A Peek at the Production and Development Art from Pixar's 'Up'
I am sure you will get even more of this on the DVD
Lou Romano voiced Linguini in Pixar's Ratatouille, Snot Rod in Cars and Bernie Kropp in The Incredibles, but on top of that he worked in the visual development of Pixar's Monsters, Inc. and now, via his website he is sharing some of the development and production work he did on the recently released Up.
He says the work he is previewing on the site is similar to the work he did on The Incredibles, including production paintings, color/lighting design and artistic direction, all of which was done to help inspire the look of the film.
| Paradise Falls Reveal | Lightning Storm |
While Up earned the #1 spot at the box-office this past weekend (and I wouldn't be surprised if it did it again this weekend) as well as earned a whopping 98% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, I have actually heard some complaints about the animation not being up to traditional Pixar standards. Personally I disagree with this sentiment entirely although I do believe the film works on a little more of a limited amount of detail in terms of backgrounds, but a lot of that has to do with locations, which are primarily outdoors and trapped inside the misty dreamworld that is Paradise Falls.
More recently Ratatouille and WALL•E were working with much different environments such as the City of Lights in Ratatouille and the amber glow of a tortured Earth in WALL•E. Hard to compare those two to the open blue sky of Up, which limits the animators in what they can do. Background detail aside, the achievement in Up is in bringing the right amount of emotion to their characters to allow the audience to connect, and on that level I would say Up may actually be Pixar's best, but enough of that, let's get to the art.
I included a few images for the teaser at the top of this article and the two videos in the middle are only two of the eight videos Romano has included on his website on top of several paintings, digital images, film renders, colored pencil drawings and gouache artwork.
The final image from his post he describes as the "Final Color Script" saying:
This was my last assignment on UP. I tried providing more lighting information than the abstract scripts, which are more for tone. Other artists also contributed greatly to the lighting design after I left the show, and the Lighting Team led by Jean-Claude Kalache did a superb job.
You can check that out directly below and give it a click for a larger version. To check out the entire feature, which is vastly indepth and includes plenty of detail on each image click here.
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Sweet.
I also think the animation was by far the most artistic Pixar has ever done. The symbolism between squares and round objects permeated every scene.
The aspect of Up I thought was lacking was the score, of course I'm comparing it to Wall-e's score, which was quite an achievement. But Up's score seemed…boring, even in the long shots of the floating house when the music was the centerpiece of the narrative I didn't find it that engaging.
Anyone else have comments on the score? I'd be interested to hear.
Why does Disney/Pixar always start there movie off with scenes that make you very depressed???
Finding Nemo – Wife/Mom dies
Incredibles – Super heroes forced into hiding and are hated by everyone
Wall E – Whole world is covered in litter and Wall E is all alone
Ratatouille – Forced to leave home and separated from family
UP – wife dies and he is being forced to leave home
What is up with these people? I guess they should keep it up cause there movies are genius and pretty much pure gold. Just wondering