INTERVIEW PIXAR
WORDS NICOLA FOLEY IMAGES DISNEY/PIXAR W ay back in 1995, Pixar made history with Toy Story : the world’s first fully computer- generated animated feature film. It was made possible through RenderMan, the studio’s proprietary rendering software, which was capable of transforming digital models into detailed animated images, enabling huge leaps forward in colour, motion and lighting. Since then, Pixar has continued to lead the CGI animation revolution, introducing groundbreaking innovations with almost every new film it’s made. In 1998’s A Bug’s Life , it massively ramped up the rendering scale, developing software capable of generating huge crowds of independently moving ants while pioneering ‘subsurface scattering’ – a technique that simulates light passing through translucent surfaces. Pixar DOP Matt Aspbury discusses all things animation cinematography & Toy Story 5 Inside Pixar’s toy box In Monsters Inc , Pixar tackled Sulley’s fur with the help of Fizt, a system capable of animating millions of individual hairs. In Finding Nemo , it conquered underwater animation, recreating the behaviour of light, water and ocean environments with never- before-seen realism. The Incredibles broke new ground in the animation of human characters, clothing and hair, while Brave introduced a hair simulation system to bring Merida’s iconic mane of curls to life. More recently, Elemental tapped into volumetric effects and machine-learning-assisted tools to create convincing characters made from fire, water, air and earth. Pixar’s dedication to pushing the boundaries of animation is unparalleled – and that extends to using real-world cinematography principles to ensure the films feel as immersive as possible;
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