Sulley, the big guy from Monsters Inc., has 25,336 key hairs that are used to guide the movement of the remaining 2.3 million. Merida, from “Brave, indomitable,” has more than 1,500 curly red hairs, sculpted one by one. For “Ratatouille,” Pixar directors created more than 270 foods on computers, and the dishes were prepared in a real kitchen for reference. Lightning McQueen (“Cars”) has 14 different paint variants, ranging from dirt to his signature red. And the largest volume of animation generated in a week of production of “Toy Story 2” was 5 minutes and 42 seconds. At Pixar, detail prevails. And to sharpen your films to the maximum, you need science, technology and mathematics, tools without which the balloons in “Up” would not float the same, or Elastigirl’s arm (“The Incredibles”) would not be as flexible. Until September 8, CaixaForum Madrid reveals a universe that goes beyond the animation we see on screen. At the exhibition “Pixar’s Science”, created by the Museum of Science in Boston In collaboration with Pixar Animation Studios, we review step by step under which techniques an idea becomes a film.
The exhibition, fully interactive, is divided into eight areas. It starts with character modeling or design, which begins with sketches and clay sculptures until moving to a digital wireframe model. Then, We move on to “rigging”, a word that is “difficult to translate, which is like giving expression or articulating these bodies”says Javier Hidalgo, head of science exhibitions at the laCaixa Foundation. It also explains how the design of surfaces and sets works, the animation, which gives life to the story, the simulation of automated movements, lighting or rendering, the final step that converts all the previous data into the image we see in the cinema. . «Pixar makes us empathize with its characters, whether it is a car, a fish, a mouse or an insect. This is done thanks to this appearance of reality, for which there is a lot of work behind it,” says Hidalgo.
To make literally every gesture we see in these movies possible – smiles, handshakes, running, chills or wind – there are thousands of professionals ensuring its perfection. When computers arrived in animated films to complement hand drawing, “people thought that jobs could be lost,” continues the person in charge, “but the truth is that in films there are thousands more people behind them than those who there was 50 years ago. Now, the discourse is based on Artificial Intelligence, a new current technology that is gaining ground in every field and that, Hidalgo points out, «can help make all these processes faster. When we talk about rendering images, it can take 90 hours of large computers working with just one. Let’s think that there are millions of images in a movie. AI can make these processes more efficient.
This exhibition is the third collaboration of the laCaixa Foundation with Pixar studios. In 2015, «Pixar. 25 years of animation” was a profound review of the work of this company during its history. Then, “Pixar. Building Characters” focused on the visual design process of Mike Wazowski and company. Now, this new project, which has already passed through Barcelona and Valencia and will soon land in Lisbon, reveals the technical process used by Pixar’s artists and computer scientists. A dynamic and interesting exhibition that is complemented by other activities, again, for all audiences. A cycle of screenings has been scheduled with some of the company’s best films: «Bugs. A Miniature Adventure”, “Toy Story” and “The Incredibles”. A “family” conference will also be held, they define, titled “3D Animation: between art and science”, as well as the general public will be able to access commented tours and workshops.
