1 CARS PRODUCTION INFORMATION After taking ... - Disney

excited about as he was winding down on ‘CARS’ was creating a story
community where the story artists were more tuned in to each other and better
connected. He would show screenings of Pixar’s old story reels to remind us of
the process that we went through to get to the finished story. His motto was
‘You have to trust the process.’ If you stalled on a story point, you’ve got to
work your way through it.”
Dan Scanlon, another story artist on “CARS,” adds, “Joe’s told us not just
to refer back to a completed film like ‘Toy Story.’ Instead, look back at the first
reel of the film that was boarded. It was terrible. He encouraged us to analyze
how problems were fixed, and how the process can work to make something
good from something terrible. It can be very intimidating for a new story
person at Pixar when you look at all the great things that have been done. Joe
would show us how bad the early versions of some of the hit films were and
explain what they did to fix it. He was a very humble guy who encouraged all of
us to stay humble and inspired us all with his gift for storytelling.”
PIXAR’S SHINING ACHIEVEMENTS:
TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS AND ADVANCES ON “CARS”
Over the past 20 years, Pixar Animation Studios has pushed the limits of
computer-animation to exciting new heights, and continued to harness the
medium to showcase their stories and characters in exciting new ways. From
their earliest Oscar ® -winning and nominated short films to the industry’s first
full-length CG feature, “Toy Story,” Pixar has never been content to rest on their
laurels. Each film has challenged them in new ways whether it was the blades of
grass and crowd scenes in “A Bug’s Life,” the caricatured-but-realistic humans in
“Toy Story 2,” the hairy characters and simulated clothing of “Monsters, Inc.,”
the vibrant underwater world of “Finding Nemo,” or the action-packed
environments and human characters in “The Incredibles.” Their latest
undertaking, “CARS,” posed some of the greatest challenges to date.
Under the supervision of associate producer Tom Porter, supervising
technical director Eben Ostby, and Pixar’s resident group of technical wizards,
“CARS” got off to a fast start and scored some impressive achievements along
the way.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for the “CARS” technical team was creating
the metallic and painted surfaces of the car characters, and the reflections that
those surfaces generate. An algorithmic rendering technique known as “ray
tracing” was used for the first time at Pixar to give the filmmakers the look and
effect that they wanted.
Ostby explains, “Given that the stars of our film are made of metal, John
had a real desire to see realistic reflections, and more beautiful lighting than
we’ve seen in any of our previous films. In the past, we’ve mostly used
environment maps and other matte-based technology to cheat reflections, but
for ‘CARS’ we added a ray-tracing capability to our existing Renderman
program to raise the bar for Pixar.”
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