Pixar’s 'Elemental' Director Explains His ‘Big Fears’ About One Character’s Design

Transcript

00:00 So one element that I couldn't take my eyes off of

00:03 was the constant motion of the flames in the fire people.

00:07 Is there a tool or a technique of something

00:09 that makes that happen, or is it literally frame by frame

00:12 the way that motion works?

00:14 - Yeah, it's a lot of technology behind it.

00:17 It's a little mix of both, but it's mostly this technology

00:20 that, or the layers of technology

00:23 that they merge together.

00:24 Now what you're talking about was one of our big fears,

00:27 just to be frank.

00:27 Like when we first started this thing,

00:29 all I did were little drawings of fire,

00:30 which were these static things,

00:32 and everyone was like, "Boy, will we even be able

00:33 "to focus on the eyes?"

00:35 And so very soon it was just about learning

00:38 to control the fire.

00:39 And so the technology was about that, control.

00:42 And it was called NST, which I'm not a technical person,

00:45 but it's called Neural Style Transfer,

00:47 which is taking a style of like a drawing.

00:50 Like you could do like, "Oh, let me make

00:51 "a very graphic flame."

00:52 It would take that and start imprinting it

00:55 into the three dimensions of the flames.

00:57 - Right, possibly. - Of the simulation.

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