When Bird finished an early draft of the script, he brought the story to the only people he was convinced would understand his vision for an animated film that he hoped would look, feel and be produced unlike any other: Pixar Animation Studios.
Innovation has long been the name of the game at Pixar, the company behind many of animation’s biggest blockbuster hits and critical sensations including the pioneering “Toy Story,” as well as “A Bug’s Life,” “Monsters, Inc.” and “Finding Nemo.” The studio is always looking for original stories from creative visionaries, and the minute John Lasseter—Pixar’s vice president of creative and an Oscar® winning filmmaker in his own right—heard Bird’s pitch, he knew he had found one.
“It was a like a homecoming to have Brad here to pitch the story because this studio was created for people like him— people who are passionate about taking entertainment, animation and great characters in unforeseen directions,” says Lasseter. “His idea for THE INCREDIBLES was truly breathtaking. I loved the idea of this great adventure about a superhero family trying to do what all families try to do—make one another happy. And I knew in Brad’s hands it was going to go beyond being just an incredibly fun story to have phenomenal style and dramatic power.”
Lasseter also knew that THE INCREDIBLES would be an unmatched challenge for Pixar—not only would it be the first time the studio had tackled wholly human characters, it would be the most technically innovative, logistically complex and overall most monumental production the studio had ever undertaken. The story unfolds on nearly 100 different sets—ranging from a whimsical, modernesque suburbia to the lush and untamed jungles of Nomanisan Island. Furthermore, because the film emphasizes the characters’ humanity, Bird was asking the Pixar team to create the most believable human animated forms in history—with palpably kinetic skin, hair and clothing. Enthusiasm spread like wildfire through the studio to meet the challenge of THE INCREDIBLES.
The process of creating any animated film goes through multiple, carefully planned stages. First, the story is written and preliminary storyboards are drawn to help tell the story visually in the earliest stages. The storyboards are then turned into a form of early animation—known as “reels” or “animatics”—that allow the filmmakers to finetune the sequences before actually animating them. Simultaneously, the art department is hard at work, illustrating every last physical detail of the individual characters and the entire universe in which they exist—also brainstorming the design of “virtual” sets, props, buildings, surfaces and color palettes. Once the story and look of the film are decided upon, actors are brought in to record the voice performances—giving the characters indelible personalities, which are, in turn, used to inspire the rest of the creative process.
At last, the process of metamorphosing these 2-D representations into a 3-D reality begins. The first step in this process is for the modeling group to build the characters and sets in the computer. The layout crew is instrumental in the next phase—fine-tuning the characters and the camera from the story reel to create the “shots” that will tell the story to its greatest effect. Following this, the characters are fully animated—move by move, shot by shot—coming to life with a full range of expressions, movements and emotions. Then nuanced shading and “digital lighting” complete the production phase…and the entire movie is “rendered.” In rendering, all of the information that makes up the motion picture is translated from digital data into actual frames of film. Finally, the film is completed much like any other motion picture—via final editing, scoring and the addition of sound and special effects.
Movie Database
In Theaters
