It’s officially June and you know what that means! Finding Dory will be in theaters on June 17 and I can’t wait to see it with my whole family! I’m so honored to have experienced insider information and footage during the Finding Dory Event in Monterey that this movie means just that much more to me than it already had! The learning sessions with the talented team at Disney and Pixar were phenomenal and I have respect for artists now more than ever. One of the sessions had us sitting down with Jason Deamer (Character Art Director), John Halstead (Supervising Technical Director), Michael Stocker (Supervision Animator), and Jeremie Talbot (Character Supervisor) where we learned that it wasn’t an easy task creating Hank the octopus/septopus (voiced by Ed O’Neill, ModernFamily & Married…With Children).
First, watch this video…
Incredible right?! These shape-shifting, color-changing, texture-switching creatures are about as complex as nuclear physics so where do you even start when you want to animate such a unique creature? The geniuses at Disney/Pixar touched on the methods they took to animate an octopus…err septopus named Hank for the movie Finding Dory.
*Research Find out as much as possible about the animal and then some. Visit aquariums, practice drawing an octopus especially if you never have like Jason Deamer! Find out what is most appealing like their fleshy whiteness or their soft velvet-like face. Make sure you omit the disgusting, off-putting things too. Touch the animal, allow it to reach out and touch you. At one point Jeremie Talbot says when petting the mantle an octopus was somewhat purring and enjoying the human touch!
*Observation Watch the animal in action, like the Mimic Octopus. See how it changes it’s pigment and texture in real time. Try to fathom how it swims and imitates other species.
*Give it Superpowers Imagine it shape-shifting into a backpack or a house plant or turning itself into a pancake. Imagine it contorting into tiny holes and escaping out of tanks, through rooms, around people. Have it squash and stretch like the super-animal it is.
*Give it a Face Have beloved friends like Bud Luckey (character designer for Toy Story) in mind and use cues from his features to create a cantankerous yet loveable character. Take cue of age, understand where the animals mouth is and imagine how to animate it. How will it communicate in motion and while interacting with Dory. Create eyes that will tell the story despite the mouth being down low at the bottom.
*Understand When drawing the tentacles, understand that each sucker on each tentacle can do individual things. It’s pretty mind-blowing. The arms just don’t come off the body, there’s webbing to consider. Hold the animal and understand it’s strength, see the muscles in the tentacles move. The chromatophores of an octopus are at the cellular level and aid the color-changing ability.
*Build a System Animators literally created an application in Presto animation software, a code in animation that helps change the shapes, textures, and speeds of Hank’s tentacles and body. I’m telling you kids, keep doodling, keep drawing, don’t give up on math! These miracle-workers at Disney/Pixar took something they loved and made an amazing career out of it.
*Give it Time From start to finish was two years of work.
In a VIP experience at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a tank with a Giant Pacific Octopus was opened up to us and immediately the octopus wanted to get to know us…or escape one or the other! Their suckers are strong, but not painful, they are smooth and slightly slimy. It was a cool chance to understand the octopus like the animators did and take a walk in their shoes. And after learning about their processes, believe me, I’ll be paying extra attention to how Hank is debuted and how everything we learned comes across on the big screen!
For more great information leading up to the premiere of Finding Dory, visit the following social media channels: Facebook/Twitter (#FindingDory)/Instagram/Pinterest/YouTube/Website.
My trip was compensated thanks to Disney/Pixar, all opinions 100% my own.
Leave a Reply