How does a large animation studio like Pixar maintain consistency when dozens of people with varying artistic tastes are working on a single project?
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Disney/Pixar doesn’t care what taste you have in art as long as you can draw according to their brand’s taste. Skilled artists can art in multiple styles
The director gives approvals and will guide the vision, but the person in charge of creating and maintaining the visual style of a movie, live action or animated, is called the production designer. This person works on the film from its earliest conceptual stage to the end of shooting, in the case of live action, or through to post production on an animated film.
There are many others who will assist with this task along the way; concept designers, storyboard artists, Art Directors, and VFX art directors. There are artists who specialize in characters, some specialize in environments, vehicles, or hardware. The time spent on the movie making decisions about how a film will look (and out of which will come the style guide that so many people have mentioned here), is called the “preproduction phase.” In animation, visual effects, and, more and more and often, live action filmmaking, the specific part of the process that you are asking about is referred to as visual development or “visdev.”
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Pixar maintains consistency in its films by having a strong creative vision and by using a rigorous process of feedback and revision.
The creative vision for a Pixar film is usually developed by the director and a small team of writers and animators. This vision is then shared with the rest of the team, and everyone works towards bringing it to life.
The process of feedback and revision is essential to Pixar’s success. Once a scene or sequence is completed, it is shown to a group of other animators and filmmakers for feedback. This feedback is then used to make changes and improvements to the work. This process is repeated multiple times until the final product is perfect.
Pixar also has a number of other practices that help to maintain consistency in its films. For example, the studio has a library of animation tools and techniques that are used by all of its filmmakers. This helps to ensure that the look and feel of all Pixar films is consistent.
Finally, Pixar has a strong culture of collaboration and teamwork. This helps to ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal, and that everyone is contributing to the creative process.
Just because an artist has a style, doesn’t mean that can’t work in other styles, too.
Just like a good session musician, give a good artist some reference and they’ll come back with something that fits with it.
Generally an artist is the lead kn a project or a specific character. They create reference images, say of Pikachu facing straight forward, looking left, looking right, from behind, standing, sitting, holding something etc… this gets relayed to the other artists as the definitive “this is Pikachu”.
The animators then do their sketches and those get sent to the supervisor, they may call for adjustments or make changes themselves. For example, Pikachu ear looks too long.
Sometimes, these will be fed to a retouch team that will take all the pieces and do minor adjustments for the scene or composting making sure Pikachu and charmander are staged properly.
Corridor Crew has a great video where they talked to animators from disney, it gives some perspective on the steps and processes.
There is a creative director or lead animator who designs the style of the animation in concert with the director.
Animation studios hire artist who are specifically good at copying certain art styles. Think the kid who learned to copy marvel comics really well in middle school. Or who could perfectly copy Disney stuff in high school. These are the guys who copy the designs of the lead animator to make the movie. The are the work a day animators.
Animation studios also hire some artists who can’t do that and who don’t have a specific style but kinda draw whatever comes to them. They usually put them in creative positions where they go nuts putting out 20-100 versions of one item that needs to be iconic. Then the creative leads and director choose the look they like and adjust it for the actual animation process.
Just because an artist has a style, doesn’t mean that can’t work in other styles, too.
Just like a good session musician, give a good artist some reference and they’ll come back with something that fits with it.
Just because an artist has a style, doesn’t mean that can’t work in other styles, too.
Just like a good session musician, give a good artist some reference and they’ll come back with something that fits with it.
Generally an artist is the lead kn a project or a specific character. They create reference images, say of Pikachu facing straight forward, looking left, looking right, from behind, standing, sitting, holding something etc… this gets relayed to the other artists as the definitive “this is Pikachu”.
The animators then do their sketches and those get sent to the supervisor, they may call for adjustments or make changes themselves. For example, Pikachu ear looks too long.
Sometimes, these will be fed to a retouch team that will take all the pieces and do minor adjustments for the scene or composting making sure Pikachu and charmander are staged properly.
Corridor Crew has a great video where they talked to animators from disney, it gives some perspective on the steps and processes.
Adding onto “the director decides”… There are documents that describe how people and objects should look and move.
Here is a really good example for [King Of The Hill](https://imgur.io/a/PiJLk). There are things such as “Do not hold mouth open while drinking” and “No smoke on Dales cigarettes”.
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