While I was in LA recently I had the pleasure of visiting the Disney Animation Studios. I was invited there to attend a Press Day for Wreck-It Ralph, to learn more about the movie and how it was made.
When you first enter the building you can?t help but see all sorts of things from the movie Wreck-It Ralph. In actuality, most of the whole building was decorated in Wreck-It Ralph theme. I learned that usually the studio changes the decor to go along with their latest movie.
Not just? anyone can visit the studio, so we were given badges. How cool it was to get a badge of my 8-bit Nicelander self!
Here?s a photo of our whole group, in our 8bit look.
Remember my Vanellope Vall post for Wordless Wednesday a few weeks ago? Here she is!
And here?s the man himself, Wreck-It Ralph!
We started by learning about how they came up with the story. The story took about a year to come up with. Raymond Persi, one of the story artists, explained to us that some portions of the story changed along the way while others stayed the same as they were in the original story idea. They knew from the start that the two main characters were going to be Vanellope and a ?big angry guy?. One of the things they do first when coming up with the storyline is work from a storyboard. These drawings often times begin as pen and ink. Then they?ll make a simple movie with temporary voices. It?s nothing fancy or edited, it?s just rough footage with someone?s voice as a placemarker, so the team can start to actually see what works. They?ll then tear that movie apart, rewriting and improving where they feel it?s needed. It was interesting to learn that early on there was another game they were considering integrating into the story ? Easy Living 2. We saw some of the clips from that, even though the concept was eventually scrapped.
One of my favorite parts of the day was spending time with some of the folks behind the visual development of the characters. You wouldn?t believe how much works goes into determining what a character is going to look like! Mike Gabriel and Bill Schwab explained to us that early on, noone had a clear idea of what Wreck-It Ralph was going to look like. At times he was simply sort of a lump. Here?s a slideshow that includes photos I took of just some of the actual renditions and changes Wreck-It Ralph went through before he became the Wreck-It Ralph that you see in the movie. It took about two years to get the character of Wreck-It Ralph just right!
Next we went to Rigging.
Rigging is the process of taking the character model and creating movement. This is done with a computer and involves the software Maya, which you may remember was also used in the Capture state I posted about a few days ago. John Kahwaty, one of the riggers, explained to us that it can take months to get the rigging for just one character done.
We got to play with Maya and try our hand at rigging ourselves. It was a lot of fun, although I wasn?t very good at it. Here?s a quick video I made of my feeble attempt at getting Wreck-It Ralph to dance.
After that we went to the Capture Stage. If you missed that post, you can read about it here.
From there we went on to Animation. We met with one of the animators, Amy Sneed. She actually showed us how she brought some of the scenes to life. A typical scene of animation is 24 frames per second. It took her weeks just to animate a few scenes! In some instances she?d actually act out the parts so she?d be able to give the characters the most lifelike attributes and mannerisms possible in the animation.
At the end of our visit we had a round table discussion on digital downloads. Wreck-It Ralph is already available as a digital download. It was very interesting to talk strategies, as well as be asked how our families used digital downloads, what we liked, what we wanted to see, and so forth.
Besides seeing so much behind-the scenes stuff, what was really cool was seeing how much everyone loved working on the movie, and how proud they were of it. I personally loved the movie and think they did a great job and deserve to be proud.
Wreck-It Ralph
Wreck-It Ralph website
Wreck-It Ralph on Facebook
Wreck-It Ralph on Twitter
My visit to the Disney Animation Studio for Wreck-It Ralph press day was part of a trip for the red carpet premiere of OZ The Great And Powerful. I attended as a guest of Disney, with all expenses paid. As always, any personal opinions reflected in this post are my own and have not been influenced by the sponsor in any way.
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