In that first six to eight months, I was just on the show as the only effects artist on the team it was really all about sort of listening very intently to what Enrico was asking for, and other elements of the production were already underway on the assets. I mean, really, as the effects supervisor on the film, I joined about two years ago. It ultimately supports his vision for storytelling.ĭS: What popped in my brain during our discussion previously was you had to have had to take a lot of different photos from a lot of different angles to be able to recreate that simplistic look of the water where most of your story takes place, can get into that?
It really feels like a shift in what we were able to provide and how the effects could visually support that elegant simplicity, that storybook stylization that he was going for. One of the things that I am most proud of is the work my team has been able to deliver on Luca. But in the end, it’s one of the things that I am most proud of.
So yeah, it certainly was the biggest challenge that we had. JR: Honestly, it was a little bit of terror because essentially, Enrico (the film’s director) was taking the playbook that we had developed over all these years and are now going to throw it out the window and go for something completely different. Let’s go for “elegant simplicity,” what was your first reaction when you heard this. DS: You go from college to working for the dominant animation studio in Pixar, whose focus has been photorealism, and then one day, a gentleman comes by and says, let’s take it back a few notches.