CaixaForum Madrid presents a space that collects the studio’s creative techniques.
Did you know that it took 100 million computing hours to render (generate an image or animation from a three-dimensional model) the movie Monsters University? Or that it took more than a month to digitally paint the car of the villain Al in toy story 2?
For years, viewers could only get to know the talent of the Pixar animation studio – a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios – through its films. However, thanks to the collaboration between the “la Caixa” Foundation and the Museum of Science in Boston, arrives in Madrid today The Science of Pixaran exhibition that allows you to learn interactively about the technical challenges behind the adventures of Nemo, Woody and company.
Until next September 8, visitors to the CaixaForum in Madrid will be able to enjoy 815 square meters “full of works that encourage and allow for a better understanding of the science and mathematics involved in the creation of Pixar films,” says Elisa Durán. , deputy general director of the “la Caixa” Foundation during the presentation of the space. Likewise, the exhibition highlights “an organized and systematic work: it is the sum of specialized professionals and talents that act like a great orchestra. The magic of Pixar is an example of leadership for the world of entrepreneurship due to its dedication and long-term vision.“.
Making films in binary language
In its origins, animated films were considered something temporary and not very fruitful. After the emergence of the first in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, many popular voices of the time pointed out this type of feature films as “something diabolical” and even “insane” for the little ones in the house. How wrong they were. Today, Pixar and Disney films are a reference for several generations and, as Walt Disney said, “it all started with a mouse”. But how are these great adventures designed? In the past, they were animated manually using cellulose acetate and every movement that appeared on the screen was recorded frame by frame. It was not until the emergence of digital animation when computers replaced this cumbersome task. Yeah Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs It was the first animated film, toy story (1995) by Pixar was the first animated feature film made entirely by computer. “To design its films, Pixar devised an eight-step work model – something like an assembly line – that it continues to use today.“says Javier Hidalgo, director of Science Exhibitions at the “la Caixa” Foundation.
The first step is the modeling. “Character design begins when artists conceive sketches and clay sculptures so that a three-dimensional model can later be created,” adds Hidalgo. Next, we move on to rigging. This concept consists of generating the sensation of movement of the bones, joints and virtual muscles of the characters. To understand this process, in the exhibition The Science of Pixar, you can see a video “that shows us Mike Wazowksi from Monsters SA (2001) with 7,000 rig controllers, which would be equivalent to a puppet with 7,000 strings.” All this accompanied by videos from Pixar’s technical directors who, through their experiences, explain this complex animation process.
Once the character has been articulated, it is time to work on the surfaces. “To understand this point, visitors to the exhibition will be able to play with light and see how it affects the characters by changing the appearance, for example, of Lightning McQueen, the protagonist of the film cars (2006), and understand the mathematical concepts behind light,” continues Hidalgo. Then it is the turn of the decorated and do the camera approach. With these ingredients comes perhaps the most important step of all: the animation. “The animators are the real actors in Pixar’s animated films. They are very attentive to the way we move in real life. A very laborious job,” she says. To understand how difficult it is to animate, the film that has produced the most animated feature films in a week was toy story 2 (1999), which managed to animate 5 minutes and 42 seconds in seven days.
Finally, the footage would be completed with the simulation, to seek verisimilitude in the movement of the scenes; the lightning -essential to dramatize the stories- and the rendering (process to generate an image or animation from a three-dimensional model). This last step is where all the pieces of the puzzle come together and are subsequently translated into data to create the images for the film. Remember, It’s not magic, it’s work, science and mathematics.
