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a p r i l • m ay • j u n e 2 0 2 2 c g w 1 7 Simul‹¡ns In addition to using the new Profile Mover technology, Turning Red's animators also took advantage of other developments that were occurring within Pixar, including a new crowds pipeline, which, according to Danielle Feinberg, VFX supervisor, made the crowds in the film possible. "There's a lot of big crowd scenes at the end, and they redid the crowds pipeline so our crowds folks could load thousands and thousands of characters into the computer with way less slowdown than you ever had before," says Feinberg. "That meant our layout artists could be shooting scenes with the crowds loaded, and while it's not the full-fledged characters, it was way more [detailed] than usual. I think that made a really big difference in terms of just dealing with those crowd shots — and it's not grinding everything to a halt." As Feinberg points out, there is a lot of simulation in the film, even though you would not expect it to be so as you would with Tangled or Brave. "This one was really deceptive in that it involves teenage girls, and they're hugging and touching all the time, and Ming is always touching Mei — she's straightening her jacket and smoothing it out, and putting in hair clips. And then there was all the petting of the panda," she points out. "There ended up being so much extra hugging and touching that there was almost no shot that was a normal shot for the sim group." The simulation department had to do extra passes on just about everything, says Feinberg, in order to incorporate all that work. "That definitely surprised us," she says. "There's lots of hair stuff that shows up later in the film that sim had to do a lot of work on to figure out how to do, on top of being overloaded with all the hugging. Simulation ended up having a huge job on this film, and we weren't expecting that." made our process a bit easier and the results a lot cleaner. The rigger adjusts the curves for the profile they want, and the comput- er figures out how to get the model shape to match the curve. So you are thinking more about the shape of things and less about the tedious movement of points for each articulation control," she says. Initially, Profile Mover was intended just for the face, but the team ended up using it for the entire body. Profile Mover was a great suc- cess, and enough so that they are now using it for most characters on future Pixar shows, as well as starting to make its way into hair and cloth. "That's even cooler in a way because if you are doing cloth, all you have to do is say, well, here's the curve of the profile I want that to hit," says Feinberg. There's all kinds of cool things you can do. It's so exciting." In keeping with the film's aesthetic, the animation team incor- porate exaggerated movement that supported Mei's awkwardness and other traits. For instance, in a particular scene she is break- dancing and believes she is crushing it, even though she doesn't exactly stick the landing. The animation group studied a good deal of hand-drawn car- toons where artists would cycle the same few drawings repeatedly. For this film, the animators took that cycle animation technique and applied it to Turning Red's 3D characters. They also leaned in to a more graphic 2D style by showing Mei's face more in profile, as opposed to what they are trained to do at Pixar: showing both eyes on screen since the audience looks for emotion. The group also went against the grain using isolated motion. "Never, ever have we had a director ask for this specific type of mo- tion. As animators, we are trained that when animating a character, that motion doesn't come from a single point," says Hartline. For in- stance, when a character usually moves, it is through the body core, which affects the shoulders, neck, head, hands. It's all connected. With isolated motion, the character is completely still while only one part of them moves. "This gives Turning Red its really fun, unique, really pushed style. However, that took a lot of untraining of our animators. Breaking them away from wanting to animate a person how they naturally see it every day, and instead leaning into more of a stylized, isolated motion," adds Hartline. "Saying, 'No, we're going to simplify the motion. We are going to take out all the extra poses and just do one pose, or we're just going to move a hand and nothing else moves; the body's going to be completely still and just one hand will move.' That's fine for one animator to learn that, but when you have 70 to 80 animators coming onto the show and we have to learn this style together, that was a challenge, but a fun challenge," he says. CŸ‡ge Met There are a lot of phrases used to describe Turning Red: "Asian tween fever dream," "chunky cute," "East meets West." But one word sums it up best: "unique." Unique for Pixar for leaning into a very different graphic style as opposed to realism. Unique in that it had women in key positions, including director. The filmmakers made a bold decision to utilize a tool that was not tested before in a feature production. They also took advan- tage of a new crowd pipeline, enabling thousands and thousands of characters to be loaded into the computer for big crowd scenes with less slowdown than they had ever experienced before (see "Simulations," page XX). Also, the movie contains a good deal of simulation, which is not obvious, but there is a lot of hugging and touching between Mei and her mother, and a lot of petting involving Panda Mei. Yet, all those challenges are hidden underneath a story that is, well, dare I say "unique." For many years now, Pixar has proven its strength in the anima- tion industry, giving us films that tackle some of the industry's most challenging tasks: realistic hair, water, and so much more. Now the studio is showing it can do so much more and go in a completely different direction, and in the process, widening its storytelling. "I don't know if it's easier or more difficult. It's just different. I think we're always going to be looking for ways to challenge [ourselves] and look for unique style. Sometimes we might have those tools. Sometimes we might not and we'll have to write something for it. But it's another thing you have to add in your toolbox," says Hartline. ¢ Karen Moltenbrey is the former chief editor of CGW and editor in chief of Jon Peddie Research.