I had totally forgotten about it until, uh, I walked outside and saw all the people outside, but we had another Pixar event at school yesterday! /o/ David Munier, who was the set director for WALL-E, came and gave a presentation about building and dressing the sets for the movie, and asdkjsdksja I could barely wrap my head around it. o_o I have no clue how these artists and TDs are smart enough to do this, but they somehow manage to write displacement shaders that a) simulate tons of small collected trash, b) add in larger bits of poking-out trash, c) compact the trash down so that it looks worn, d) add age to the trash so that it looks like it's been there for hundreds of years, e) blend the trash into normal dirt, and f) randomize the effect so that it looks natural and not like a texture. And that's just the work that goes into ONE GROUND SHADER. And in his presentation, he managed to make it funny, too. XD

He talked about the trash-covered earth for awhile before moving to showing the scale and layers that went into creating the Axiom. Aside from the exterior (which they color-coded multiple times to demonstrate age, shininess, etc.) they also showed how they had to create dozens and dozens of animated moving billboards for the interior of the ship, and then animate THOSE so that they looked like they were holographs that had been running for hundreds of years. Perhaps most amusing was when they decided to integrate Massive for all the crowd scenes inside the Axion (Massive being the software they use for AI crowd control; think Happy Feet and the armies of LOTR), only to have the director go "Let's have all of the hoverchairs and robots move about the ship on FLOOR LINES!" Which is...exactly what Massive is NOT meant to do. XD;

Every time they do these presentations, even though it's often the technical supervisors talking tons of CG jargon, I'm always amazed at the time and effort they put into all the little details of the movie in order to tell the story best. None of the people there, from artists to TDs to effects people, really don't skimp on any part of their job...and the sad thing is, because they're doing their job so well you never even notice it! And David seemed really excited talking all this techie jargon on how they problem-solved these ridiculous sets. Work flies when you're having fun. :O

And it just made me wanna see Wall-E again. EEEEEE-VAH!


Drawing: New LG page; almost done with boards. Not a drawing, but I'm almost done with Brawl!Phoenix, too. :3

Writing: Not much.