During my trip to California, I was treated to a Wreck-It Ralph press day at Disney Animation Studios. Having loved this movie, I was excited to see just what goes into making an animated feature, and boy was I ever surprised!
Little did I know that I would be walking into a virtual world………………
Lets just talk about the building and work space for a moment. As soon as you walked in the door it was like you were transported into the Wreck-It Ralph movie. There were Wreck-It Ralph images, real life sets from the movie and even a huge likeness of Ralph himself. Everywhere you looked was Wreck It Ralph. All I kept thinking was, how cool it would it be to work in this building??
I wondered if they changed it out to whatever film they are working on and asked our Disney rep. and she said that they do. Whatever the next film is, they will decorate, for a lack of a better word, the entire work space with sets, images, etc. Wow, now I want to work there even more!
Before we could be on our way into the world behind Wreck-It Ralph, we had to represent with the proper identification, so we were presented with a Press Pass ……… LOOK, me as an 8 bit/Nicelander! We were also given a cookie ala the cookie in the movie, and the same cookie they sent home to our families for Valentines Day since we were away from them.
Here’s a pic of all 25 bloggers as Nicelanders:
Our first stop was the story and development department to talk to Raymond Persi . He explained to us how they created Ralph and his friends and gave us the inside story on the development and story line. We were shown storyboards and short animation pieces showing the brainstorming process and the direction they wanted to go in.
As you can see from the pictures, it was really neat to see just how far the characters and story lines progressed.
The next stop was the Visual Development department where we spoke to Mike Gabriel and Bill Schwab to see just how Ralph began. These guys were really fun to listen to, and they were amazingly funny and candid on how Ralph came to be from an artistic standpoint. You don’t realize how many different versions that the artists come up with before settling on one. It also seemed like they had a really fun time coming up with the different concepts.
I really enjoyed talking to the guys and asking them about the entire process. You could definitely tell they had that 80’s video game influence working for them, especially when seeing some of the character mock up’s.
The next stop on this amazing trip – The Rigging department where we received a crash course on bringing characters to life and how to give them a full range of motion from John Kahwaty. This was so cool, and I really wished my 9 year old, Nikolas, could have been there. Right now, he is love with animating video game characters and he would have flipped to actually do it for Disney. He would have probably done a whole lot better than I did. 😉
I got a little ahead of myself at one point and ended up on a whole other screen lol! They did help me get back to where I started, but he did say I was “advanced.” LOL.
We also received a hands-on demonstration from Evan Goldberg and his team in the motion capture department, which you can read all about here.
Last but certainly not least, was the animation department where we were shown by Amy Smeed, all the hard work we witnessed throughout the day in the final animation scenes.
Wow, what a day in the life of a Disney Animation Studios artist, because even though they all preformed different tasks within the movie, to me they are all artists in their own right. The amount of people and dedication it takes to not only make Wreck-It Ralph, but all of the animated features is amazing!
Kudos to each and every single person from start to finish! I had such a great time learning how animated features are made and am honored to have been able to witness the creation process.
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WRECK-IT RALPH Blu-ray and DVD Combo Pack will be released on 3/5/13 AND is now available via Disney Digital Download.
Disclosure: I was provided with an all expense paid trip by Disney in order to bring you this information. All opinions and experiences expressed are my own. This is accordance with Federal Trade Commissions 16 CFR, Part 255 Guides Concerning the Use of. Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
