Rhett Wickham: Every Little Thing That Goes Into the Soup,

Rhett Wickham: Every Little Thing That Goes Into the Soup
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by Rhett Wickham
July 27, 2007
Rhett Wickham Talks To Ratatouille Supervising Animator Mark Walsh About The Importance Of Every Little Thing That Goes Into the Soup (and respecting the tradition of a reliable stock)


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RHETT WICKHAM Talks To RATATOUILLE Supervising Animator MARK WALSH About The Importance Of
EVERY LITTLE THING THAT GOES INTO THE SOUP (and respecting the tradition of a reliable stock)

Pixar’s identity as the 200 pound gorilla of CG animation was not yet established when Ratatouille Supervising Animator MARK WALSH was a student at Cal Arts. “Everybody was lining up to get into Disney, at the time. It was really, really hard to get in and there was this place called Pixar that had just made one movie. A friend of mine had gone up there earlier and he said, “This is fun! You get to be an animator right away. You don’t have to go through clean-up or assisting someone else.�? I was like “Great! I’ll go up there and see if I can get a job there.�? Thinking, as everyone did in the 1980’s, that eventually Disney would gobble them up and that the “little studio�? would perhaps make a couple of more pictures before closing shop in the face of competition, Walsh thought of it as a perfect opportunity to establish himself in preparation for taking another shot at animating for Disney in a few years. Though not entirely prescient in his thinking, and far from alone in his assumptions at the time, little could Walsh have know then that the best of all possible worlds was at his feet.

What is most fascinating about Walsh’s journey as an animator is not the great fortune of joining Pixar in its infancy, or even wrangling his own gifts through hard work and determination in order to stay on-board through the repeated nexus of the digital giant. It is, instead, the lessons Mark Walsh has learned about the people who do the work. It’s a lesson that feels and sounds very much like being in a kitchen with passionate chefs – lots of passionate chefs – the obvious but particularly appropriate analogy for the guy who guided the animators on Pixar’s latest effort.

With less than a month to go to the premier of the feature, I spoke with Mark Walsh about the various ingredients that went into his own soup.

RW

The first thing that strikes me about Ratatouille is that, not since 101 Dalmatians, has any film so romantically interpreted and also perfectly capture the milieu of a specific place; the way that (Walt) Peregoy and (Ken) Anderson captured London and rural England, so this film renders a beautiful, dreamy, romantic and impressively specific Paris.

MW

Well that visual look is largely thanks to Harley Jessup, the guy who was the art director for Monsters Inc... He really…kicked on this thing, for lack of a better term! Harley is a great designer, and his own work has a very flat style. He started by taking the real Paris and ever so slightly caricaturing it. I know that he made a lot of trips to Paris and took a lot of pictures. Like most of the Pixar films it’s “real�? but it’s also hyper-real in the design. For instance, you take a closer look at it and you think things like “that’s a really design-y railing.�? But it’s not so design-y that it takes you out of the place and time – it’s not like a Sleeping Beauty railing. It’s, like you say, more of a Peregoy caricature of a railing. It’s still the place, but it’s an artistic take on the place.

RW

I’ve enjoyed all the Pixar films, some more than others, but this is a film that for the first time strikes me as having an artistry that cut the usual thread; a thread that up until now kept my eye or emotions following it back to the computer as the source. Even more so than with The Incredibles, I’m struck by the graphic appeal, particularly in the character design and in the animation.

MW

Much of that choice comes from Jan Pinkava, the guy who directed Gerri’s Game. He led the movie for a long time. There is a Czechoslovakian designer who used to do stop motion films, Jiri Trnka. He had a very simple toy-like style. Jan wanted the overall styling to be more like puppets – stop motion puppets. Everything is just a little bit over-sized. The way that the cloth on the characters folds, and stuff…hmmm, what I mean by oversized. Everything is made to look as if it’s not a full-sized set. That the characters aren’t full-sized, that they’re smaller than full sized. It’s a very subtle thing, but it adds a bit of caricature to the look.

RW

It’s very whimsical, and charming, too.

MW

Yeah. You know, how if you were to look at a stop motion film, how they’re wearing clothes and it’s a big fold, because it’s a small piece of cloth, right?

RW

Right

MW

We try to do some of the same things, or Jan did, and I think that shows up quite a bit. There are some beautiful character designs by this guy Jason Deamer. He also worked on the One Man Band short. He’s been drawing at Pixar for years now, and he was able to take a bunch of the influences that Jan liked and funnel them into something that could be animated easily and would also be appealing. I think it looks different from the other films. It’s funny, because I remember Colette, the female, we thought she was kind of weird, she’s got a big nose… but when she’s in the film, and by the way we moved her around and put rouge on her cheeks, she’s actually appealing. I love that kind of thing, where you have a female in an animated film that’s not all busty and clearly all-American beautiful, but still cute. It’s a harder thing to pull off, and I love that.


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