Report: Researching Character Design Techniques Used In 'Up'

Introduction

In this report I will be looking into some of the character design processes carried out during the production of Disney-Pixar's 'Up' (2009). I have chosen to research the development of this film in part due to the similar themes of house-based-adventure in this film and in my animated piece for this module. My research has primarily been informed by 'The Art of Up' (Tim Hauser 2009) and special features from the DVD of 'Up'.

The concept of ‘Up’ began with a simple sketch featuring an early incarnation of Carl (the films protagonist), described by director Bob Peterson as 'a cranky old man selling the happiest balloons you'd ever seen'. Despite this image having been produced long before any production had begun on the film, the juxtaposition of happiness and crankiness within the image already serves to encapsulate the basic essence of Carl; ostensibly callous and angry, yet warm and eccentric on the inside.

The initial sketch which led to the creation of Carl

When I began looking into character development for the film 'Up', one of the first things to strike my attention was the powerful simplicity of much of the artwork. Many of the images produced early on in the film's production consist simply of basic lines and blocked out shapes, yet still manage to exude a powerful sense emotion and personality.

Very early concept art conveying the general character of Carl

Although these images were produced at a very early point in development, they still offer a concise and detailed insight as to the character of the films protagonist, Carl.

'Simplexity'

The term 'simplexity' was coined during the production of 'Up' to describe the way in which its characters were designed. Production designer Ricky Nierva defines simplexity as: 'the art of simplifying an image down to its essence. But the complexity that you layer on top of it - in texture, design, or detail - is masked by how simple the form is'. Director Pete Docter states that the production team wanted 'to caricature and heighten the sense of shape' in their character designs through the technique of 'abstraction'. Comic artist Scott McCloud describes this process as 'stripping down an image to its essential "meaning"' in order to 'amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can't'. This technique can be observed even in early developmental artwork for the film:

An illustrative sketch by Ricky Nierva portraying the use of shape in the character designs for 'Up'

This sketch by Ricky Nierva demonstrates the basic shapes that were used as a basis for some of the main characters in 'Up'. An astounding amount of information and character is conveyed through this image: we see Carl represented as a square - whose sharp corners and harsh edges convey a harsh, grumpy character, while conversely, Ellie is represented as a circle - the opposite of a square; no harsh edges or sharp corners, just a soft round shape representative of a friendly and warm personality. Already we can begin to draw connections between these characters and deduce what kind of relationship they might have as a couple. Bob Peterson adds that most characters are round, rolling and moving forward; with the exception of Carl, who - being a square - needs the other characters to push him forwards. 

Moving into later stages of the development, and towards more technically detailed concept art, the emotive charm of the images only continues to expand; while maintaining the 'simplexity' described above:

Fig. 1: A piece of concept art produced by Daniel López Muñoz depicting the Character of Carl

Fig. 2: A piece of concept art produced by Lou Romano depicting the Character of Carl

These are some of my favourite pieces of concept art from the film, primarily due to their beautiful simplicity. While the images merely consist of a man sat at a table or on the edge of a bed, they remain powerfully expressive. The characterisation contributed by the designers' use of basic shapes in the character of Carl is aided and embellished by the environment around him. The framing of the 'shots' is also beautifully thought out, conveying Carl's state of mind. For example, the way in which Fig. 1 shows the door frame literally boxing him in, and the way in which the lighting leaves Carl in the shadows.

'Chunkification'

As the character designs became more and more developed in 2D, the production team began seeking ways of translating their design ideas to 3D. This introduced new challenges in terms of maintaining a traditional, minimalistic aesthetic; character supervisor Thomas Jordan cites the work of Rankin/Bass as a major influence in this area.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (Rankin/Bass 1964)

Jordan explains that the team were keen to achieve the same 'cosy, small, contained feel that stop-motion gives you' in the visuals for 'Up', in particular to convey this atmosphere within Carl's house. Ricky Nierva uses the term 'chunkification' to describe the 'charming, toylike quality' created through the emulation of a traditional stop-motion style. Characters were modelled as though they had been created by human hands, as opposed to having been modelled digitally. Nierva details the key characteristics used in 'Up' to mimic the stop-motion style as larger, thicker features such as strands of hair, eyelids, feathers and fingernails. Once again, the team were striving for simplicity in the basic form of their characters, as opposed to exploiting the potential 3D allows to include almost limitless detail in an image.

Sculptures depicting the character of Carl during different stages of his life

Above are sculptures of the final character designs created as a reference for the 3D modellers. Sculptures are often used during the development of a digitally animated 3D feature as part of the general character design process, however given that 'Up' was intended to look as though it could have been produced as a stop-motion piece, these sculptures were vital to ensure that the 3D character models used in the film could in fact exist as real-life miniatures. Once 3D models had been produced to the specifications of these sculptures, the character design process was complete.

Life on the Edge: Finished Animated Clip

My animated clip is finally complete! and here it is:

The animation of this clip was fairly straight-forward as my animatic was quite highly detailed - much of the remaining work simply involved redrawing the moving elements and adding colour and inbetweens to frames from my animatic.

I used Adobe Flash to draw and animate this piece, and Adobe After Effects for compositing and bringing all the elements of the animation together - a particularly useful tool in this piece of software being the motion blur tool, which can be seen in action at 0:05 and 0:15 of my animation. I feel that motion blur really helps to convey a feeling of momentum; in real life some of these actions - such as the planks flying off the bottom of the hut and the hut flying off the cliff - would happen so fast you almost wouldn't even see them... making it tricky to animate such a motion convincingly, yet with motion blur this type of motion is very straightforward to achieve.

To conclude, I'm really satisfied with this piece of work and I will hopefully return to complete the animation at a later date.

Some Finishing Touches To My Designs

As I approach the production of my finished animation I decided to put some finishing touches to some of my designs to make sure they look as polished as possible in this piece. below are some model sheets depicting how the 'characters' of the hut and the bird look from different angles. This would allow any turns in the characters to be animated consistently if the animation were to come into production. I also find model sheets a great way of getting to know your characters better, it really helps to flesh out the images a bit and bring them into the real world; as opposed to having them exist just from one angle.

A model sheet depicting the 'character' of the hut from all angles

A model sheet for the bird in my animation, who I have chosen to name 'Klaus'

This piece illustrates where Klaus's features all lie in relation to each other, as well as demonstrating the way that his form is based upon a circle

In addition to fleshing out some of my character designs, I decided it would be interesting to look into more developed concept art for my environmental designs too:

Above is a fairly detailed sketch showing the first scene of my animation; while this piece of concept art is definitely too complicated and contrasting to my character designs for it to be used in my actual animated piece, I still feel that the process of producing it has given me a greater understanding of the world in which my animation takes place. Below, however, I have taken a much simpler approach; simply colouring the black and white images which I designed earlier for my animatic:

Coloured background for scene 1

Coloured background for the first antarctic scene

I really like the simplicity of these images and feel they match the style of my character designs nicely enough to potentially be used as the backgrounds in my final animation. The only concern I have regarding these images is that the antarctic background features no outlines and therefore clashes slightly with the background to scene one, which features thick, chunky outlines for the most part. I will most likely only need one background for the animation I produce for this module, however if I ever choose to develop this animation further outside of university, this is an element of the design that I will have to reconsider.

My Final Animatic With Sound

I have now recorded all the sound effects for my finished animatic/animation! here is the result:

I'm really pleased with how most of the sound effects came out - the only one I'm slightly unsure about is the sound made as the hut crashes into the sea. As this sound effect was recorded in a bathroom, the tiled walls resulted in a lot of reverberation that I struggled to get rid of completely through noise reduction and EQ without making the audio sound too washed out. This may be worth revisiting if I get time - If it was rerecorded in an environment with normal walls I'm confident that it would sound fine.

I also mentioned in a previous post that once I had completed the sound for my animatic, I would be able to make a more informed decision as to which segment to animate. Now that the sound is done, I feel that the most dynamic section to animate would be the scene in which the bird lands on top of the hut. I was very happy with the way the sounds contributed to the visuals here, particularly the way the hut owner's footsteps cause the hut to creak as he leaves; this shows the age and weathered nature of the hut effectively and concisely. I all I just feel that this segment is the most rich in terms of both audio and visuals, therefore this section will best showcase the overall feel of the animation in the short amount of time given.