? I don't know if you can do it or not. If not, we'll just watch a little more.
[music]
We'll do it after.
Film:
I'm telling you, big daddy you're going to be seeing this face on TV a lot more often.
Yeah? Like, on Monstropolis's Most Wanted?
You've been jealous of my good looks since the fourth grade, pal.
Have a good day, sweetie.
You, too, hon.
Whoo!
OK, Sulley, hop on in.
Nope. Uh-uh. Uh-uh.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!
Where you going?
What are you doing?
Mikey, there's a scream shortage. We're walking.
Walking?!
Yep.
No, no, no, my baby.
Come on. Come on.
Look, she needs to be driven.
Bye, baby.
I... I'll call you!
Hey, genius, you want to know why I bought the car? Huh?
Not really.
To drive it!
You know, like, on the street?
With the honk-honk and the vroom-vroom and no walking involved.
Give it a rest, will you, butterball?
Come on, you could use the exercise.
I could use the exercise?!
Look at you. You have your own climate!
How many tentacles jump the rope?
Morning, Mike!
Morning, Sulley!
Hey! Morning, kids.
Hey, kids.
How you doing?
Bye, Mike! Bye, Sulley!
Ow! Hey!
Ah, nuts.
Hey, hey, hey! Fellas!
Hey, Tony!
Tony! Ba-da-bing!
Tony!
Hey, Tony!
Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow!
I hear somebody's close to breaking the all-time scare record.
Ah, just trying to make sure there's enough scream to go around.
Hey! On the house!
Hey, thanks!
Grazie!
Ba-da-bing!
Oh, great.
Hey, Ted!
Good morning!
See that, Mikey?
Ted's walking to work.
Big deal.
Guy takes five steps and he's there.
Monsters, Inc. Please hold.
Monsters, Inc. Please hold.
Monsters, Inc. Please hold.
Morning, Sulley.
Morning, Ricky.
Hey, it's the Sullster!
See you on the scare floor, buddy!
Hey, Marge.
Hey, how was jury duty?
Morning, Sulley!
Hey!
Hey, it's still leaning to the left.
It is not!
Hey, fellas.
Hey, Jerry.
Hey, Mr. Sullivan!
Guys, I told you, call me Sulley.
I don't think so.
We just wanted to wish you good luck today.
Hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey!
Come on, get lost, you two.
You're making him lose his focus.
Oh. Sorry.
See you later, fellas.
Go get 'em, Mr. Sullivan!
Quiet! You'll make him lose his focus.
Oh, no. Sorry!
Shut up!
Monsters, Inc. Please hold.
Monsters, Inc. I'll connect you.
Ms. Fearmonger is on vacation. Would you like her voice mail?
Oh, Schmoopsie-poo.
Googley Bear!
Happy birthday.-Oh, Googley-woogley, you remembered!
Hey, Sulley-wulley.
Oh, hey, Celia...weelia. Happy birthday.
Thanks. So,..are we going anywhere special tonight?
I just got us into a little place called,..Harryhausen's.
Harryhausen's?! But it's impossible to get a reservation there!
Not for Googley Bear. I will see you at quitting time and not a minute later.
OK, sweetheart.
Think romantical thoughts. (sings) You and me, Me and you. Both of us together!
Elyse: I think we're going to go right into the Door Vault? Oh, nope. Maybe we skipped--did you skip by the first one? There was just one? [laughs] This is two? I'm looking at fingers up there. I'd love to show the Door Vault one because I've shown so many of those pastels.
[film excerpt of "Monsters, Inc."]
Attention, employees: Randall Boggs has just broken the all-time scare record.
Huh? No, I didn't. Get out of my way!
Go get 'em, Googley Bear!
There it is!
Get off my tail!
Let me through!
Sulley, what are you doing?
Grab on, Mike!
Are you out of your...? Sulley, what are we doing?
We have to get Boo's door and find a station.
What a plan...simple, yet insane!
Whoa. Oh, boy. Hold on! Sorry!
Elyse: [laughs] Movie interruptus! Sorry about that.
OK, "Finding Nemo." So, the exploration in "Finding Nemo" was clearly rooted here, in this wonderful country. In the early phases, John said to Andrew Stanton and his team, "You've got to go scuba diving. You've got to go see what it looks like under water--see the light."
You know, the process of designing "Finding Nemo" was really, really different from "Monsters, Inc." because it's actually a known world. It exists, you know, all those fish and sharks, and the reef, and the drop-off--they exist. So, the research wasn't as much rooted in letting your imagination go in a million directions, but actually looking at those creatures and those places, and then designing them to tell the story, and designing them into the animated world.
In fact, the problem that we had at one point was making "Finding Nemo" too realistic. The initial tests of water and under water were so spectacularly beautiful and realistic that we thought we need to pull that back a little, we need to actually make it this fantasy world, this animated, believable world.
What you're looking at here is a drawing by Simon Varela. These are extraordinary; I think there's four of them downstairs. Layer upon layer of charcoal and graphite, extremely detailed. This is a drawing of the drop-off, going from the reef to the drop-off. These drawings were really important to Andrew Stanton and his vision for the film, and Ralph Eggleston, the production designer. This is something that you never see in the movie, this shot right here, but it helped to imagine the full world and the fear of being caught by the fish.
I think these were pretty early in the process. Jerome, were these drawings early? Jerome Ranft just walked in, sculptor extraordinaire, whose work you will see downstairs, and who will be giving a talk tomorrow or the next day? Tomorrow. Do you remember, were these Simon drawing really early? Yeah.
And Bruce here, Bruce the shark, changed somewhat in character design, but clearly... Yeah, oops, sorry. [laughs] That was me laughing. [laughs] Oh, dear.
One of the things Ralph Eggleston was exploring in his color scripts -- also extremely beautiful color scripts -- exploring the light and the color between the drop-off and sort of the dark underwater areas, and then the really beautiful color-filled, light-filled areas. So in a couple of these small color script pastels, you can see kind of that darker look. This is actually from the very beginning of the film.
And these are some of his early explorations of light, and how that light filtering down and hitting the coral reef, and just really, really different color when you're in that part of the film.
OK, let's take a look at the "Finding Nemo" clip. Are you guys getting tired of the clips? Are they too long? You're OK?
Film: Where'd everybody go?
Coral, get inside the house, Coral.
No, Coral, they'll be fine. Just get inside the house. You, now.
[sound of fighting]
Coral! Coral? Coral? Coral? Coral?
Elyse: Let's skip ahead, if you don't mind. I think this shows us the color of these darker scenes. And let's take a look at, I think, the next one. And then we'll move on to "The Incredibles." Sorry. I'm making the projectionists work harder in a way I didn't tell them I was going to do. I apologize. You can probably just let it go right there. Just take a look at the color of that world.
Film: Woah!
Elyse: Here's that drop-off. Oops, that's enough. That'll be fine. [laughs] I think we're ready to move on anyway. It's fine. Let's move on, and we'll do "The Incredibles" afterwards.
So, "The Incredibles" character design, we're going to take a look at Edna Mode. This doesn't look like the Edna we've all come to know and love. And they went all over the place in their explorations for this costume designer for superheroes. And Edna, they looked at kind of a "Jackie O" style, they looked at kind of a "butch" style. Yeah, here's a little more Jackie O. I think they looked a fair amount at Edith Head, the costume designer. Quite a wide range of explorations of what would her look be? How would that character be embodied in a physical being?
That's a great one, a Lou Romano painting. And so you can sort of see here the beginnings of Edna. I think actually, the first one that captured it: this is a collage by Teddy Newton. And I think this was actually Teddy's collage piece that everyone looked at, that Brad Bird looked at said, "Yeah, that's the direction. That's where we need to go."
Just playing around with expression, shapes, really simple ideas for how do we make that face work with those huge glasses. And Tony Fucili's drawing, painting. And this isn't you, right, Jerome? This is Kent Melton. They're downstairs and they're lovely.
I'll go quickly, also, through the design of her house, and then we'll look at the clip. I can't not show this clip, because it's too great. I could see it over and over.
So where would this character, Edna Mode, live? This is one of the drawings that inspired the design of her home. And I love this drawing by Scott Caple. The simplicity of this marker sketch that inspired a lot of other designs and ideas and explorations. But there's something -- just like that "Monsters Inc" sketch by Pete Doctor -- that idea's captured right here. That's not enough to actually build it and move forward; there was a lot more that needed to be explored.
Another collage by Teddy Newton. The sense of big space and geometric shapes. Sort of very elegant and dramatic, and something so huge with tiny, little, geometric Edna inside and these gargantuan Greek sculptures. It's kind of a monumental place.
Paul, is this yours? Paul Topolos, artist extraordinaire, also giving a talk right over there. [laughs] This is a digital painting, right? Do you want to tell us something about it? Sorry I'm putting you on the spot, but you can talk about it better than I can.
Paul Topolos: I did this piece, and I really hated it.
Elyse: And then we stuck it in the MOMA show and you're forever angry. [laughs]
Paul: No, no, no, I'm not. [inaudible]
Elyse: [laughs]
Paul: [inaudible]
Elyse: Yeah.
Paul: [inaudible]
Elyse: Did anyone kind of direct you on this? What they wanted? Were you working from sketches at all?
Paul: [inaudible]
Elyse: Yeah, me too.
Paul: [inaudible]
Elyse: I love that the explorations in the "The Incredibles" are so loose and abstract and geometric. And obviously I know the film looks different than that, but I think that that work that Teddy Newton and Lou Romano on the design of the characters and the worlds really shows through and holds the film together in this beautiful way visually.
OK, so let's take a look at "The Incredibles" clip. And I'm not going to cut it off, I promise.
Guard: Do you have an appointment?
Bob: I'm an old friend.
Guard: All visitors are required to make an appointment -
Edna: Who are you, what do you want? -- My God, you've gotten fat.
Edna: Yes, things are going quite well, quite well. My God, no complaints! But, you know, it is not the same, not the same at all!
Bob: Weren't you just in the news? Some show in Preg... Prague?
Edna: Milan, darling! Milan. Supermodels! Ha! Nothing super about them, spoiled stupid little stick figures with puffy lips who think only about themselves. Blech! I used to design for gods! Hmmm, but perhaps you come with a challenge, eh? Am I surprised to get your call.
Bob: Eh, I just need a patch job.
Edna: Hmmm, this is mega mesh, outmoded but very sturdy. And you've torn right through it! What have you been doing Robert? Moonlighting hero work?
Bob: Must have happened a long time ago.
Edna: I see... This is a hobo suit darling and you can't be seen in this! I won't allow it! Fifteen years ago maybe, but now? Blech.
Bob: What do you mean? You designed it!
Edna: I never look back darling, it distracts from the now! You need a new suit, that much is certain.
Bob: A new suit? Where the heck am I going to get a new suit!
Edna: You can't! It's impossible! I'm far too busy so ask me now before I again become sane.
Bob: Wait, you want to make me a suit?
Edna: You push too hard darling! But I accept. It will be bold, dramatic, heroic!
Bob: Yeah! Something classic, like... Dynaguy! Oh, he had a great look! Oh, the cape and the boots!
Edna: No capes!
Bob: Isn't that my decision?
Edna: Don't you remember Thunderhead? Tall, storm powers? Nice man, good with kids.
Bob: Listen, E--
Edna: November 15th of '58! All was well, another day saved, when his cape snagged on a missile fin!
Bob: Thunderhead was not the brightest bulb...
Edna: Stratogale! April 23rd, '57! Cape caught in a jet turbine!
Bob: "E", you can't generalize about this things!
Edna: Meta-Man! Express elevator! Dynaguy, snagged on takeoff. Splashdown, sucked into a vortex! No capes! Now, go on! Your new suit will be finished before your next assignment.
Bob: You know I'm retired from hero work!
Edna: As am I, Robert. Yet here we are!
Bob: "E", I only need a patch job! For... sentimental reasons.
Edna: Fine! I will also fix the hobo suit.
Bob: [laughs] You are the best of the best "E"!
Edna: Yes, I know darling, I know.
[laughter in the audience]
Elyse: And for any of you who don't know, the voice of Edna Mode was voiced by Brad Bird, the director of the film. He had done the "scratch voicework". "Scratch voicework" is when we record inside Pixar, temporarily, until we figure out who's going to play the characters and Brad did it. Then we brought in all kinds of wonderful actors to try out for Edna and nobody could touch what Brad was doing.
I think it was actually Lily Tomlin in the end who said: "Brad, you have to do it. It's perfect!" And he said: "All right, I'll do it." And then we have... lots and lots of Pixar people have now done "scratch work" that ends up in the film. In fact, in our new film "Ratatouille" -- which comes out here I guess in August and opens in the States in a couple of days -- one of the lead characters, Linguini, is voiced by Lou Romano who's one of our brilliant, talented production designers. And Pete Sohn, another one of our incredible artists, is playing Emile, right? Yeah. So if you look in the credits, there's lots of people in there!
I think, maybe, what I'll do now is just really quickly go through the remaining slides and then open it up to questions and you can ask questions of Paul and Jerome as well. Or Adrian or Kim or Dianne, who are sitting in the front and didn't heckle me too badly. [laughs] So, these are Bill Cone color scripts from "Cars" and again it's that same idea of really planning out the mood and the color and the lighting, in these... Bill did these extraordinary like postage stamp sized color scripts. He did larger ones too which he developed further, so there's more detail in them but they're these tiny little beautiful gems!
These are night sequences, most of them. Here is a larger painting. This is Adrian, Texas, right? Yeah. So, one of the things that happened that was fun in the exploration of the paintings for "Cars" was they took a bunch of road trips out Route 60 and did drawings and paintings that were pretty realistic, that actually reflected the landscape and the lighting and the color, and ultimately had to turn it into the world of "Cars."
One of the ideas that came up, just like we people tend to see our image everywhere, we think there are faces in the clouds and things that we know, cars would see themselves reflected in the landscape. And so slowly the landscape morphed into these hoods. And this is a painting by Tia Kratter, "Ornament Alley, Night Shot." You'll also see this in Artscape.
Here, kind of side by side, a more realistic landscape with a bridge, and then the somewhat morphed one of Radiator Springs. What do you call that thing in the background, you guys? The radiator cap. I'm not much of a car expert, so I don't know that parts and the terminology, even after going through all this.
Ooh, that's "Ratatouille." This is Remy, who is the star of our new film. This is a digital painting by Robert Kondo. And some of the paintings that you'll see downstairs were created digitally, painted digitally, using Photoshop. You know, they blow me away, they are exquisite paintings using a different tool. They're not a pastel. But they are executed in as traditional a way of portraying light and character and beauty. And I'm not prejudiced against that, I like the traditional mediums and the amazing new mediums that are used by our artists.
This is a pastel by Dominique Louis. It's downstairs, looking over Paris. And didn't you do a matte painting, Paul? Yeah. So, a lot of these. A little more of Emile and Remy. Just a taste. Harley Jessup, some early kind of character design and exploration. Some of the chefs. This is just like a little sneak preview. And that's it.
So, let's open it up to questions, and feel free to ask Jerome or Paul anything that you guys want to know that I didn't already tell you. Over there?
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: That's a good question. Into production? Did we ever close down a feature that we went in? I think what happens really is that they change, they turn around. "Toy Story 2" was pretty far into development and then had a major re-haul on the story. That actually happens quite a lot. That happened on "Ratatouille" as well. Right? Is there anything else? What's the furthest you went into production and then closed down a production?
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: Oh, right.
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: [laughs] So, again, the film was made, but the story was overhauled. And that happens actually quite a lot. That's why we spend so many years on story. But it's the thing we care about the most. If you don't have that great story, then why make it?
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: With the artwork? There's artwork that doesn't end up being seen or clearly visualized in the production, but it's still a part of the process and you don't know that you couldn't have gotten to where you get without going through that stage. You know, just to know that's not what you want. Yeah?
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: Yeah, that's true. And the feeling at Pixar is, if it's not working, we're not going to make it. And that's true. It's only happened once, on a short film. And the rest of them, the work has just happened to make the story better. Yeah?
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: There are writers who come in, and sometimes the writers are directors. Brad Bird writes his films, Andrew Stanton writes his films. And sometimes our directors will work with other writers. But then the rest of the story process, it's usually just a couple of people, is this drawing out the story. And they are pretty amazingly gifted with drawing.
But they also, what's amazing to me about the story artists is that they're really funny; they really understand character and the flow of story. They're not just about drawing; they have all these other talents. Yeah?
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: That's the director's job. Yes, there is a strong editing process, but that holding it together and making the vision consistent, that's what the director does. Throughout the process, all kinds of people are bringing ideas and suggesting things, and the director ideally works with an editor or a group of editors that he or she really trusts, and they cut things out and bring it together. But it's the director who's holding the vision together. Yes?
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: There's quite a lot of overlapping now. There's one that's just about to come out, so that's finished as of yesterday, probably. [laughs] And there's another one that's deep in production, one that's kind of in middle production.
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: Right. So they're in various stages of production or development. And when they're in development or early production, they have really just a small number of people working on them, and as things ramp up, more and more people -- as they get off of one film -- can go on to the next one.
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: Four to five years. Yeah. Four to five years. Yeah.
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: There's parts of it you can't do until other parts are done. But there is also a lot of back and forth. Editorial, for instance, are working the entire film, because they start out working with the story artists and cutting the storyboards into reels. But they are there up until the very end.
Sound, I guess there's some sound that starts pretty early on. Right, you guys? With scratch and kind of background sound. But that sort of gets finalized towards the second half. So it's a mixture of doing it in sections and doing it all along and back and forth. Yeah?
[inaudible audience question]
Elyse: Great question. That's a great question, and it's something we've thought long and hard about. Adrienne and Deanne and I just put up the internal "Ratatouille" art show, and there's a lot of exceptionally beautiful, digitally-born paintings. And so we went back and sort of discussed amongst ourselves, "What's the right way to do this?"
And ultimately the choice was, we want to exhibit it in the way that closest meets the vision that the artist had. So these paintings in particular, they're done in a very traditional way. They're almost like pastels or watercolors or blosh paintings. And we actually bought a new printer, and Deanne did extraordinary work experimenting on different kinds of papers until we felt like we and the artists -- this was the best way that we could output it and show it.
Man 1: OK, I'm sorry, folks, but we've gone way over time.
Elyse: I'm sorry. [laughs]
Man 1: Which is one of those things I think that I gave the big pitch to start, that at the end of this you're going to be bigger, brighter, better for listening to Elyse. And I think that I'm bigger, I'm brighter. You guys are obviously better.
I think it's an amazing experience to sit back and look what a studio like Pixar has created in such a format over this hour and a half of time spent in the cinema. So I'd like you all to thank Elyse Klaidman for a fantastic performance.
[applause]
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