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simulation ■ PIXAR ARTISTS modeled and rigged 400 unique monsters from seven archetypes. new simulation pipeline on this film. We upgraded where it made sense. We used global illumination for the entire feature, which we hadn't done before." On Campus Monsters, Inc. Director Pete Docter had wanted to populate that film with furry creatures, but he had to settle for one hairy monster. "He wanted a Muppet kind of world with funny, diverse characters," Bakshi says. "We couldn't achieve that then. Sully alone was a huge leap forward. But on this film, we didn't impose any limits on the number of furry characters." Or, on the number of arms, legs, eye stalks, horns, and so forth. Character Designers Ricky Nierva and Jason Deamer, who had both worked on Monsters, Inc., started with subtle changes to the original models for Mike and Sully that helped them look 15 years younger. Then, they designed the other members of the Oozma Kappa fraternity. "We made Don Carlton, the mature student, a dragon because he's dragging all that outdated stuff around," says Deamer. They also gave him a batwing moustache, dry skin, and a polo shirt that he had washed too often. For Jason, who is a mysterious vagabond character, they connected his arms between his legs. "It makes no sense, but in a great way," Deamer says. "He's purple, Muppet-like, and perfect." Scott Squishy Squibbles is moldable. "He's underdeveloped, undeclared, a blank slate," Nierva says. "For him, we thought about pliable substances. He has childlike proportions and five eyes." The most interesting and difficult character to design and rig, however, was Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren). "In the 15 years I've been with Pixar, this was the most challenging character I've ever been part of," Deamer says. "On the one hand, Dean Hardscrabble needed to be graceful and scholastic. But, she was the most successful scarer of all time and poignant in her criticism of Mike. Those ideas didn't reconcile well." For a year, the designers worked with a male version of the 12 ■ CGW Ju l y / Au g u s t 2 0 1 3 character. But, six weeks before the character was due in shot production, they decided to change the creature's gender. "It was like putting lipstick on a pig," Deamer says. "Nine of us sat in a room and tried everything you could imagine: butterfly, moth, bat, crab, owl, spider, scorpion. We had a bird-like design that worked for a dean, but not the most successful scarer of all time." Then, a local insect dealer showed them a giant centipede. "It is the creepiest thing ever," Nierva says. "Dangerous, yet beautiful. Its legs create this elegant sine wave. We brought an expert in who deals with venomous snakes and poisonous spiders. He put on leather gloves and held this thing with long metal tongs. He said if you got bitten, you wouldn't die, but you would wish for death. We had this thing in a Tupperware container with a little lid with tape on it in some poor coordinator's office." Using the scary centipede as reference, the designers incorporated elements from horned dragons, gave her wings, and a designer garment. "She could afford the best," Deamer says. Rigging Dean Hardscrabble was a challenge, as well. "She is elegant and powerful," Bakshi says. "She's subdued and disciplined and scary in a professorial way, and then all of a sudden she flies out of a scene or uses her body to climb up a pole like a creepy but elegant centipede." Modelers working in Autodesk's Maya and Mudbox incorporated her wings into her Coco Chanel-like jacket. "We don't know she has wings until they burst out of her body like batwings," Bakshi says. "We had to figure out how to collapse them because they're always integrated into her body and jacket." The animators didn't need to control each leg, however. When they put her on a path, a procedural system within Presto, Pixar's proprietary animation system, would determine where each foot would go depending on the speed they set. Student Bodies Once the characters in the main cast were well under way, the artists moved on to the ensemble cast, a process that extended through two and a half years. To create characters, the team initially used a system in which they rigged model parts in isolation and plugged them together, as if they were building LEGO models. "At the time, we felt that was really clever," Bakshi says. "But, people could see that the limbs we stuck onto a character weren't really integrated that well, even with a fillet. We wanted to make characters with smoother lines that felt more organic." Knowing they would need to create a university filled with students and teachers, yet maintain a design consistency with the first film, the modeling and rigging teams began by looking at the variety of monsters in the original film. They organized those monsters into seven species, and then added controls