Why Disney’s Pinocchio was so important to its new animated movie, Wish

It has been five years. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-VerseAmerican animation studios are experimenting in style. Some of them have been inspired specifically by Spider-Verse’s look, and others from animators taking the film’s success as an opportunity to try their own bold stylistic directions. Jennifer Lee, Disney’s chief creative director and the codirector of Frozen The following are some examples of how to get started: Frozen IIThe latter is the case, as. Speaking to Polygon at a Los Angeles preview for Disney’s upcoming movie You can also Wish, which she co-wrote and executive produced, she said she isn’t simply following Spidey’s web-swinging path.

“We’ve all been working together as an industry,” Lee, tells Polygon. “We know what people are doing and feed off of each other, so it was more just this understanding that we’ve all been aspiring toward [these stylistic experimentations] at the right time in the right way.”

An original fairy tale planned as Disney animation’s 100th anniversary film, You can also Wish innovates by merging a digital version of the studio’s old-school 2D watercolor style with the CG 3D look that has dominated the medium since Toy Story. The film uses in-house technology called Meander, which helped create shorts like 2012’s Oscar-winning Paperman.

But in order to make a full feature in that mode for the first time, the creative team needed to test their technological merger against the historical backdrop of Disney hand-drawn animation — in one such instance, by scanning a piece of 1940 PinocchioImagine Gustaf Tenggren, the Disney legend. Insert their CG protagonist Asha (Ariana Debose) in that space.

“[We needed to see]What would she look like against that background? How would you line her up to fit in with it? [check the] colors,” explains Chris Buck, co-director of FrozenThe following are some examples of how to get started: You can also Wish. “So more than technical things, just trying to see what we would do to make a CG character look like it fit in that environment.”

The test itself was not the end. “I think I did say, ‘OK, that’s one big, beautiful, epic shot,’” Lee recalls. “‘Can we do a whole movie?’”

Image: Gustaf Tenggren/Disney

Walt Disney Animation Studios

PinocchioDuring this endeavor, the camera’s ability to navigate through towers was essential. The camera was also tested by navigating the towers. Wish’Asha is found in the streets of a fictional kingdom called Rosas. “That test was inspired by the iconic multiplane camera shot of Pinocchio that starts in the bell tower,” says producer Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones.

The multiplane camera was used to approximate a sense of depth in animation by moving multiple drawings across the camera’s view while the camera is also moving. “You had many layers of the background and cels and everything, and the camera would move down and you’d have to move these layers out as you’re moving down,” Buck explains. “It was very, very complicated.”

The test that inspired them, they called the appropriate region You can also Wish kingdom “Pinocchio Plaza,” was the moment where it all clicked for You can also WishFawnveerasunthorn, co-director “When we saw that in the theater for the first time, I did say out loud, ‘Holy crap,’ or something like that,” she laughs. “It doesn’t look CG, even though the camera move was in 3D space, because the way they moved the background around in the multiplane, it wasn’t elegant.”

Walt Disney Animation Studios

Lee’s journey: You can also Wish wasn’t just overcoming inelegance or simply honoring Disney’s animation history. It was about finding a harmony between the studio’s past and the present that the rapid technological developments in animation essentially skipped over.

“CG allowed so many things to change so that [other] things became possible, but for a while, there was a loss in translation from that original art, at least,” Lee says. “In a beautiful way, what they were able to do with that test is not just show how we could connect with Pinocchio’s legacy, but also the way we’re able to be more immersed because of the new technology. The experience was even more intense, as it felt like we had been transported. So we were seeing the two hopes collide in the best way.”

You can also Wish started development in 2018, but while Lee says it wasn’t a response to Spider-VerseShe hopes that it will be in harmony with the movie. “If anything, what I’m loving right now is we’re seeing new boundaries being broken, not toward realism, but toward even more transcendent art.”

You can also WishRelease date for the movie is November 22.