To celebrate the recent Blu-ray, DVD, and 3D release of Disney•Pixar’s Brave, Tia Kratter, Shading Art Director, answered questions about the production of the film.
Kratter painted backgrounds at Disney Feature Animation before joining Pixar Animation Studios in 1993. She has worked on Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Cars, and A Bug’s Life.
What does a shading art director do? In her own words, Tia says, “My ultimate goal is to support the visual inspiration of the director and the production designer. I’m responsible for specifying the colors and textures for things that are modeled in the film. It’s one small part of a greater group of people who come together to make the visuals work as a whole. There’s really no part of the film that I can point to and say, “I did that.” Making a CG animation film is so collaborative, that if you’re looking for individual accolades, this probably isn’t the right medium for it.”
She worked on Brave for 6 years, which is an amazing amount of time to spend on a single film.
Q – Can you tell us about the creative process…what are the first steps that happen after you read the screenplay? Was Merida the first character created?
A – Tia Kratter: Let me answer this from the art department’s point of view: Usually when you are pitched a story or read a treatment, all sorts of visuals start running through your head. So the first steps a production designer might take could be very broad and general, maybe small impressions of the emotions or story points that resonate from the initial pitch. On “Brave,” Merida was always the main character in the film. When developing the story, Brenda Chapman recognized a fiery, headstrong spirit in her daughter and used their relationship as inspiration for Merida’s relationship with her mother, Elinor. From that point, it was up to our production designer, Steve Pilcher, to describe that relationship visually.
Q – Can you tell us about the resources used, and the research done, to make all the details in the movie about ancient Scotland accurate?
A – Tia Kratter: We have a few different ways of getting our information. Thank goodness for the Internet because now a lot of our research can be done pretty quickly that way. But there’s nothing like going to a real location and feeling and seeing things in person. Even though we really do our research, we don’t remain tied to getting the facts exactly perfect. We take what we need to make the story believable. So, for instance, tartans didn’t really exist during the time period in which our film takes place. However, tartans are such an iconic image of Scottish life that we decided to incorporate them into “Brave.”
Q – In “Brave” the landscapes, Merida’s hair and, in general, the care for details is really impressive. Can you tell us about the processes required to bring these details to life?
A – Tia Kratter: What we discovered in both the landscapes and Merida’s hair was the beauty of chaos. The landscapes were a combination of grasses, mosses, ferns, and rocks – different textures across any environment. Similarly, Merida’s hair was lots of different oranges and yellows, and every ringlet had its own personality. A lot of times you think characters and landscapes are quite different, but in this case they presented a lot of the same types of challenges. So, in order to make them look believable, we gathered a lot of research for both the hair and the landscapes and took that all the way through the process, even getting some help from the lighting team to bring it all together.
Q – We read that one of the biggest challenges in “Brave” was the hair of Merida, that you wanted it to stand out on the stunning film backgrounds. What can you tell us about this?
A – Tia Kratter: It was a challenge, but I have to say that this was one of solutions that came easily to us. From the very beginning our director knew that Merida was going to have wild, fiery, orange hair. The big payoff was that it worked so well against the complex and rich violets and greens of the Scottish landscape. It was a wonderful discovery for us to see that if we had a shot in the film with Merida against a huge, rich environment, even if she was tiny in the shot, you could always spot her with that beautiful head of hair.
Q – Your director said it was critical for artists to go to Scotland. How did you find that to be true, as you worked on the project?
A – Tia Kratter: So SO true! There’s nothing like being somewhere in person. At Pixar we tend to do this for every one of our films. To be able to go to places like Dunottar Castle, Stirling, and the Isles of Skye, Lewis and Harris was a massive payoff, visually.
Q – The color and the movements are incredible, red hair floating in the air reminded me the first time I saw that technique in “Monsters, Inc.,” can you explain it in some detail?
A – Tia Kratter: Thank you! A lot of the research and discovery we made on Sullivan’s fur in “Monsters, Inc.” was used as a foundation for what we developed on “Ratatouille” and ultimately “Brave.” “Brave,” of course, raised the bar quite a bit with Merida’s wild hair. We’ve come a long way, and I’m really impressed with what our Simulation team did. From the beginning of “Brave” we knew that her hair was going to prove to be a technical challenge, so we put a good deal of our initial time and research into making it work. When we know, ahead of time, what our big challenges are, we tend to do pretty well at solving the issues.
Q – Our readers always love fun facts. Do you have any fun stats or numbers concerning the art design and renditions?
A – Tia Kratter: Here’s a number: A113 is seen in every one of our films. It’s the animation classroom at Cal Arts, one of the schools where quite a few of our artists studied. You can find that over the entry door in the Witch’s cottage (but look carefully…it’s not easy to find). Merida has a total of 22 different costumes. Merida has more than 1500 individually sculpted “key hairs” that once rendered in the computer generate about 111,700 hairs. Yikes!
Q – Do you use a kind of library for objects and textures? The look is getting more and more realistic- are there still objects in the library from the beginning that could be used?
A – Tia Kratter: You’ve asked a good question. Ideally we would keep a library of objects and textures that we could use over and over. Here’s the rub: computer technology changes so quickly that the Woody model we used on “Toy Story 3” is quite different from the original on “Toy Story.” So, we do try to maintain the look of our original characters, but we’re constantly upgrading, too.
Q – The arrow shot in slow motion is something very cool, what are the implications during the designing of that movie and how many drawings you had to do for the preparing of the shooting?
A – Tia Kratter: I love that shot, too. The art department on “Brave,” generated quite a few drawings to show what the bow and arrow look like, and how its design is unique, but the credit goes to the animation department for how the arrow behaves in that shot. Did you notice how the shaft of the arrow actually bends around the bow? That comes from lots of research on their part, along with some archery lessons, that gave the animators good information to extend to the screen. So it’s less drawing on our part and more research by the animation department that really brings that beautiful shot to fruition.
Q – What struck me most about “Brave” is how cinematic it looked, from the helicopter shots of the Highlands to stationary cameras and two-shots. It was as if I was watching a film where the characters just happened to be animated. Can you talk about how the art department achieved that look?
A – Tia Kratter: I give a lot of credit to our director of photography-camera, Rob Anderson and his team, for being able to virtually scout the world of Scotland as we knew it on “Brave.” We didn’t create this film to be photo-realistic, but if it’s believable to you then we feel we have done our job. Thanks for the nice compliment. (In one of the helicopter shots, if you look carefully, you’ll see the shadow of the helicopter in the shot. But of course, there were no helicopters in ancient Scotland – just one of the many additions our director Mark Andrews brought to the table.)
Q – Tia, any final thoughts on “Brave” as we close out this interview?
A – Tia Kratter: First off, many thanks for such interesting questions. It’s been a real treat to spend a few hours with you. Hopefully you got a better sense of how we made “Brave” and how we work at Pixar. Enjoy the rest of your day and happy writing.