Follow up to "The Connection between Movie Making and Software Development"

I just found this related post by Martin Reddy, a former Pixar engineering lead. Enjoy!

Lessons from Pixar: Why Software Developers should be Story Tellers

Furthermore, I thought I'd share a few animation making trivia facts with you (still from Tony DeRose's talk):

It takes about 4 years to make an animation movie; half of the time goes into story and design, the other half into implementation.

Character design is done by means of a broad variety of techniques, from pen and pencil, over oil to digital. The results are actually shown in an record-breaking art exhibition which is traveling the world. (The same is planned for the science behind the animation.) Personality poses of characters are made in 2D and 3D (e.g. as clay models which are later laser scanned and used to check with the 3D model). Concept art is produced for the environment.

Tony DeRose (TDR): "It still amazes me that we managed to make an appealing story about rats in a kitchen!"

In a process called rigging, virtual controls are added to the character to enable motion and other manipulation (e.g. the degree of movement for eyebrows, and more... there are about 300 controls in a character's face, compared to 30 in a human's face. In total a character might have several thousands of controls.).

Shading, the process of putting textures unto characters and objects, is a lot of work: "Look how much stuff there is! Somebody's got to model and place all these objects!" Especially realistic textures that are not smooth but e.g. feature dents, are very hard to make, but vital for the realistic feel of the film as they give each item a back story. "Next time you see one of our films, step out for a moment and appreciate just how much stuff there is!" (TDR)

Lighting artists position the virtual light sources to ensure that the light hits the virtual cameras exactly right.

"Hair is essentially another character in the film" (TDR)

With a physics simulation layer, it actually matters what happens to a character off-screen.. So if you downsize it too much, it might loose the items it's carrying...