A Short Pixar Short Post

A slightly shorter post on one of the Pixar shorts I contributed to: Mater, Private Eye. This was an especially fun one for me because of its satirical take on classic film noir.

The shorts department had a small dedicated crew, but also provided a temporary landing pad for folks rolling between longer productions. Shorts were always a fun break from features because they moved much faster with less iteration and with smaller budgets, leaving room for more creative problem-solving.

I was always a pragmatic designer at Pixar. I did not consider myself as strong an artist as most of my peers, so I leaned into my job as a visual problem-solver: how could I find the best design choices to solve as many of the story's needs as quickly as possible.

On this project I wasn't given a lot of time, but I was given a lot of reign. As a relatively early Sketchup adopter at the studio, I was able to quickly concept and design characters, props and sets all in 3d, at scale. Being able to approximate camera shots provided a greater degree of reliability that the designs served the all needs of story, camera, and animation.

There were occasional odd logic and visual challenges working in the Cars universe. In this case we had one character that actually doubled as a set piece. The Tanker was many factors larger than the Crane characters, who themselves were many times larger than the standard Cars characters, all of which presented interesting challenges around scale (especially eyes and faces), as well as how to 'carsify' non-automotive vehicles.

I was pleased with some of the design choices we landed on, such as the Tanker's turtleneck sweater and longshoreman's cap and the Cranes' period hats

I was also able to quickly iterate concept variations such as Mater's crate disguise (with the joke being the crate costume totally gave him away).

And of course, I couldn't seem to work on something without contributing some graphics. Here are some classic examples of visual exposition, where text is used to convey explicit plot information. And me being me, I wrote all every column of copy for every article, all supporting the story or world logic, with a bunch of humor thrown in. Especially proud of the 'Mid-Size Sedan Turns Compact in 30-Day Diet'.

I found Shorts a refreshing distraction from the grueling marathon of features. They offered a wider range of style and content to work on, often enabled a greater level of contribution and sometimes provided growth opportunities. And they were a great way to keep people busy between features. I'll share another formative Shorts experience in a future post.

Let me know about your favorite Pixar Cars Toons or Shorts. Thanks for reading!