Toy Story 3 Animation Thoughts
There is a large process that animators and writers have to go through to make a truly great movie. Pixar has a team of animators, designers and developers that have been employed to work with each other since 1995, giving them a chance to feel more comfortable with each other’s ideas and design styles then that of a group of freelance artists who are scrapped after the movie is completed. The team starts off the movie making process with an excessive amount of planning and thinking that is most often scrapped for what seems to be a better idea.
The beginning stages of the movie often start with a group thought of a great storyline, moving into many story boards, concept art sketches and digital illustrations. This may include clay sculptures of different characters, storyboards of the opening scenes or digital designs of possible scenery. After that, simulated designs of fur, wood and other textures are added to the different characters and scenery to give a rough concept of the overall frame. When the writers believe they have what they want for the basic story the compile everything into a story reel; or a large digital flipbook, and have everything critiqued by the employees of Pixar, including executives and grunge workers.
About a quarter of the way in, actors are brought into the studios to have their lines recorded over and over again. Each actor will say their lines dozens of times with different expressions in order to get the feel right. After all the voices are recorded designers will animate the computer models to simulate the expressions on the actor’s faces in order to give a natural feel to the animation. While the animators are getting their models to look realistic, there are shaders to help give the toys a more realistic looking plastic look. This includes shading almost 1,000 pivot points per character.
When the shading and modeling is completed, there is a team of people designed to give texture to the 3d models and make them look as realistic as possible, whether it may be wet fur or a really old carpet. They stay up late each night to get the work finished, rendering as they go. Which may take anywhere from seven to eleven per frame. Once the rendering is completed, the frames are compiled into one large sequence with the audio and the fully animated scenes of the movie is completed.
i posted two picture, the top showing a glass effect in the window to see through the wall, then with the bottom the same effect but a little lighter and more realistic. i added a cloudy sky to give the impression of looking out of the house window into the afternoon sky.
