HowThe Wild Robots director, Chris Sanders, found a sweet spot between hand-drawn and CG animation.
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Chris Sanders has spent his career making movies about outcasts building new families.
His latest,The Wild Robot, could give that Disney classic a run for its money.
If that sounds like a tearjerker, youre right: It is.
That concept obviously evolved and changed dramatically.
But seeingThe Wild Robot,I realized it was very similar to that.
And he pointed that out!
We should maybe consider moving it into the human world.
The animation style inThe Wild Robotis unique.
The textures of the characters and the environments look like brushstrokes from a painting.
How did that develop?As I read the original book, imagery was flooding into my imagination.
So I asked our production designer, Raymond Zibach, for something more in the realm ofBambi.
We were already creating some color sketches, explorations for what this film might look like.
Several images were looking very, very loose and painterly because people are just doing these very quickly.
I loved that look.
And he said, Lets go for it!
Usually, we battle this by wrapping geometry with textures.
So backgrounds, rocks, trees they have geometry inside them, just like our characters do.
Thats what our characters are like.
If you get very, very close to them, its just these rough brushstrokes.
So there are no individual hairs that are represented.
But then, into this beautiful painted environment.
Roz deliberately arrives on the island as a CG element.
We did not give her surface a painted texture in the beginning.
As Roz spends more time on the island, we replace her CG surface with a painted surface.
She literally begins to fuse with the island as she adapts and becomes a resident.
You just mentioned that animators have been trying to make their work look more handmade.
Obviously, in the U.S. particularly, computer animation has taken over everything.
We would always have different styles, depending on the kind of film that we were making.
When we sawSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, that was a revelation.
Somebody finally escaped that gravitational field, that gravitational pull!
And at DreamWorks, they followed up withBad Guysand withPuss in Boots: The Last Wish.
So wed already gone a certain distance down that amazing road leading away from CG looks.
I was really asking, How much further can we go?
And I will say the entire crew adopted this film in a way that I have never seen before.
And I would say, Excuse me what?
Its funny artificial intelligence really became a thing in the news as we were making this film.
And oddly enough,The Wild Robotis more human-made than anything Ive worked on since CG started.
Theres no replacement for that.
But theres also no replacement for the interaction we have with humans on our crew.
You could never have typed in enough commands to make this film with AI.
You have to sit with people, and you have to debate things.
Our editor, Mary Blee, very same thing.
When I come into editorial, its not just What do you want, Chris?
Its human interaction that created this film.
You made the transition from hand-drawn animation to CG animation back withHow to Train Your Dragon.
By the time I arrived on that film, they had already been working on it for some time.
One exciting thing was the ability to move the camera in space.
Its something that we dont talk enough about.
you could change lenses; you could move the camera; you could push; you could pull.
Theres a gigantic emotional component that comes from that it cannot be understated.
And we wanted that dimensional push with the camera, which means it wasnt just a zoom.
We had to move things in dimension to get the feeling that the cameras pushing forward.
But it was traditional animation, so we started to work on that shot very early in the process.
It was the longest-running shot in production.
And we eventually had to cut the scene because of 9/11!
Its not in the movie.
But with CG, you’re able to do all that much more easily.
We couldnt have that coffee cup.
I actually learned about this while we were makingAladdin.
I was in the Ink & Paint department.
Someone came in and said, Okay, were going to have to lose three colors off of Jasmine!
She had maybe 15 different-colored lines, and they had to maybe take it down to ten.
And you could change things much easier.
That was another big plus.
They had this strange marionette quality to them.
Now, I feel like weve finally come out of this tunnel and anything is possible again.
Stylistically, we are much freer to maneuver than we ever have been before.
I feel like what Lupita Nyongo does inThe Wild Robotis really fascinating.
She never entirely stops being a robot.
Its incredibly moving.I think Lupita shares more in common with Roz than I wouldve known at first.
She has a very thoughtful process of understanding the character and understanding the story.
She takes things very seriously, in the best way possible.
Trying to find Rozs voice, we began in a more robotic place.
Rozs delivery was never I.
It was never that 1950s sort of robot.
Shes in a sympathetic position as an outsider who is lost and overwhelmed by this situation.
Shes discouraged, and that helps us connect to her as a character.
The voice that Roz presents at the beginning of the movie is a more tensioned voice.
Its this higher register that she creates when she says, Hello, my name is Roz.
Do you need assistance?
And its a lot more work than that, both emotionally and physically.
Lupita would go into a recording session and she would work four hours nonstop.
So physically, its very demanding.
That was something that I insisted upon.
I think that robots work best when they dont have a lot of articulation on their faces.
I see that youre still doing the voice of Stitch in the live-actionLilo & Stitch.
And they played people trying to sound like me, and I was confused.
Im like, Why am I listening to these?
And I immediately said, Oh, no, no, no, no!
This is my guy!
I will be the voice.
Its hard to even describe that recording session.
So Im not a stranger to being just a voice actor in these situations.
Have they consulted with you at all on the new movie?Not really.
He gave me a call and asked if I wanted to return as the voice.
He seemed to have a great enthusiasm for the project and seemed like a thoughtful guy.
I only knew him from his filmMarcel the Shell With Shoes On.
But this was their baby.
