This is my little blog documenting the making of
Pixar's newest short "The Blue Umbrella".
Look for it in theatres in front of Monsters University on June 21st.
Oh and follow us on twitter: rainycitytales332
06 / 09 / 13
Annecy!
I’m at the Annecy animation festival in France, super exited to show Le Parapluie Blue tomorrow to open the festival before Monsters University. Hope some of you can make it! And how fitting that right now, in Annecy, it rains. Always puts a smile on my face :)
05 / 20 / 13
Dress Up!
As we celebrated the wrap of Monsters University and our very own The Blue Umbrella, some of us, instead of dressing in a suit, dressed up in character!! :)
04 / 27 / 13
How Pixar created the ultrarealistic animated film
A great Interview the lovely @deantak did with me for @VentureBeat
04 / 12 / 13
Bobu
It was early even for Bobu. He said that he had never gotten used to it. Rising before the sun comes up “just ain’t natural” he told me.
A small treat that the bloggers and pressers got that are visiting Pixar at the moment : http://instagram.com/p/X53XypxeEC/
04 / 10 / 13
‘The Blue Umbrella’: Inside a Pixar Love Story
The process began on one of those unusually rainy but otherwise ordinary California days. Pixar camera and staging artist Saschka Unseld was walking through downtown San Francisco. Something caught his eye. He looked down, studying more closely an object stuck in the gutter in front of him.
Thank you Andy for the lovely article.
Tech geekery and the cohesion of design and motion blur:
1. As a base, to achieve a more realistic look” we used a .6 motion blur for the entire show. Pixar films normally use less since their design is more stylized.
2. Just for the umbrella faces, to match their more stylized design and animation, we used a front weighted .3 motion blur.
3. For the city characters that are made of solid non bendable materials, we used no motion blur and animated the on 2s or 3s. This way we stayed away from a rubbery feel and managed to keep their hard/solid look. Our reference was to make them feel stop-motion animated or pixilated.
4. For the slow motion of the title shot, instead of “overshooting” to slow everything down, we slowed down the 24fps footage resulting in a playback of 12fps to 6fps. This helped in giving the slow motion a more realistic/gritty feel instead of the common slow motion that always felt a bit too “kitsch” to me.
03 / 03 / 13
R&D
In order to get the right organic and hand held feel for our camera we tested different input devices for capturing the natural movements of a camera operator. Here is a look at an early version in which we hooked up a playstation move controller.
02 / 27 / 13
Animation Review
Some of our animation reviews are held in a screening room. It is nice to step away from the monitors but also important to see everyones work on a big screen. It’s amazing how different a lot of the animation feels when viewed on such a different scale. Here our animation supervisor Ross gives feedback on a shot that ultimately didn’t make it into the final film.
02 / 22 / 13
The Umbrella Review
Maryellen Atkins wrote this lovely review of The Blue Umbrella for The Pixar Post. Be careful though, there’s super slight spoilers in it.
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
