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DEPARTMENT www.postmagazine.com 26 POST NOV/DEC 2020 "It is a very pastel palette, somewhat desat- urated. We wanted to make sure the souls fit perfectly without getting lost, so they are a little brighter," says Steve Pilcher, production designer. For instance, "we bleached the color in the Hall of Everything. Everything there is recognizable, but there's no color in it unless you interact with it." Meanwhile, for The You Seminar, artists and Docter built a world that is totally new, albeit deceptively simple, with big, bold shapes and ab- stract buildings. SOUL MATES At The Great Before, Joe finds himself in the midst of an ethereal array of inhabitants who are formed from artists' imaginations, including new souls that have not yet lived, mentors who once lived and counselors there to assist. But, how do you visualize a soul, which is essen- tially air? With a lot of R&D, imagination, art and technology. In the film, new souls are cartoon-like, cute and appealing, with simple, rounded shapes; they are underdeveloped, with no distinguishing features yet. Because they have never lived on Earth, they have no concept of gravity, so they tend to float. What's more, "How do you animate characters that break physics, or how do you create a 2D look in a 3D world?" Podesta asks rhetorically. Since these purple-eyed new souls are in the process of being formed physically as well as in essence of being — personality (acquired at the various Personality Pavilions), passions and traits — their models are evolving as they prepare for their trip to Earth. As a result, they have recognizable limbs that can appear and disappear, and facial features that can move anywhere on the face. And more importantly, give them the ability to emote. Foggy and vaporous, the souls have a some- what translucent form, with a gradation of rainbow color. To help anchor the eyes and mouth on the face, TDs set up a system within Pixar's Presto that automatically lined the edges that mattered while ignoring those that didn't, with a tapered brush- stroke-like line on every frame. This further defined all the articulation of the characters. "Our cross-department collaboration also ensured we were able to build rigs that could hit those really big, graphic, appealing mouth shapes and expressions we saw in the art with control and flexibility to craft the silhouette into straight lines or sweeping curves, and push and pull the body into beautiful lines of action, giving animators the power to pose and animate soul characters in clear, appealing and entertaining ways," says Jude Brownbill, animation supervisor. As character modeler and articulation artist Jonathan Page points out, achieving the volu- metric look was hard because the souls con- tain a shading treatment built within SideFX's Houdini in which they have some depth and also a kind of penumbra around them, along with a multi-color treatment. "Getting that look right using the volumetric shading approach was difficult," he says. A sepa- rate shading treatment was used for the charac- ters' eyes. The animators were further challenged when it came to the articulation for features that appear and disappear at random — a hand will appear and then disappear, or will transform from a mitten-like appendage to one with digits. LOST SOUL Among these new souls is 22, who doesn't quite get the appeal of the human experience. Indeed, many new souls need help in finding a special spark for their trip to Earth. Assisting them are mentors, extraordinary folks who have lived and are meant to inspire, people like Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Archimedes, Mother Teresa and more. This mentorship has always worked for every new soul — with the exception of 22. Even hundreds of years at The You Seminary failed to yield any result. So Joe becomes 22's mentor, charged with showing her why life is worth living, and she gets to visit Earth temporarily with Joe as her guide. Unlike the barely formed new souls, mentors have lived on Earth, appearing as an abstract of how they saw themselves on Earth, with unique, distinguishing features and accessories that make them recognizable to the audience. They also have experienced gravity and walk as such, even though it is unnecessary in this realm. On Earth, Joe identi- fied with his hat and glasses, which he wears in this new realm. LINE DRAWING Even more unusual than the new souls are the counselors, ubiquitous characters that were kind of a 2D construct but also inhabit a 3D space, formed out of a three-dimensional line. All named Jerry, these higher-dimensional entities make sure The Great Before runs like clockwork (similarly shaped Terry maintains the accurate count for The Great Beyond). They are cheery, optimistic, patient and enthusiastic, serving as camp counselors of sort to the new souls in the very chaotic environment of The You Seminar. The counselors describe themselves as "the uni- verse dumbing itself down for humans to be able to comprehend and getting their forms mostly right," says Podesta. Page, however, describes them in more precise terms: "They had to be 3D objects, even though for the most part they appeared kind of as 2D shapes — kind of a 2D construct that also inhabits a 3D space." They emit light; they interact with the world around them. The artists drew inspiration for these characters from Swedish sculpture, nature and even light. The art department began exploring and drawing 'New souls' are in the process of being formed, and float.