Demian’s Blog

You must check out this latest film from Pixar, they’ve teamed up with Disney to make one of the funniest animated films in a long time. The story involves a rat who somehow has developed and extraordinary sense of taste and is fed up with eating garbage like the rest of his species. Clambering up from the sewers, he finds he’d not only been living beneath Paris, one of the great culinary capitals, but mere yards away from Gusteau’s, a legendary restaurant that had fallen on harder times. With thrilling examples of cutting edge animations and CGI, we are led through the tale of our gifted rat protagonist using a willing human to to express his cooking talents and reach the top of his game.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the film was the length and breadth of the credits! I think there was an army of approximately 2500-3000 strong involved in all aspects of the production. From lighting and shading directors, to a list of around 75 babies that were born to staff during the production.

I had fun explaining to Aldona some of the techniques involved in CGI, what exactly motion capture is, how the models are built, bones added, skinned, textured, lit then animated. An interesting note appeared near the end of the credit, “100% Natural Animation, No Mo-Cap Used” – not hard to imagine these guys are old school. Check out Ratatoille, you’ll love it.