Behind Disney's Chicken Little

On December 5th, four people from Disney feature animation came to the Fashion Institute of Technology as sponsored by Siggraph. Perhaps they came to advertise Chicken Little (in theaters everywhere, just tell 'em Walt sent you), but these creative department heads each spent a nice chunk of time reviewing techniques on art direction, character animation and special effects animation. Accompanying their lecture was a screen projecting a digital slide show that represented visual guides they give their artists. Their talk was incredibly informative, so for those who could not be there, here's a rundown.

Dan Cooper and Ian Gooding, the two art directors of the films, were the first to get up and speak about what their job entailed. Simply, they said, their two goals were "establishing mood and the look of things." Specifically, they were in charge of determining the overall look of the film through the use of color. Their slides of the Style Guide that they gave their designers had a page that said the following: "The first task is always to figure out what each scene is about, and find a way to make that subject the center of interest."

Two things -- "local color" and mood -- influenced the design. To illustrate "local color" to us (i.e. "normally colored"), slides were displayed of paintings of sets for the film -- rows of brown houses with red roofs, baseball fields with green grass, and a beautiful birds-eye-view of a white kitchen from a scene that was cut. Even for pre-production art, these images were incredibly well executed with paint and pencil by the art directors. What was key, they said, was finding and holding to one "unifying theme" that would keep the design consistent.

Cooper and Gooding emphasized that scenes have to read quickly for each shot, so it is essential to limit clutter around the subject. The subject, whether or not it's the main character, should not have to compete for attention. Still images were shown from Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, "Once Upon a Wintertime" from Melody Time, and the short Casey at the Bat. In brief but key shots of these films that can easily go unnoticed, the old designers crafted backgrounds that highlighted the action. Inspired especially by the work of Mary Blair from the 1950's, the designers for Chicken Little emphasized one key word: Contrast.