Last week in conjunction with the release of Cars 2 on DVD/Blu-ray, I was able to travel up to Pixar headquarters (Emeryville, CA), to tour the grounds and speak with the team behind the sequel. In today’s installment (the fourth of five interviews): I speak with supervising animators Dave Mullins and Shawn Krause. Mullins has been working with Pixar since 2000 on projects as varied as Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Cars; whereas Krause dates back to 1994 having served as animator and layout artist on Pixar’s first film – Toy Story. Both bring an experienced and well-learned perspective to how the animation process has changed over time and Pixar’s role in it.
In the following interview with the two, they also discuss what separates a “good” animated mouth from a “bad” one, who their favorite character to design in Cars 2 was and how to imbue inanimate talking cars with human characteristics. For the full interview, hit the jump.
Dave Mullins and Shawn Krause Interview Index:
- When do they get involved with the animation process?
- What is the process for designing a character?
- Designing the mouth of a character
- Favorite character to design in Cars 2?
- How do you imbue human characteristics into inanimate objects?
- Differences in animating monsters (in Monsters inc) vs. cars (in the Cars series) vs. people (in Brave)
- How has the animation process at Pixar changed over time?
