Figure 1: Shrek (2001)- (Caarton, n.d.)

‘Shrek (2001)’ directed by Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson and produced by Aron Warner, John H. Williams, and Jeffrey Katzenberg which was the fifth film to be released from ‘Dreamwork Studios’.  “a lively romp for kids and an enormously clever comedy for adults… standing every fairy tale convention on its head” by Todd McCarthy (McCarthy, 2001). It was based on children’s book which was Shrek! In 1990 by William Steig (Steig, n.d.) which marked the incredible debut for first-time directors Andrew Adamson a professional visual effects supervisor working at PDI (Pacifica Data Images) in 1991 who was born in Auckland, New Zealand. And Vicky Jenson who is an art director and storyboard artist born in Los Angeles, California then worked for many studios and then in late 2000s she joined DreamWorks Animation (James, 2024). After being hired for the first film, Andrew Adamson had several arguments with the producer Jeffery Katzenberg over adult appeal, whereas Jefferey Katzenberg personally promoted Vicky Jenson due to her hard work as a story artist who was trying to piece the film together to the best of her ability. Then her and Andrew Adamson decided to work on the film in half, so they could answer other animators or other crew members while working on the sequence (Wales, n.d.). Jenson describes her partnership with Adamson as it was been “Kind of separate and kind of side-by-side” (Koseluk, 2001). Their main goal was to make Shrek as funny as possible they could. Both the directors pushed their boundaries by challenging traditional fairy tale narratives and their humour, a distinctive tone for DreamWorks. They were willing to include adult-targeted jokes, while they were balancing appeal for children.

Figure 2: Finding Nemo (2003)- (Rizka, n.d.)

‘Finding Nemo (2003)’ directed by Andrew Stanton and produced by Graham Wallters. Made in Pixar studio and distributed by Walt Disney Studios motion picture. Andrew Stanton was unimpressed by an early cut of “The Lion King” as he thought that the movie romanticized the animal kingdom, so he made “Finding Nemo”, in part as a movie that too took place in a dangerous animal kingdom in ocean (Shamsian, 2016). Finding Nemo show cased Pixar’s ability to blend in groundbreaking animation with emotional Storytelling. As the story goes by, Marlin lost his whole family in a barracuda attack, shaping his Journey to find Nemo. The movie’s dark theme suggested that Nemo never existed, and in fact was a coping mechanism for Marlin;s grief and loss. Which symbolizes 5 stages of grief, with Marlin navigating denial, anger, bargaining, despair, and acceptance (Lealos et al., 2021). The challenging part was filming underwater animation for this film. So, they use a technique called Transblurrency, the animators adjusted Pixar’s RenderMan software (which includes photorealistic renderning, and advancing the creation of 3D computer animation and visual effects) to blur objects based on their distance from the viewer and the depth in the water. And to convey the human-like emotions through the expressions of non-characters, Pixar enhanced their Geppetto articulation software, which then gave the animators better control over facial features and they used reference footages (Ian Phillips, 2021).  Lisa Forsell and Danielle Feinberg were the CG supervisors responsible for the Ocean Unit (Cover Story: Depth Perception, n.d.).

‘The Incredibles (2004)’ directed by Brad Bird, produced by John Wallker which is 3D animated film made by Pixar Studio. In the first scene of the film we can see that it starts like a documentary-like atmosphere then it shifts drastically to an action scene with good visuals and sound quality (Figure 22). The character designer, Teddy Newton mentioned that from the beginning they wanted the characters and environmental elements to be appear stylized like traditional cartoon characters rather than a photorealistic quality film (Figure 23). The film’s production designer, who was Leo Romano who created many characters through his drawing, mentioned that they reconstructed all human moods, emotions and atmosphere from the beginning using colours and shapes (Production notes, n.d., p. 16). In Figure 25 and 26, we can observe the urban texture and colouring of the city. They designed it with pastel color in some of the scenes, while more vibrant colours were been used in the dynamic scenes. Then the art director Ralph Eggleston also mentioned that they aimed to reflect on the look in 1950s suburban residence in the film (Coles, 2009). It Illustrates the big city and the location of the parr family house with the context and we can see the use of furnishing and lighting elements that reflects the aesthetic design of the 1950s which then strengthened the interior spaces. For example, in parr’s family house we can see the portrayal of family environment and relationships within that environment such as living and dining rooms then a study room and a garage, all of this which supported the storytelling . Then we got the initial designs for the Syndrome’s Island, the producers got inspiration/envisioned at first that they make a place like Disneyland. It was intended to have many seasons area into their scenes however they later decided to simplify the space and made the island with seperate buildings (Nomanisan Island, n.d.). The director of photography and staging expert, Patrick Lin (Benetton, n.d., p. 1) while filming the final battel scene, they did not initially design and model the entire city because the fighting scene was too large and complex. They initially conducted shots involving low-geometry architectural models and after director’s approval they would modelled and placed the entire city based on that shots. They even made elements representing the city impression, such as residences, cinemas, offices, etc., a water element was in the city park, from there the storytelling revolved around Frozone’s superpower of creating ice, which added depth to the narrative .

‘Wall E (2008)’ written and directed by Andrew Stanton and produced by Lindsey Colins and Jim Morris. A film by Pixar Studios for Walt Disney. “ Our approach to the look of the film wasn’t about what the future is going to be like. It was about what the future could be – which is a lot more interesting. That’s what we wanted to impart with the design of this film. In designning the look of the characters and the world, we want audiences to really believe the world they’re seeing. We want the characters and the world to be real, not realistic looking, but real in terms of believability” “ says Stanton” (Wall-E Production Notes, 2017). “Andrew Stanton wanted to capture cinematic looks for his film, so his team employed virtual cameras to create dynamic angles and movements” (Nigh, 2021). Then they used Pixar’s software such as proprietary, Render Man etc and they advanced lighting techniques, including global illumination and ray tracing. They paid a very good attention to the textures that they used throughout their films. The use of subtle cues of gestures made the Wall E characters expressive with limited dialogues and Pixar also gave special attention to their realistic mechanical movements so which would add up to their emotional expression. And for the very first time Pixar studio used live-footages in Wall-E, we can see some elements. This film avoided fantasy from the traditional animation to some extent. It was made nearly to reality and close to life (filmtvmovingimage, 2017) (oscarxia, 2011).

Figure 5: UP (2009)- (Up, n.d.)

‘Up (2009)’ written and directed by Pete Docter. Another film by Pixar studios. So the story revolves around Carl Fredricksen who uses to be a retired ballon salesman who goes on an amazing journey to fulfil a promise he made to his wife, Ellie. It is a story of Love, Loss and Adventure on the way of his journey. The character design of carl is like blocky type with square shapes it portray his age and rigidity while for other characters like Ellie and Russell, they are more like rounded which sort of shows their warmth. Instead of main character leaving the house like other films, UP needed the house to go along with him on his journey as it was a house built by both him and his wife Ellie. We can see that how much work Pete Docter and Bob Peterson have put into bringing the emotional background and story for Carl and Ellie growing up together, all the way to when they are senior citizens in first few mins of the film (Shane Hurlbut, 2019). Now they needed to find a place or scenery where Carl and Russell will go on their journey with the house. So, Pete saw a documentary of Adrian Warren an Tepui Naturalist/Filmmaker, where he saw a Beautiful Mountains, cliffs, waterfalls (Pixar, 2016). Then Pixar sent a team of artist there so they can trace tepui landscapes, towering waterfall, the fog-shrouded labyrinth. And with that in 2011 a team from National Geographic TV series thought the idea to try and find out that how hard it will be to make a house fly with 300 helium-filled balloons in the air, so that they can justify the movie “UP” (Ali, 2018). Then on their journey they met Dug a lovable golden retriever, then Kevin an extremely rare 13-foot tall flightless bird, then Charles F. Muntz being sort of evil character and his Airship (Spirit of Adventure), he travelled the world in this airship and used to collect various things along his way. And after Muntz’s death, the airship then belongs to Carl and Russell with their new companion Dug returning to U.S.A (Spirit of Adventure, 2014).