How Pixar’s Design Process Creates Compelling and Believable Stories
Pixar creates beautifully rendered animated films that bring characters to life through compelling stories. They do this through a long, iterative process that involves lots of collaboration between designers with different skills and tools. Throughout the design process, Pixar focuses on appeal (connecting with the audience), believability, and storytelling. First, they begin with the story, then they research, collaborate, and iterate until they have the finished film.
Story
The first step to the development of a Pixar film is, of course, the storyline. There is a core team of directors who each create three separate story ideas. This process typically takes 4–5 months to complete, and rather than a fully formed story, these pitches will describe the world, characters, and general theme of the story. If one of the story ideas is chosen, then that director will develop it further.
“At Pixar Animation Studios, we think our entire filmmaking process is a design process, alternating iterations of planning and implementation, all centered on storytelling.” — Pixar Animation Studios
Research
Once there is a story, Pixar does their research. They take this very seriously. This portion of the design process is broad and thorough. It includes researching the elements of the story and putting together text and image deliverables of the results. It also involves research on the theme of the story, where the Research and Development (R&D) team will create sizzle reels, which are clips from live-action films that have similarities with the story.
Pixar pushes its research even further by consulting experts, living out experiences, and exploring real-world landscapes. For Ratatouille, they spoke to chef, Anthony Bourdain, whose emotion and behavior directly influenced character development. For Cars, a group of designers experienced the road trip down Route 66 first-hand that takes place in the film, and this greatly influenced the landscape of the film. I would love to take part in research like this!
By actually experiencing the types of people and parts of the world that they feature in their films, Pixar achieves the believability factor they strive for.
Collaboration
Collaboration among the Pixar team is a major factor in the success of their films. Ideas and creations for settings and characters are developed and passed around to multiple designers in different departments, each adding notes or ideas, or changing something about the design.
Pixar also uses experts in environment, character specialists, and storytellers to focus on the details for each respective element of the story to amplify the believability and realism.
Iteration Through Simplicity
Pixar goes through a long process, lasting years, to develop their films. But they use simplicity in their iterations in order to come up with numerous ideas and refinements.
The Art department will create storyboards (similar to comic books), which then develop into story reels. For characters, they may start out with something as simple as shapes. For example, in Inside Out, Anger was drawn as a red square and Sadness was a blue blob. They use abstraction to create colorscripts, which essentially removes the elements of time and detail in the story reel to focus on the colors and emotion of each scene.
Pixar’s design process cycles between planning and implementation. Beginning with the story and tons of research, and incorporating collaboration among different departments. They then move back and forth as they develop and refine each element that makes up the final product. Their unique approach leads to a film that evokes great emotion, has compelling and convincing characters, detailed worlds, and believable stories that audiences can connect with. I truly admire the structure and innovation of the Pixar design process and will strive to apply these strategies to my own.
