Dunwoody native talks working on new Pixar movie ‘Elio’

A still from the new Pixar movie Elio Photo courtesy of Pixar Stephen Wong has been a part of the Pixar squad since the days of Ratatouille Now the Dunwoody native s animation work can be seen in the new film Elio Elio is about an -year-old boy named Elio who makes contact with aliens in space and goes on an intergalactic adventure befriending a worm-like alien creature named Glordon Wong who attended Georgia Tech for computer science before heading off to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco worked specifically on the character of Elio Rough Draft Atlanta not long ago spoke with Wong about his career with Pixar and the movies that got him into animation This interview has been edited for length and clarity I read that the movies that sparked a love for animation for you were Jurassic Park and Toy Story What do you think it was about those two movies that hooked you and made you want to pursue a job in animation Stephen Wong I remember seeing Jurassic Park in theaters and just not fully understanding how it was done and being fully blown away by that I think Toy Story was a similar thing where growing up with animation seeing the first feature film in D I was entirely blown away with how this was even being done It was a similar impact I didn t think I d ever do that kind of a thing but I remember going wow that would be pretty amazing to be a part of When did it become a reality that this was something you could do professionally Wong I went to Georgia Tech for computer science and I remember laughs barely surviving Georgia Tech I kind of went there thinking you know I like computers I like graphics And not being fully prepared for how much math was involved I had a friend that I went to Georgia Tech with that came out to art school in California He was like you know it s genuinely pretty fun out here Maybe you should think about giving it a shot I remember at the time being in a place I wasn t super happy with and just going what if I don t go out there I might just regret this forever I just thought I d take the plunge with art school I had a couple of Pixar animator teachers there and that was my eye opening experience This is what I want to do What was the first movie you remember working on for Pixar Wong I had started in on Ratatouille and then I left briefly I went to a visual effects studio Then I came back on WALL-E That would have been the prime stretch for me We watched Ratatouille so several times in middle school I can t even tell you Wong I think that s one of my favorite projects to work on for sure For Elio you helped get the character ready for animation and helped the animators stay on model Could you elaborate for those of us who aren t animation-talk savvy what exactly that means Wong I was animator number one on Elio Usually what that means is you re the first animator to come on board Essentially we re digital puppeteers For every frame we re making these poses frames make one second of animation and so over time these poses become movement or performance The acting is all kind of dialed in from there Very early on before animators come on board there s something called the pre-production process There s an artist that will come up with the character design We take these models that are built for us with a skeleton rig on it and we have to test it out to make sure that the model can do the kinds of things that an animator demands it to do I came on board early to kind of do animation tests and test out the rig and try to do certain performance things just to show the director is this kind of what you re thinking about for this character Is this the way he would move Is this the way he would act We re thinking about situations to put the character into very early on before we even fully know what the story is Once we get that dialed in then I start working with our artists to hone in on what makes this character appealing What kind of face shapes or mouth shapes eye shapes body language makes this character feel unique and feel on model Then I ll create a guide and a pose library so that animators could come on and understand okay this is what makes this character appealing This is how we stay on the model Because there are likely going to be or animators that wind up animating Elio in a few maximum We want to keep this character feeling consistent from one animator to another so that it doesn t feel like animators are working on it It feels like a cohesive character What sort of unique or appealing characteristics did you think up for Elio Wong He s obviously obsessed with space but he s also an oddball He s a hand talker so that means big gestures He s a little bit high force If that s the occurrence if you put him in a situation where he s got to get something he s supposedly going to take the path of least resistance He s going to just go directly through something and he s going to maybe create destruction in the mess behind it These are all things that we use as guidelines to come up with how these characters perform At the same time this is a character that has dealt with tragedy Early on in the film you find out that his parents have died so he s being raised by an aunt So finding this balance of he doesn t feel like he fits in the world how do you portray that But also his natural state is this fun energetic loveable kid Toggling those two things is a big challenge for us He s toggling those two things it s a big challenge for us You mentioned Ratatouille earlier but having been with Pixar for so long has there been a favorite movie that you ve worked on or a favorite character you ve worked on Wong Luca was another one that I felt a really close attachment to I was on that pretty early as well I was responsible for the Alberto character so I did the pre-production for him That was one where I was able to do the pre-pro and then work on that particular character a lot throughout that whole production It was also weird because it was during the pandemic so that was the first time we were working from home That was really the first time my family got to see the process of how we work and realize oh you guys are pretty slow laughs I think people don t realize we re animating like four-to-five seconds per week It s a very tedious process Sometimes we re listening to the same audio over and over and over daily I don t think they fully realize that part of the process Having done all these different projects over the years what has been unique about working on Elio Has there been anything unique about working on this particular movie Wong I think for me as an animator typically we just get assigned shots to work on So we have a sequence of shots and then we work on those We get those approved by the director and then we move on to our next chunk But they did pull me in one time to help brainstorm this Elio montage sequence It was Elio and Glordon playing and having fun in the universe That was the first time I was part of almost like a story brainstorming session where we go to pitch ideas of things that we could try in those sequences Specific of those ideas did wind up in the film which I thought was a pretty neat experience The post Dunwoody native talks working on new Pixar movie Elio appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta