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Wall-E Supervising Animator Tells His Story
Denofgeek wrote in to tell us about their story where "Pixar's supervising animator Angus MacLane gives an interesting interview about the technical challenges in bringing Wall-E to the screen. Plus he squeezes in a bit on his love of Lego, too..."
Actually, Wall-E was much different than I expected. I know the critics really liked it, but I found it to be a bit heavy for younger kids, and probably not enough to grab very young kids' attentions. As an adult though, I thought the movie was incredible. I hadn't really read up on it before viewing it and had no idea it was going to be an entire social commentary-esque movie.
Definitely makes you think, though! And the animation was absolutely breathtaking at times.
-MelRom
I will admit - I don't watch too many movies. However, I am extremely glad I spent the money to see Wall-E and I will be buying it on DVD when it is released.
The animation of this movie is amazing. Using almost no words (two?), the animation team captures a wide range of emotion: love, sadness, fear, humor and anger. What's even better is that they capture these emotions in the form of robots - something that typically is not associated with emotion. The storyline itself is fantastic. Not only is it simplistic enough that even a child can understand it and enjoy it, there is a definite adult theme throughout the entire movie which emphasizes taking care of this planet that we live on.
Additionally, this movie starts up with a great short (haha...that rabbit is awesome), the ending credits are absolutely beautiful and genius (how many different art styles can you spot?) and the soundtrack is great.
I would highly recommend that everybody check this movie out in the theater. It's definitely worth it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa... You went to a Pixar film not realizing that there would be a short before it? What rock have you been living under?
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
To be quite honest, I wasn't all that thrilled about going to this movie. I walked into the movie by request of my little brother, and I figured I'd at least get a few laughs out of the movie.
What I got was a masterpiece.
Not two minutes into the film, I was enthralled by the sheer beauty of the landscapes. The incongruity between the cheerful opening tune and the devastated Earth landscape is absolutely delightful.
Also, Pixar has gotten so good at what they do that they don't even need words to tell a story. The first 45 minutes of the movie has pretty much ZERO dialogue with the exception of BnL ads for background. Oh, also a word or two (literally) from the robots.
Particularly well done were the flight scenes - the part in the beginning where EVE watches the ship leave and start cruising around while WALL-E watches in awe, and when the two of them are dancing around the Axiom. I could watch those two scenes over and over again and still be thrilled.
Also, the (oft overlooked) soundtrack is phenomenal as well. I bought it the instant I could, and I've had it on repeat for about a week now. (2815 AD and Define Dancing are my favorites)
I can honestly say that this is the best (in terms of sheer all-around quality) film that I have ever seen, and I fully expect this to just rake in its well-deserved awards.
Wall-E was an incredible movie. The character development was outstanding, emotions were believable, and scenes really made impressions on me.
What I found most interesting about TFA was about the software they use for long-term development.
It said that for long-term development movies (Wall-E was 3 years, right?) they use the same software all the way through. I had always wondered about that kind of thing.. Since 3D software and rendering engines and such is always improving, how do these guys make the movies? Do they constantly re-render with the better software throughout the process, etc.? How do they keep up with competition in that regard?
So it was neat to finally find that out. The article also offers a lot of insight into the team arrangement at Pixar. I like that they aren't chained to animating a certain character/part- That they really observe who likes to animate who and what kind of scenes and kind of let them do what they enjoy best in the project. I wish programming jobs were like that- Where we could work on parts that we really liked instead of being moved from language to language and to different teams etc. like our preference doesn't matter. I think it's a really good thing they have over there.
If you haven't seen Wall-E yet, it's well worth the ticket price!
They were able to make a roach cute. And no, not some Disneyesque anthropomorphic huggable buggable plushified abomination to be mass-marketed to yowling ankle-biters everywhere, no, no, no! This was a realistic roach, the kind that makes me reach for a shoe and go Khrushchev on its filthy self. My family went to see this movie together and my own mother, my earliest memories of which involve her screaming hysterically and attacking palmetto bugs with a toilet plunger wielded with the sort of two-hand grip reserved for viking warhammers, she found the roach cute! She gasped when Wall-E rolled over it that last time, thinking it might be dead.
If Pixar can make her identify and sympathize with a realistic roach, the animators at those other studios should just hang up their keyboards and go home.
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