Playing with shapes, studying overweight dogs, visiting the zoo, those are just some of the diverse activities that describe production research on Up!
The New York Times is running an article, Designing Up, featuring director Pete Docter and production designer Ricky Nierva discussing the film’s "simplexity." The team talk about each of the main characters and some facts on how the Up team came UP with them. For example, Carl and Ellie’s design center on squares and circles, in fact, pictures of the couple together feature a square frame and a circle matte. Russell was designed to be simple, but with simplicity comes complexity, at least when CG is involved. His clothing was challenging in particular because of the many overlapping layers. Don’t forget Dug and Kevin, for these two odd animals the team researched all sorts of creatures. From the rare, iridescent Himalayan Monal to an overweight Labrador/Golden Retriever mutt.
You can read the article here. Don’t forget to play the interactive feature, "Inside and Out", that compliments the piece. The feature includes recordings of Docter and Nierva talking about the characters; illustrated with concept art and fully rendered stills! Speaking of art, we’ll be reviewing The Art of Up soon.
Last modified: May 16, 2009
Nice interview. Not nearly enough about Ricky Nierva or images of his work (like in the book). I saw the film at a preview, and it’s great. The design of the film by Mr. Nierva is quite stunning.