Why Pixar's Animation is so Magical (NO SPOILERS)

onward is Pixar's first big movie of 2020 and if you didn't get a chance to watch it in theaters thanks to Disney we cannot watch it on Disney Plus and the first thing want to tell you is that while I will be showing some clips from the movie to break down some stuff here I will not be showing anything from the second half so I will not spoil it for you if you don't care about spoilers you psychopath go watch the movie anyway and for the rest of you who have already seen it I'm gonna dive into five different categories of different things that I think Pixar did a great job on from Easter eggs and references that everybody's gonna love your technical and visual details some mechanics some performance and acting choices there's a lot to look at and if you're new here hi I'm sir Wade and we do a ton of animation stuff here on the channel so if you want to see more content like this hit subscribe if you want to let me know what other stuff you want me to make drop it in the comments or hang out with me three days a week over on Twitch links for everything down below so with that let's jump into Easter eggs and references now this first one I saw the first time I watched the movie and I caught it right away I was actually really excited about it cuz I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan the burger Shire this Shire hear referencing Lord of the Rings where the hobbits come from and the question the Pippin asks - Aragorn yes what about second breakfast something the next thing has that I absolutely love if you've worked in retail or food service you've probably seen this face before in this case we've got a reference to that children's book the three Billy Goats Gruff for the three goats or whatever the name of it is could we got the troll under the bridge I should also point out the Pizza Planet truck because people are gonna start to notice this I want to let the record show that I found it first thank you very much moving on take that BuzzFeed now a lot of us know that Steve Jobs had a really big part in kind of growing Pixar into what it was so seeing Apple products or sounds from them is not new to you but here's some fun stuff on this quote-unquote iPhone you've got the power indicator which is like a lightning bolt because you know they don't have batteries they had magic so there you go when we think of what we call people on we think of a phone but in more medieval terms you'd think of maybe some kind of horn that you would blow you've got these horns here shields seem to be the things instead of circles for buttons and you've got this little pointy eared and horn person also just to point out the incredible work being done by the lighting team here you've got all these different lights from the stop lights different signs illuminating the scene in different ways really nice and some great animation with secondary action of a character rubbing their eyes something we don't really notice but it's there I just feel like this character is real boy we're not in performance yet we'll come back to that stuff this one is one for those who have seen the movie because this is going to be a reference to the overall story that's taking place and not so much an external thing ok so now you know the worst that can happen so there's nothing to be scared of right it's something that for us helps inform who barley is how he acts in his way of seeing the world and we learn a lot more about where that comes from later on you can connect those dots on your own now we're gonna mix it up I'm gonna go in no particular order but we're gonna see some technical setups and details some visual details body mechanics and animation character performance and acting all that stuff let's do it [Music] something I love about this scene is the complexity that's hidden behind the scenes we just watched this inna me appreciate it but those of us who animate we know that there's some kind of a texture being revealed here as you're writing on it you've got to constrain the hand and the pen and the notebook all together and drive that from a specific probably a locator you got to pick what's kind of moving this whole system and retain that flexibility but the main thing I wanted to point out is when he's writing on the paper look very closely at the lines of the paper that paper gonna actually have a give to it from that pressure so that's actually included and deformed into that paper mesh that is very subtle very nice here's a visual detail you guys ever driven around on the road and seen all this like nasty looking stuff on the road all this kind of like tar they used to fill up holes and stuff they really captured that feeling here on this road I also want to point out that as we get a close-up of the car look at all this like gunk all this dirt and kind of the rain you know it rains and it kind of washes off pieces of the car and do you see how it kind of ends here there's almost like a clean line I'm guessing that's the windshield wipers you know where those are able to actually clean and as we get onto the freeway check this out watch these little guys these little like pole thingies watch what happens when this big trucker drives by they actually wiggle because of the the air pressure differences from that car whooshing by you actually see them kind of woo a little bit one more detail in the reflection you can even see all the scratches on this little edge different materials are gonna have different specularity different kind of scratch patterns and things like that and they really put a lot of thought into each material in this movie okay another technical set up kind of like the paper is here on Anne's hand when he's writing on his hand do you see that when he pushes down you get that little fleshy pole that movement of the pen pulling the skin on his hand around and I also feel like we're seeing sweat glistening on kind of the pores of his hands he's very shiny and it's just a quick aside when do you ever see animated characters sweat that's a lot of foresight and thinking about what this character was going through right now our first mechanics example is when barley gets out of this truck see how the truck leans when he gets out of it really think about your props and your environments and how they react and respond to your character and their weight these antennas this bumper a little bit this hood here this bumper does a lot of stuff if you watch all those different pieces you'll see how they all move slightly independently of the main van body which is different than the tires which move very very little but they do actually move so all these different things help the van itself to feel more organic whoops all right another visual detail when Ian opened the door and if you look at the stuff on the car door these you know especially this little handle you'll see it kind of wiggle around you know this duct tape and this crack in the seat with the foam showing through if you have ever been in a really old car you notice that that specific spot where it's like all ripped and taped up that's very accurate it's always the front of a seat or the side where you get out because as you slide in and out of a seat you're wearing it out a lot more than other parts of where you're sitting in high school I drove a 74 Chevy and it had a lot of this type of stuff and you actually got a lot of dirt in those little ridges but you can see here they put that in and then you've got this kind of sticker residue that you get from when you peel off a sticker because it looks like he's got lots of stickers around so they really did a good job of showing how this van is weathered it's not just oh it's beat up and it's worn you can see where that wear and tear is coming from and why and then same thing with this VHS tape you can actually see all these little dust specks and dirt and even these little like hairline smudges on what I think is the actual plastic or glass on the boom box there's even fingerprints right here in the middle which actually is exactly where his eye is but I just want to point all that out because when you are constructing a demo reel of your own you're putting together your own shots don't just make everything perfect cuz things never are if you can add a lot of wear and tear a little bit of wackiness to the props to the model to the environment to whatever it is it will help to integrate your characters make them feel a little bit more realistic what Pixar has done a fantastic job with especially with things like set dressing that's one of the jobs of a job like set dressing is to put a bunch of stuff everywhere to make it feel like a lived-in space but you got little folds on these what I call them post-its you've got a pen sitting here you've got a notebook sitting here nothing is very symmetrical either you've got these post in it's these are in a different angle these are a different angle on top of that you've got notebooks that don't quite line up this character is clearly not you know super OCD about where you lay stuff out but it's that fact that makes this feel like it's a potentially real space what is it it's a gift from your dad now here we have a great performance by mom and Ian back and forth this is a really really well acted scene and this is how I want to show you so just that reaction from Ian the thing I want to point out here is something I learned in Mike McAra which is animation collaborative summer intensive and winter intensive for that matter which I have done videos on both of those experiences linked below if you want to check those out it's one of them is a really good video on what I learned in a 10 day animation workshop which was the animation collaborative 10 day summer epic intensive so doesn't check that one out a lot of good tips in there but one of the things I actually learned from Mike who worked on this movie as well is the importance of a neutral facial expression sometimes to have a good emotion read it's not about going from one phase to another phase it's not just changing these big emotion changes it's relaxing in the face what's about to happen is this character is about to learn something that's shocking and amazing to them the eyes have to widen but the rest of the face instead of going into oh it's going to relax everything is going to lower and the tension goes away as you still have the eye pose and you still have the asymmetry of the face the eye is open and the mouth drops everything just kind of goes oh wow which is a great choice that you should definitely study and consider if we continue this shot we actually get a great example of mechanics and another character working with the space and environment so when she steps on it we can see the ladder actually presses down into the ground and then as she's coming down watch the actual rungs of the ladder as she steps in the whole thing kind of bounces most objects when you interact with them don't just stay completely stationary there's a little give or influence that one object has on another so show that hold on I was just prepping her home so here's the scene with a great example of kind of an acting and emotion evolution for multiple characters over scene so you've got a character here barley who's gonna cast a spell he's very confident about this very excited about it so he's very sure in his actions everybody's very invested in their facial expressions are serious their eye lines are really direct and unwavering and then BOOM nothing happened some tension kind of eases now Barley's a little bit more ensure he's looking around more he's a little bit more unsure kind of thing shifting his hands around he's looking back and forth back into it now he's back he's focused this is gonna work this is gonna work and I was kind of looking up at though like will it work I don't know I hope so that look of intensity kind of wavers now you've got these little things up in the middle as it kind of twists up like I think this is gonna work what I'm not entirely sure now Sun has set one day to walk and you have this like oh please work please please please work so he's he's now not quite as haha he's like oh come on come on but so focused and optimistic about this and really feels like it's possible and then you see the kind of the shock the surprise the why didn't that work that what they both kind of deflate a little bit if you focus on kind of where their brows and their lids are you will get a sense of when and how these characters start to disengage from the idea and more investing you can see more of his eyes he's definitely more kind of like whoa versus the mom whose eyes are a bit more relaxed she's a little bit less sure that this is gonna go anywhere which continues to evolve as time goes on her eyes get a little droopy er you've got the same kind of thing happening with barley is you know his eyes are kind of dripping down he's getting a little bit more discouraged with this even the Dragons not quite as into it at this point and then this shot in particular watch Ian because he's gonna go from come on and then you're gonna see him kind of lose steam which is gonna lead us into the next shot and then over here he's really upset about it so you actually get to see that transition happen over the course of this little montage now switching back to mechanics for a second here's a great little moment when barley sits down on the couch watch everyone bounce and there's a nice little offset barley will kind of go down and up the mom will bounce up first and then Ian will bounce after that which of course affects the dragon as well so there's this nice little thing that happens down the chain now I am avoiding a lot of kind of story-driven stuff so I'm not talking a lot about when the characters change their opinions of things and the way they think about certain characters and like I'm not focusing on that stuff because that gets into more spoiler territory and kind of how the movie plays out so if you guys want me to do some kind of a part two where we talk more about the story aspect of some of these things let me know in the comment all right now when this van drives away I really love these little divots right there watch the van just go boo do them and they may be another animated movies I'm not sure but I've never noticed them ever before even though I didn't really think about when I was watching the movie that's definitely something I've driven over before and had that little bounce someone had to think about putting that in there and then the anti-ager had to actually animate the van reacting to it which just adds to the feel of realism and relatability in these scenes and same here barley is going to hit the gash pretty quickly you'll see the car kinda lures forward and in gets pushed back and has to brace himself against the van back doors those are things that don't have to be in the movie like they could have left that out the car could have just driven forward and even could just be sitting there talking to the pants right but instead they chose to put that in there now I can't talk about character and performance if we don't bring up the manticore there's some amazing animation in this movie as a whole some great stuff on the manticore and one of my favorite shots in the whole movie is character performance wise is right here are you gonna fix the Machine or not yeah in a minute okay if you've done customer service who you feel that part pretty hard right this is that face when you've got a smile at the customer but you are sick of their are still entitled customers but seriously I really want to point this out because there's two things that happen one is the man Tucker's face which is just fantastic so you have this great moment from a character so you actually learn a lot about how she feels about this whole thing but also pay a lot of attention to this side character watch her for a second don't look at the manticore watch this character okay here we go it's great because you have first of all you have her coming up with is like bore and half let it expression of like um are you gonna fix this or what whoosh that face just goes are you gonna fix it and just like in her business so this lady's a little bit like Oh God but then the manticore brings up forearm real quick and the lady flinch his back she's afraid she's gonna get punched in the face which i think is just a fantastic choice don't just focus on the one character who's saying something the hair's gonna move around in gesture the other characters around should probably react to that by the way if anybody is watching this who was on the team who animated this who knows who animated this just please let me know in the comment now let's take a look at magic for a second this is a well first of all the effects of the magic are amazing love it something I love about this is the mechanics built into how magic works it doesn't just freeze things on the spot you still have weight and mechanics happening it has this good this this overlapping action whatever you would call that follow-through and then when even pulls away from it it really feels like he's locked in place and it has to yank it out to get it out of the spell which is then something he kind of learned and uses later to distinguish certain spells and you know that comes with his own challenges but it really helps to make it feel like the spells connected to what's happening he's not just like do this room over here it'd be too free to lock in and be connected to something it needs to feel like there's there's weight on the object just as there's weight happening as a result of the whole you get it when a character lets go of the wheel for a second car like drift off to the side and then they reget it and that's just his driving style so here he lets go the car the whole thing kind of goes this way like he knows what he's doing he grabs he goes back to the left so you actually have a lot of really amazing driving scenes animated in this in this movie of characters on the steering wheel they're actually doing all the stuff they're looking around so here we've got another car thing and this is one that I also have experience with from heavy old car doors he needs to get out of the van you don't just grab it and push with a big heavy door you you kind of go in with the shoulder and just kind of against it to push it open but it says we have a full tank doesn't work another of my favorite acting scenes in this movie that I can show you from the first half anyway actually right after this technical thing we've got another hand pushing down on the pages you know it's gonna flatten out and push that way a little bit you've got Barley's finger kind of squishing against the page here and with the book I really like the way he kind of uses his fingers to just kind of tap on the book here because he's not like you know this he's not pointing he's more like this book there's a respect at least the way I interpreted that like it feels reverent of what's in there like he's just this I don't know something about that to me feels interesting and good now here's another one of my favorite shots of performance animation in this movie what splinter can we sand this thing down no it's an ancient staff with magic in every glorious fiber you can't sand it down all right all right I love that cuz it's like this is amazing and every fiber sent down I just knew animated this tell them I love their work they did a great job something wrong sorry it's just your stance is up like here's your example barley kind of comes in and you just see his elbow off screens and then he's in this pose which he stays in he doesn't leave this pose but it all stays within the same feeling until he kind of comes out of it we're turning to this shot you've got the whole package you've got body mechanics you've got acting you've got technical challenges of ropes and constraints and different things there's a lot going on but I love this performance by Baro are you still alive yes okay so now you know the worst that can happen so there's nothing to be scared of right I just love the choices of gestures and the way he's kind of looking in different directions and that's just very nice love it wanted to point it out let's keep going now this is probably the closest into the middle of the movie is I'm gonna get and it's a really great little mechanic slash acting thing technical it's kind of a lot of things at one you've got running and kind of popping around you've got the mechanics and then you got that right there the thing about that that I really want to emphasize is the jiggle and the arms often you can use Ben bows you know there's a hidden controls on a lot of rigs that allow you to warp and shape the arms into spaghetti noodle arms I talk about that in a lot of my rig reviews now this is the last clip I'm going to show and this is a great example of combining mechanics and acting and a lot of different things into one shot also with constraints and more technical stuff you have a whole set to deal with there's a lot in this this is like a fantastic example of like something you'd want to have on your demo reel but I have one other thing I want to add to it after we take a little peek at it [Music] dragged himself out of school it was really good well alright so that is a fantastic shot and it continues on but I don't want to play any further because it starts to get spoilery but yeah this fantastic shot something that I noticed is when Ian said that the end it was really good that line of dialogue I feel like the lip-sync is a little bit off on the good so I'll play that again so you can see it focus on the lip-sync for Ian's line here school it was really good well if you take a look at the word good I feel like it doesn't quite read with the lip sync school it was really good well before I point this out the the way Ian says good is like really good it absolutely works you can absolutely say the line the Tom Holland says and animate it this way because it does make sense really good you don't really see me go good right like I'm not doing the whole yeah it's just really good you don't actually see it but I feel like when you don't see it to me feels like something's missing this is the good I feel like if I were to have given notes on this I'd like to see more of an O shape for the good and maybe it wouldn't have worked maybe it was tried I don't know oh yeah again I'm not trying to say that this was done wrong or anything it's a fantastic shot really impressive now if you would like to see videos of me maybe setting up some of these different shots like like oh how would you do like a person writing with a pan on a piece of paper like how would you do that or other constraint set ups I'd like to rope with the character or multiple characters interacting I don't know if there's stuff from any of this or from other movies that you're wondering how you could do it in your shot let me know what those things are down below in the comments then I can maybe make videos all that stuff if you can do a part 2 - onward maybe we can try to recreate some of the effects done I don't know I really enjoyed onward like a lot but yeah I'd love to know what else you guys want to see from me and also feel free to jump in the discord we've got over 3,000 artists in there hanging out answering questions for each other having conversations getting to know each other especially now that a lot of us are at home it kind of is a nice community to be a part of and just talk about creative stuff or non creative stuff if you need a break from it or if you want to talk about it live i streamed three days a week live on Twitch tons of Q&A a lot of demos lot of cool stuff it's coming out and don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell on this YouTube channel so you don't miss you up and for free to browse around a lot of you guys are newer and have found the channel more recently and see maybe a couple videos here and there but haven't really gone through and seen what else is is here I've done a lot of interviews and a lot of tutorials and a lot of just internet advice videos and all kinds of different stuff so take a look around I'm sure there's some stuff that'll help you out and if you don't see anything please let me know what you were kind of hoping to find so that I can make those videos next anyways thanks so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this video and I will see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Sir Wade Neistadt

Views: 77,312

Keywords: pixar animation, onward animation, pixar onward, onward easter eggs, pixar, onward, animation, acting animation, animate like pixar, animation secrets, animation workflows, animation demo reel, pixar reel, pixar breakdown, pixar bts, behind the scenes, onward magic, onward best scenes, onward aloft elevar, aloft elevar, sir wade, sirwade, 3d animation, character animation, pixar animation jobs, animation job, pixar artist, 3d artists, 3d modeling, animator, reacts, analysis

Id: 49ZZve_f0ck

Length: 20min 47sec (1247 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 05 2020