THE MALAYSIAN WOMAN WHO BROUGHT CAR’S LIGHTNING MCQUEEN TO LIFE
She started out as an intern; now she is the technical director
JOHOR Baru-born Kiki Mei Kee Poh is the computer-generated imagery (CGI) expert who helped bring Lightning McQueen to life in the hit animated Pixar film Cars.
Poh, was the first Malaysian to work at Pixar Animation Studio in California, the United States, when she joined as a full-time employee in 2010 after she interned at the animation studio for eight months.
Today, she is one of the experts in the specialised trade of visual effects, shading and grooming of characters and objects in CGI.
The 39-year-old is the shading and grooming technical director of Pixar, the studio that has produced some of the highestgrossing animated films of all time.
Poh has been involved in the making of Cars, Monster University, Inside Out, Toy Story and Toy Story of Terror, a television special for Halloween.
She mastered modelling, animation, texturing, lighting and compositing skills of visual effects before becoming an expert in shading and grooming.
On the recently released Cars 3, she worked as the shading artist for the movie characters including Doc Hudson, Fillmore, Arvy the motorhome, the legendary racer River Scott and others.
“I was assigned as a team leader to work on Lightning McQueen Crazy 8 crasher.
“It was my first time as a team leader where I had to lead two colleagues to finish 60 car models on a very tight schedule.
“My job was to shade these cars and create enough variations for these cars.”
Poh said the most challenging part of her work was breaking the language barrier as she was a Chinese school student.
“Before I came to the US, I did not speak much English as I studied at Chinese schools. Language was one problem.
“I also found it difficult to express my thoughts and be more vocal.”
She found it difficult to communicate with her American counterparts during her early years in the US.
She studied English as a second language while pursuing her master’s degree in visual effects from the Savannah College Art and Design (SCAD) in Georgia, US. She is now fluent in English. She believes that she is breaking the language barrier by creating realistic and stunning animations that speak a universal language.
Originally trained as a character animator, Poh majored in applied art (computer animation) at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Before pursuing her graduate studies in the US, she worked at IVL Animation in Singapore for a year, where she specialised in designing and developing animated characters.
It was during her time in Singapore that she became involved in Pixar’s first production, Ten Commandments, the biblical story of Moses.
Monster University was the first movie in which Poh was involved in the shading and grooming of the characters’ hair.
There are a few experts in shading and grooming at Pixar, and Poh is one of them.
“These are different skills and techniques, and it takes time to learn both. Grooming is to design shapes for hair and fur. We use specific software to create hair and fur.
“There are different procedures for creating hair and fur.
“Shading is to create material and textures for the surface of characters and objects, such as the skin and clothes.
“It is a different skill than grooming, in which it is necessary to learn how to simulate hair. Not all shading artists like to do both,” Poh said.
Her position as the technical director also shows that she is a professional technical artist.
“Technical director is a senior technical person within a software company or a film studio.
“This person usually possesses the highest level of skill in a specific technical field and is recognised as an expert in the industry,” she said.
The impressive graphics and CGI of Jurassic Park, a movie that Poh watched while in secondary school, inspired her to become an animator.
She draws inspiration from Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, author, and manga artist.
“I like the fact that he is able to create films based on details in his life because he is able to see subtleties that surround him, such as people’s relationship with the environment and nature.
“He is able to produce films with these subtleties that touch people’s hearts.
“Although he is 75, he still tries to do something new and deliver something different every day. He once said that he would rather try and fail than not do it and regret later.”
She attributed her persistence and determination to excel at her job to having a supportive friend while working in the US.
“I interned at Pixar with my friend, Teng Teng Liu. I met her while studying at SCAD. But unfortunately, she did not get to stay at Pixar after completing her internship.
“She was upset because she thought her career and dream had stopped there. But she never gave up and landed a job at another great company where she just finished her own short film, received awards and got invited to an animation festival.
“My friend’s determination in not giving up her dream inspired me a lot,” she said.
Poh, also a full-time working mother, is able to maintain a balance between work and family.
“The best way to maintain work-life balance is that when I am at work, I focus on my work and when I am with my family, I focus on my family. With this, I am able to enjoy working and being at home with my family.”