Hi, Tech-E

Dylan Brown: The Pixar Animation wiz discussed the 3-D
‘toon business during the recent Syracuse International Film Fest;
Brown was also responsible for a TV commercial for Wall-E (below) that aired during the Super Bowl. MEAGHAN ARBITAL PHOTO

Brown, 38, grew up in Davis, Calif., and
studied film and animation at San Francisco State University. While in
college he was blown away by the keyboard-created computerized graphics
dinosaurs that ran amok in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Jurassic Park
and that fascination for such 3-D computer-generated animation (as
opposed to 2-D, or traditional cel-painted cartooning) soon led him to
Pixar. A steady rise in the ranks through his work on Toy Story 2 and A Bug’s Life eventually resulted in his screen credit as supervising animator for Finding Nemo and subsequently for director Brad Bird’s summer 2007 hit Ratatouille. (Brown also directed the Wall-E TV commercial that aired during last February’s Super Bowl telecast.)

{mospagebreak} 

As supervising animator, Brown oversees
the production process and helps the entire team of animators achieve
the director’s goal for each film. Of course, those animators are
responsible for every single movement on the screen for every second of
film—and for films running anywhere from 90 minutes to two hours,
that’s quite a task. Every eye movement, every finger twitch has its
purpose and was put there by the animator squad. 

Syracuse New Times creative
services designer and budding cub reporter Meaghan Arbital caught up
with Brown during his Salt City stay to discuss all things Pixar
(including Disney’s 2006 acquisition of the company). And Brown was
clearly impressed with the young-teen demographic that attended his
chat at the MOST. “With high school students, there’s so much energy
and so much eagerness to get out into the world,” Brown said about the
dialogue. “It’s satisfying for them because they get to see a neat
presentation, and satisfying for me in that I get to connect with kids
in a way that means something to them down the road.”

Q: How did you end up working for Pixar?

A: I discovered Pixar before Toy Story (released in 1995). There were two magazines at the time, Computer Graphics World and Cinefex; every once in a while there would be an image from Pixar and it would always be better than anything else I’d seen. 

I was 21 when Jurassic Park came
out and that was the first time this {computer animation} technology
had been used to make something {living}, where the end result
transcended the technique. I felt, “I need to be a part of this.”
Dennis Muren {a visual effects supervisor on Jurassic Park} spoke at this Star Wars
convention in San Francisco. So here I am, this kid, I raised my hand
and I said, “I want to do what you do. Do you have any advice so I can
get in?” And everyone was laughing! I was dead serious. He said, “Never
be satisfied. Things can always be better, and always push to make them
better.” And that kind of {set me up} in a really nice way; it brought
out something that was already in me.

In September 1995, Pixar was looking for someone to do color mapping and image compression for the Toy Story
CD-ROM and the activity set. I went in for an hour-and-a-half
interview, which is short by Pixar’s standards, and they said, “Well,
we think you’d make a great addition,” and hired me. I was basically
going to film school full time and getting straight As, and then
working at Pixar probably 35 hours a week in the evenings. I slept four
hours a night for a long time. 

{mospagebreak} 

They told me, “You’ve shown a lot of
potential; we’d like to put you through training.” I apparently did
well enough to be asked to come on as an animator for A Bug’s Life
(1998). I was pretty computer savvy and was just helping people out,
and it felt like a pretty natural thing for me to do. They asked me to
be a directing animator on Toy Story 2 (1999). After that I was given the reins {as supervising animator} to Finding Nemo (2003).

Q: What is one of the most important things to keep in mind as an animator?

A: I
would say perspective. A live-action actor understands who their
character is in that moment—their motivation, what they want, where
they’re coming from—and they play that moment. It’s a live, real-time
thing. With animators, we do the same thing, but we do it 24 times per
second and to animate five seconds is going to take five days and it’s
going to be painstakingly thought out and planned and sculpted over and
over again. There’s hardly anything spontaneous about it. 

Sometimes you get shots {from younger
animators} that are overacted or things are moving around too much,
because the animator has lost sight of the bigger picture. If you put
everything into every single shot, it ends up being a mess of motion.
It’s about keeping the broader context in perspective when you’re
working frame by frame and recognizing where your piece fits into the
greater film. I think that’s something I don’t see enough of. 

Q: Is there a scene in any of the films you’ve worked on that you’re particularly proud of?

A: In The Incredibles
I did the “Goo Ball Sequence.” Mr. Incredible is on a platform in the
middle of this giant room, he sets off the alarm and all these doors
open up. “Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” is blaring and he’s being
shot at by these Goo Balls. {I had to show the audience} that these
guys are not invincible, they have weaknesses. Director Brad Bird said
to me, “We’re going to catch Mr. Incredible and bring him to his knees.” 

I actually did that scene in an
unconventional manner. We usually have the shots {divided up} already,
but I actually animated that entire scene in one shot. The flow from
the beginning to the end of that scene was so critical, I didn’t feel
like it would serve the end result by doing it in separate shots. To be
trusted with that sequence, to do it in a way that was totally
convincing, and then have people tell me, “Oh my God, my heart just
sank,” it was a very satisfying experience to animate.

{mospagebreak}

Q: What keeps Pixar so successful through the years?

A: The
strength of our studio is that we’re a director-driven studio. The
films we make come from the director, not from some group of producers.
It’s not like it’s coming out of marketing, either, saying, “It’s all
about the tweens!” I’ve been there 12½ years and I’ve never seen that
even creep in and be the motivator for telling a story and making a
film. 

There are many different elements to do
animation in a way that’s physically and emotionally correct, and deep
and light and humorous at the same time. It takes persistence and
vision. Pixar is fortunate to have people running our company who
create and uphold and maintain those ideals. Other companies have
different sets of values and outlooks on what something needs to be.

I’ve had students ask me, “Do you ever
feel like you’re not any good at what you’re doing, or that it’s really
hard?” and I think, “Basically every waking hour of every day.” It’s
not a state of depression, it’s more a state of always pushing to be
better, always willing to learn more. Pixar is a compound of
like-minded individuals: There’s a lot of diversity in the sense of
thinking and there’s a lot of heated discussion every day about things,
but ultimately the bottom line is achieving something of excellence. 

I get nervous before I start a shot.
Always. Because there’s competition and challenge, and you have to
prove yourself. Some people tell me, “I’m tired of feeling like I have
to prove myself over and over,” and I say, “You’re in the wrong game.
That’s how this game works.”

The studio doesn’t expect you to know
things all the time. But they do expect you to learn, and I expect that
of me, and I will be the one that’s hardest on me.

Q: With
all of the advances in technology, are some films losing the core
animation values, such as weight, balance, motion and acting?

A: With 2-D it requires a greater discipline to create something because you really have to think about everything.
One of the main differences is that in 2-D you start with a blank paper
and in 3-D you start with a model that’s been rigged. At Pixar the
animation department works very intimately with the modelers to get it
right and end up with this fully functional puppet. 

The thing about computer graphics is
it’s so easy to bring up a model and start moving things and not really
think about how you’re moving things around and, more importantly, why you’re moving things. If
I do my job correctly, you don’t think about the character being
animated, you’re just there with them. But the story has to be there;
otherwise, it’s just pretty pictures. 

{mospagebreak} 

One of the strengths of computer
graphics is that we can really do subtlety and detail well. We also
look at reality as an influence and as an inspiration, but we don’t
copy it. In Finding Nemo we did realistic water tests where you
can’t tell the difference between computer graphics and the real
{shot}: “OK, now that we can do that, it’s time to turn the caricature
knob and to saturate the water and play around with the caustics and
bring that out a little more.” The water becomes a really significant
character, and it has a basis in reality, but we use that reality to
create something that has authenticity.

Q: Any advice for animators aspiring to work at Pixar?

A: We’re
not looking for you to animate like us. We want to see. . . you. I
don’t want to see our work on your {animation sample} reel. Students
get caught up in the “Oh, I have to animate like Pixar to be at Pixar,”
and to me that’s not true. The thing that’s missing, or at least
challenged in the animation community right now, is that personal point
of view.

Q: Will the Disney-Pixar merger change Pixar?

A: Disney
purchased Pixar because we were doing something correctly. They used to
be able to do it, but then they lost it. We’re different companies but
now we’re under the same umbrella. There’s going to be influence on
Pixar from Disney, and there’s going to be influence on Disney from
Pixar. 

There is an effect, but in my day-to-day
dealing operations, I haven’t seen Pixar do anything differently that
isn’t a natural evolution of values that we’ve built up to this point.
Disney does what they do, we do what we do. But as we grow and change
we have to be very mindful of the values that we’ve operated under. At
Disney, the management got disconnected from the people. There’s
certainly a risk of that happening at Pixar, but I have not seen that
happening. We meet regularly to talk about issues and real things come
up at those meetings, and I don’t feel afraid to speak my voice about
something I disagree with. As long as that communication stays,
everything will be OK.

Q: What do you hope for in the future for Pixar?

A: I hope
we continue building on the foundation that we have already
constructed, that we continue to tell personal stories in an
entertaining way with attention to detail and appeal. There’s room to
push the look of our films. I think they’re something beautiful, but
there’s a lot more latitude in our medium than technically anyone has
explored yet. I think we’ve been very reality-based with our worlds,
and there’s room to expand there as well. 

{mospagebreak} 

Our company is always changing. We have a bigger corporation now, and we just need to keep our values intact and move forward based on the values that have gotten us to where we are now.