MDU115 Blogs: Blog Four

A highlight in the history of 3D graphics has to be the 1995 release of Toy Story, the very first feature-length computer animated film, produced by Pixar and released by Disney. Ed Catmull (Executive Producer of Toy Story) admitted that prior to Toy Story, the team at Pixar were complete novices, with no previous production expertise except for short films and commercials (Zorthian, 2015). Catmull was also one of the computer scientists that built new software specifically to design the film, which took over 5 years to complete, with 33 animators and 300 processors. It was followed by Toy Story 2 in 1999, Toy Story 3 in 2010, and a 4^th instalment due in 2017.

Tom Bancroft

http://tombancroft.blogspot.com.au/

https://www.instagram.com/tombancroft1/?hl=en

An animator and character designer, Bancroft has over 25 years’ experience in the animation industry. He has contributed to movies like Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Mulan, and Brother Bear over his 13 years at Disney Studios, which he left in 2000.

Bancroft is the pen behind Mushu, the enchanting little red dragon in Mulan. When Bancroft was given the job of supervising animator for Mushu, it hadn’t yet been decided what the character was even going to be, so Bancroft set to work almost a year before the film went into production. Over this time, the script changed many times, and at one stage Mushu was going to be two different characters. He researched Chinese dragons, as he wanted something different from the heavy dragon that had already been animated in Sleeping Beauty; A Chinese dragon would make Mushu more snake-like and skinny. Once the personality was realised, Bancroft was able to complete the character with facial expressions and poses to match the smart aleck little dragon (Belz, 2013).