Every Pixar film has a
challenge. I wonder what could it be? Any thoughts/suggestions?
Nice idea. And yay – another chance
for me to spill my Ratatouille love out on. 
Here are my suggestions:
1) Remy vs. the Chef - Well…let’s see. Remy, according to numerous
articles and resources, makes a winning soup that catches the chef’s attention. Maybe he’ll get jealous and try
to make a dish that is better than Remy’s? Then Remy takes the bet and tries to make a better dish than the
chef’s. And the race is on…
2) Remy and His Family - I bet Remy and
his family will have a lot of conflicts between themselves throught the film – Remy likes good food, whilst his
family doesn’t care what a morsel looks like…as long as it is edible. And we already heard Remy’s dad
disagree with him in the teaser trailer, so…
I dunno – these are only guesses. But we’ll find out
what the real deal is next year, won’t we? 
I meant any
chalenges for Pixar. Like what obstacles will they encounter? For example: TI (hair/clothing simulation, human
animation)
Woah man…I was totally off. Heh – sorry about that.
Probably some of these:
Lighting - That’ll be tough, with all of the restraunt lights and city
lights all over the place. Not to mention, they’ll have to capture the feeling of Paris via special lighting and
shadow effects. I mean, this is only the second time that they have focused their story around a known, central
location – the other was Sydney, Australia in Finding Nemo.
Hair - Unless they have developed a program that works better with the hair,
they’ll probably have a few technical difficulties on their hands. It was hard enough with [i]The
Incredibles[/i]…
Fur - Not that fur is impossible to create
and manipulate – they sure figured it out with some of the monsters’ hair and fur in [i]Monsters
Inc.[/i]; and Buster’s “fur” wasn’t too bad. Squeaker’s fur wasn’t half bad, either. But
rats’ fur? Well…actually…they didn’t do too bad of a job of Remy’s and Rollie’s fur in the teaser
trailer. Myself being a rat critic, their fur could have been a little less coarse, I suppose; all-in-all,
though, it looked awesome.
What about the
Lighting in the sewers? I bet that would be difficult as well. In addition, I don’t see how hair is going to be
hard? When do they use hair in Ratatouille. I don’t think they are going to go as far as doing Violet’s hair
again. And fur. They done monsters, so wouldn’t this be less of a challenge?
Heh –
I knew that I would get something wrong there. (snigger)
Yeah, I was gonna mention the sewers, as well.
That’ll be tough – although, from what I saw in the teaser, it sure looks pretty dang good…for my taste, at
least. Then again, that was just the teaser…
Hair - When do they use hair?
For the humans, right? 
(snigger) Either they’ll do their best to avoid it altogether, or they’ll deal with
it. Might be a bit of both.
Fur - Yeah, I figured as much. Of course, being a
rat lover, I feel as if everything has to be absolutely perfect when dealing with
these fuzzy critters – the fur has to be top notch; their profiles have to resemble that of a rat; their tails
have to be long enough (yes, Remy’s and Rollie’s tails are not as long as they should be – heh). Now, please
don’t get me wrong; nobody is perfect. However, you’re right; I trust Pixar. Fur probably won’t be that big of
a problem…
Hair: I don’t think there is going to be anyone with long hair. So I think we can
throw that one out.
Fur: Since they encountered fur, I think they will challenge themselves to make the
fur look more complex or even Better.
(Man, I haven’t had this much fun discussing something since I last asked my dad a question about
Star Wars. )
Hair: I agree. Long hair =
difficulties. However, wouldn’t it seem kinda weird if everybody in France had short hair? 
Fur: Indeed. They will have to make it adequate enough to the point of
believeability. However, I respect the fact that Pixar makes their films very advanced concerning scenery and
“looks”, but not too advanced that the eye-candy is over-powering. They
put a few cartoony qualites and a tad bit of realism into their films, and I absolutely love that.
Well, Like in the
Incredibles, I don’t think Brad Bird wants hyper realism. If they can make it believable, the audience should
not notice.
Just the thought of creating an animated film and making it an instant classic, 7 times in a row, must be a
challenge!
Ratatouille will be number 8 for them, and I think those folks have perfected the art.
I know that, technology-wise, Pixar always try to create
new challenges for themselves with every new film that they make, but, thinking through all of the scenes that we
know will be in Ratatouille, so far, I can’t think of much. Pixar are the masters of lighting- even their
concept art proves this- so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
John Lasseter answered that
question in the JoBlo Interview:
[b]You talked about the increasing technical challenges with
each film, so what?s the big hurdle with rats? [/b]
The rats themselves. Our new movie
RATATOUILLE is about a rat that wants to be a fine chef and it?s a story about following ones passion against all
odds. And what odds?you know, a rat to a kitchen is death and a kitchen to a rat is death, so those are pretty
big odds.
One of the challenges we had with that is that in the principles of animation there is a
technique called Squash and Stretch, and its been a part of our animation from the very beginning. As a student
animator, one of the tests you do is to start with a bouncing rubber ball, but then you go on to what they call
the ?flour sack.? And it was something I learned. Its like?you know the old cloth sacks of flour?if you take it
and lift it up you can see that it kind of stretches out and you drop it. Pffft. And you move it all different
ways and what happens is it?s constantly flexible however it never changes volume. And that?s the essence of
Squash and Stretch.
And that?s something by nature that hand drawn animation has been able to do extremely
well. You look at the Seven Dwarves?Dopey and Doc and Grumpy and all that stuff?they were doing it back then so
well. But it?s something you haven?t seen in computer animation. In THE INCREDIBLES we did an amazing job in
getting the feeling of bone structure underneath with muscles and the skin and the clothing on top of that, which
is totally unique and hadn?t been done before to that level. But it still didn?t have that Seven Dwarves level of
squash and stretch that we loved as animators. And so when we started with RATATOUILLE we said we want to solve
this, we want to figure out a way to get the really, really flexible.
And just like in CARS, where we
studied the cars, studied Route 66, studied every aspects of it and the physics of the cars?the same goes for the
rats. We have these pet rats in the animation department that you watch and you see how they move and they curl
up into a little ball, they stretch out, they climb under things, they climb over stuff. It?s unbelievable. And
that?s been a very exciting development. And when you see the characters and you see them moving around, its
pretty special. It?s unlike anything you?ve seen. It?s very natural for the world we?re creating, in this kind of
cartoony world that takes place in Paris, France and the French countryside. It?s really special and you haven?t
seen this in computer animation before.
Well, I guess Groaning just gave you the definitive post right there
Haha – true that!
Thank you
for posting up that very informative article, Groaning! I quite enjoyed
reading/reviewing it.
Yes, I did notice that they seemed to “up” the "squash and
stretch" effect with their characters – in viewing the Ratatouille trailer
(and I forgot to mention this in my “Rats” post) I noticed that the title character of Remy seemed to
have more flexibility than other Pixar characters. Yes, the animation was beautiful and everything, but even more
so due to the fact that it, like Mr. Lasseter said, was improved considerably.
I would love to give a
step-by-step analysis of how the Pixar animators matched the movements of Remy to that of a real rat perfectly,
but it would take up too much time.
You don’t know
how jealous I am at this moment. Oh, how I wish I could be there to “help” them play with their
rats…
Oh, right- well, that pretty
much answers our question. Ratatouille does look a lot more cartoony than previous Pixar films so far, that’s
for sure.
Which is why I
love it! I can’t wait to see what the other characters in the film will look like…
Well, you saw one of the characters. A
big, chubby brown rat.
The Star Swordsman - Indeed – “Rollie” has a
very cartoony and flexible look to him, as well, despite his apparent “chubbiness”.
However, I
was referring to those other characters whom we have not yet seen or heard about yet (ie., Remy’s family, the
chef, Linguini, etc…). Will they be just as flexible? Will the fluid movements of the known characters be
applied to the humans as well?
I guess we’ll never know. I guess we will have to wait for the movie to come out.
I guess so. It seems as if June 29 can’t come soon
enough – I’ve been practically skipping with excitement.