Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1474486
j u ly • a u g u s t • s e p t e m b e r 2 0 2 2 c g w 7 T here is no doubt that the Toy Story franchise established Pixar as an animation powerhouse and gave creditabil- ity to computer animation. Director Angus MacLane expanded the franchise's iconic four-installment legacy by exploring the reason why lead character Andy Davis wanted to own a Buzz Lightyear action figure. He came up with a cinematic answer in the form of Lightyear. "This is meant to be a self-con- tained adventure," states MacLane. "In the original Star Wars, you get this feeling that there is a larger universe outside. It was always the intention to have the film feel big, but you can't show everything because you only have so much time and money. For me, movies where you immediately go super cosmic and there are millions of races of aliens that nobody seems to blink an eye at it, that's hard to get your head around. The sci-fi I've enjoyed always had an element of relatability." In the fall of 2017, the idea for Lightyear was approved. "We wanted to build into the story structure a way where Buzz [voiced by Chris Evans] could be out of step with reality so that you would have that entertaining premise from Toy Story [1995]," notes producer Galyn Susman. "He and his compatriots are stranded on a planet and need to develop a fuel that will help them reach hyper- speed so they can get back to Earth. Every time Buzz goes on a test flight— because he's approaching the speed of light—time passes slowly for him. His disconnect with reality is that he's frozen in time while everybody else on the planet is moving on with their lives. You can't have a sci-fi action epic adventure movie if you don't feel like you have real stakes." Lightyear is epic in scope. "Angus worked hard to reduce where he could. For example, the entire second act is basically Buzz and the four companions that he's with. Space is big. There is a whole planet that we're portraying. We knew that there would be a ton of effects and we're not an effects house. We had to do a lot of rethinking about how to approach effects on this film." Effects supervisor Bill Watral referenced anime and SpaceX footage when creating launch plumes for the film. "You try to find this happy balance between the level of detail that feels right and makes you believe that this is the phenomenon you're witnessing, but not so much detail that your eye goes there and you're starting to scrutinize it in relationship to all of the other work around you," explains Watral. Creating reflections and refractions in space helmet visors was hellish. "We find it to be most efficient to split our volumes out on a separate layer, do our matting in render time, and then put things back together in compositing. What we focus on are the things that give off light, and we try to find a way to get in the reflections and refractions. For something like the planet with the clouds and the deceleration rings, the ship goes through a ring and hits a blue effect that pops out like the Hawaiian Punch guy. Both of those things, the clouds on the planet and the decelera- tion rings, we set up so they would reflect, refract, and illuminate the ship and ring so you would feel like that was really in the same world. We created a little LED set for our background render." "The physicality of the animation is something that was im- portant to me and is a tremendous struggle," notes MacLane. "It's easy to animate things that are fun and appealing, but for me, with animation, you want each shot to say something true. The physicality of that is the truth of that moment. Comedy comes from the mundane truth of things." The effects had to fit within the level of stylization. "Oentimes the character animators will work closely with the effects team to make sure all of that stuff is working in harmony and the emotion for both the character animation and effects are supporting each other. We have an amazing effects team and they have a lot of effects in the film, and you've got to find a way to balance it. Some of the effects are small, just to connect the objects together by adding dust. It's not entertaining for me to highlight effects to show off the prowess of the technical aspect. It's the same with character animation. I'm not interested in charac- ter animation that draws attention to the acting. Everything is about the overall film with the intent of making the audience feel that it was awesome." It was important for everything to feel tactile rather than digital. "Angus liked the warmth that you see in the practicals of a Star Wars film, so we hired someone who had built the practicals for Star Wars prequels, John Duncan," reveals Susman. "He built us a model The film's animation style veers toward photorealism with an illustrative and stylized bent.