Pixar artist goes behind the scenes with graphic design students

Pixar Pic

Pixar worker Michael O’Brien visited the College of Design to talk about the making of Pixar’s latest film, “The Good Dinosaur” and his work on the film as a part of the special effects department. MURPHY NEWS PHOTO BY TIPHERET PEÑA

By TIPHERET PEÑA / Murphy News Service

It’s not often you get to hear a firsthand account of the making a highly anticipated film by one of the most successful animation studios in the world.

So when Pixar team member Michael O’Brien visited the University of Minnesota College of Design Wednesday morning, those in attendance got a chance to hear behind-the-scenes details about the production of the upcoming movie “The Good Dinosaur.” 

O’Brien, a technical lead on the special effects team for “The Good Dinosaur,” spoke about the movie and its background, as well as his work on the film and the role of the special effects team.

“The Good Dinosaur” centers on Arlo, a young Apatosaurus who is separated from his family and has to find his way home with the help of a human boy named Spot.

“We have a lot of ‘What If?’ movies,” O’Brien said. “Like, what if toys could talk? Or what if old guys were action heroes? … What if robots fall in love? This one is: What if the asteroid that’s gonna hit Earth misses?”

The movie was rebooted halfway through its production when the Pixar team realized that the original version was not representative of its best work.

“We had a version of this movie that was fine but not awesome, and I’m lucky enough to work for a company that recognizes that,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien showed the audience facial animation tests of the characters, never-before-seen clips from the film and extended trailers as he spoke of different aspects of the film.

The film blends cartoon-like characters with realistic sets and scenery. Its team wanted to create a balance between a realistic and believable world, and interesting and empathetic characters, O’Brien said.

“Making a super hyper-real thing, I think takes the kid out of it,” he said. “Having that split … allows us to put empathy, to put sympathy into these characters. It becomes universal.”

The film reverses the role of animal and human, as Arlo is the one throughout the film who talks to Spot, who doesn’t know how to talk back.

O’Brien described the movie as a “big jump” for the special effects department because it gave them the opportunity to create something that was representative of the level of the world we live in.

The department wanted to make natural phenomena come to life specifically for “The Good Dinosaur.” The goal was to create believable interactions between the characters and the world of the film; to heighten the mood, atmosphere and drama of the movie, adding spectacle and visual complexity to the film as a whole.

Special effects at their best are used as storytelling tools, O’Brien said. The department’s ultimate goal, he added, was to augment the story and allow people to enjoy the movie, rather than getting audience members to notice particular effects or elements of the film.

The team, he said, worked on elements such as motion, scale, timing and weight. The artists solved equations of motion for specific effects, focused on the appearance of materials and elements such as water, smoke and sand. They also worked on the integration and composition of light in combination with those elements.

O’Brien has previously worked on films such as “Monster’s, Inc.,” “Wall-E” and “Brave.” He has done a lot of work with water scenes in the past and spent about six months alone on depictions of water in “The Good Dinosaur.” One of his main jobs for the new movie, he said, was creating the river on which Arlo gets lost and which he must navigate throughout his journey.

The river propels the characters and audience into the journey and provides Arlo with a means to get home, O’Brien said. “We want it to parallel the emotional arc of all the characters.”

As part of his day-to-day routine O’Brien made sure all the department’s systems were working and helped artists with complex simulations and processing. He said he blocked off the second half of his day to work on his own shots.

One of the goals of the special effects team was to get to the level of work it was seeing in different departments, O’Brien said.

“The sets team just absolutely hit it out of the park … the sets in this are just staggeringly beautiful,” he said.

O’Brien also emphasized the company’s framework of creating characters first and then building a world for and around those characters.

“We wanted something epic, it needs to feel big, it needs to feel real,” O’Brien said. “But it needs to feel real for a talking dinosaur that’s green and cartoony.”

O’Brien has been working on Pixar’s next film, “Finding Dory,” the sequel to its 2003 hit “Finding Nemo,” which is due for release in summer of 2016.

“The Good Dinosaur” opens Nov. 25, right before Thanksgiving.

Reporter Tipheret Peña is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.

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