CLEAN SHEET DESIGNS
THE ARTFUL CRAFT OF CREATING AN ALLNEW ‘CAR-ACTER’
There’s sweet irony in the fact that despite Pixar’s cutting-edge, computer-generated animation, the studio’s beloved characters are first born from a few simple pencil lines on a sketchpad.
Creating the new ‘car-acters’ for Cars 3 was no exception, only this time the Pixar artists were joined by a design legend from the real world of cars.
J Mays was Chief Creative Officer for Ford Motor Company for 16 years, overseeing designs ranging from the Aston Martin DB9 to the Ford GT and Land Rover LR3. He’s also a personal friend of Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, the writer and director of the original Cars. Lasseter invited Mays to sit in on the first workshop for Cars 3 character creation.
“We had this great session for two days where we all just sat around the table and just sketched and brainstormed,” said Cars 3 production designer Jay Feaster, whose first job at Pixar was as an artist for Cars.
From those sessions came the initial ideas for three key new characters: rookie racer Jackson Storm, racing trainer Cruz Ramirez and businesscar Sterling, who runs Rust-eze Racing Centre.
In the first Cars movie, just Lightning McQueen and Matar, the redneck tow-truck, were clean sheet designs, with all the other ‘car-acters’ based on real-life cars.
“We did that on purpose because we were trying to tell the back story of those cars,” explained Cars 3 creative director Jay Ward. “We were infusing a bit of what those cars really were and building those characters into them.
“But for our main characters we usually do in-house,” he noted, citing Toy Story. “Buzz and Woody – in-house designs. All the rest – real toys. Mr. Potato Head.”
So, after the success of Cars, were automakers calling up to lobby for their new models to be in the sequel?
“The cool thing we set up a long time ago is, we do not do product placement,” said Ward. “It would be easy to go down that road, but once you open up that Pandora’s Box, you compromise your story, you compromise your film.”
He did recall Porsche contacted the studio with a request that Sally Porsche, who is based on a 996 Carrera, be updated to their new 997 model.
“We said no, we want the old one because that weird-shaped headlight makes you look at her eyes up on the windshield. The new one had these big round headlights that would kind of fight with her face.”
Added Feaster: “As time went on we wanted to own these characters. For instance Sally Porsche; because of various contractual reasons, we couldn’t use her in, say, this situation or that scenario.
“So we wanted a little more control over our characters, and that’s when we decided to just design allnew cars and make them in-house.
“And that’s a lot more fun for us. To create something from the ground up rather than just use an existing car that we all know what it looks like.”
That’s certainly on display with Jackson Storm, who Feaster describes as a “weapon on wheels.”
“Jackson Storm is Lightning’s nemesis—the film’s baddie,” said Ward. “Though he isn’t really a true villain. He represents what’s happening in racing—both in the movie and in real life. A lot of young racers getting into the sport have more experience playing video games than on an actual track.”
So Feaster gave Storm a high-tech vibe, part stock car, part super car.
“With our own designs – like Cruz and Storm — they just look so cool and unique,” noted characters supervisor Michael Comet. “They might be inspired by the real world, grounded in the real world, but it allows us to create what we think will really fit with the character, and with the story.”
That also underscores Feaster’s design mantra when it comes to creating the clean-sheet designs: “Truth to material.”
Which means the designs come from the character first and the vehicle second. But that’s not to say there aren’t hints of real cars in the Pixar creations.
For example, the new character Stirling’s bears a striking resemblance to a classic BMW CS.
Asked about this, Feaster just smiled.: “Does it?”
A final design influence car even be the actor who voices the character, which was the case with Miss Fritter, “the school bus of your nightmares.”
“As soon as we found out Lea DeLaria was going to be voicing her, we gave the character these really thick black-rimmed glasses,” said Feaster. “We just made her windshield super chunky.”
Feaster clearly loves his job, and for a car-crazy kid from Detroit with mad art skills, he’s living the dream. But don’t think he ever mails it in.
“Working on these characters for any of these movies, there’s no forgiveness. What I mean by that is John (Lasseter) has his eyes on all these things and he’s all about the completion of these characters. So you can’t let it go. “If you’re just going, ‘ah, that rear end, slap any kind of lights on it.’ John’s going to say ‘those don’t fit.’ “So I feel there is no rock left unturned in this
film.”