Animator annotated
Octopuses are a mess
One of Prince’s old bandmates told a story about how the band members would labor over musical parts until they were just right. Prince would give his approval and then inform them they had to play those parts while executing the dance moves he’d created.
Such was the process of animating “Finding Dory,” the newest animated film from Pixar. Because it’s a Pixar project, the film required the most intricate animation tools available used by skilled artists. Then they had to recreate the experience of being underwater.
“Finding Dory” took more than four years, from its conception by writer and director Andrew Stanton to the film that just opened in theaters this weekend. As with any movie, “Dory” — a companion piece to the 2003 film “Finding Nemo” — started with a script and storyboards. Then it required research, and trial and error with models to get just the right movement. Then, finally, the animation process began. At its peak, nearly 70 animators worked for about nine months to create oceanic worlds populated by oceanic creatures.
Michael Stocker served as supervising animator on the film. After getting his start in animation with Disney, he has spent the past 14 years working on Pixar films including “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” “Up” and “Toy Story 3.” Stocker was in Houston this week to talk about the process of giving life to a film about a blue tang fish trying to get home to her family.
Q: Making an animated film seems complex enough as is. Was doing an underwater project markedly more complex?
A: Yes. Every movie has its complications, and obviously moving underwater has its own unique complications. That was a big thing on the first movie. We needed to honor “Finding Nemo” for sure, with that feeling of going underwater that people love. But we had to rebuild everything, because nothing was left from the first movie. The technology had changed so much. So we had to teach everybody how that works: How do fish carve through water? How do they swim? How does the seaweed move? We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and we put GoPro (action cameras) in the water. You have to get a sense of that motion, the current, in the water to convince everybody there’s water there when there isn’t.
Q: It sounds like building an elaborate set.
A: That’s exactly what is. Every time we cut, that’s another set we have to build.
Q: So most people have taken an art class that teaches the rudiments of drawing the human body. With the different fish, it seems there are a lot more variables to pick up.
A: Yes, we have all these fish, some are the same characters, but all these new species. And we had only a handful of people who worked on the first movie who had any knowledge of how that was. So we had to have experts teach the animators how the fish carve through water. The difference between flappers, which is what Dory is, but Marlin is a rower. They swim differently.
Q: Was Hank the octopus a particular challenge?
A: That’s one we worked on at Monterey Bay Aquarium. They didn’t have a beluga or a whale shark, but we had every animator hold an octopus. We held it, and it wrapped around us. They’re super intelligent animals. But we had to deconstruct how these things move. The first part of your master research is how things move around. For “Cars” you drive a car. But you have to figure out how the octopus moves. And it’s really hard to deconstruct that happening. They’re a mess. A beautiful mess, but a mess. So we had to organize that mess into something beautiful. That was one of the hardest things I’ve done.
Q: The glacier cliche seems to apply. You see this small frame and not the time and effort that leads to it.
A: Everything else is just in service of what’s happening right in front of you. If people see it multiple times, maybe they’re like, “Hey, look at that kelp back there!” But it’s about the performance and acting, everything is in the service of the story that was written.
Q: We think of technology as making our work easier. But with animation, it has created so many more variables it almost seems like it has complicated the process.
A: Yeah, it can do that. But the animation rules we use, they used on “Pinocchio.” We just use different tools. Some things they make easier, other times they make the film feel more organic or allow you to get a softness when you’re drawing. Hank is a good example. It took a long time to build this tentacle rig to get this squishy character just right. But a lot of the process is exactly the same. You storyboard the same. Pinning up the boards. Drawing, it’s digital, but it’s the same.