So this is nothing like what my style frames look like. What I wanted to do just … wasn’t working so, I did something else.
RIT MyCourses is evil. Stupid 2nd submit button screwing me over …
I just finished reading The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company by David A. Price. He was right when he likened the founders of that would-be Pixar and their cohorts as the Athens of what we know today as modern technology. You have Ed Catmull (Pixar) who is creating texture mapping and other core 3D techniques rubbing shoulders with the founders of Adobe and throw Bill Gates in the mix too. And of course, when the not-yet-formed Pixar was working for ILM under George Lucas, Catmull never bothered with the kid across the street who was working on this super cool image software (Photoshop). There are a lot more big names than that and it’s much more impressive in the book but, I digress …
The one thing I honed in on was the process work that the Pixar staff does. John Lassester, the story guy (who changed titles several times but he’s the big-wig when it comes to approving scripts) is all about immersion. Learn anything and EVERYthing you can about your project. When producing test footage for Finding Nemo they brought in experts on ocean translucence, wave and tides, and fish (to name a few) to lecture to the-then small staff of FM. The fish expert was brought back many times and was amazed to find that this animator actually cared if their fish wasn’t swimming the way it should. Lassester also supported a trip to Paris to see restaurants for making Ratatouille and a scuba trip to Hawaii for Finding Nemo.
It sort of drilled in the point that my teachers had been trying to make to me and the rest of the class about how process work and research is important. I’m no Pixar and I’m not going to be producing test footage for anything - but it’s akin to the layout compositions story boarding that we do.
In the end, it really is about telling a story even if the story is the mission statement of a company told through a website. You have to connect with the audience somehow. The more you know about what you are doing, the better you can connect. Simple as that.
Learning, asking questions, and getting into the project to the point where I can get excited about the project will be the key. The book made a point that if the employees aren’t behind a project, the project will fail (referring mostly to Toy Story) which is true in school. If you don’t like something, chances are you aren’t going to try very hard.
Anyway, I thought it was interesting.
