Walt Disney's Pixar studios has devised "mind-blowing" technology that will make the film – a fast-moving spy story with anthropomorphised cars as characters – its most challenging and complex yet. Director John Lasseter, who shot to fame in 1995 with Toy Story, the first feature-length computer animated film, said: "The level of complexity in Cars 2 is 10 times what we've been able to put into any other film.
"Everything you see has been created by somebody. That took new technology. It's close to reaching the level of complexity you see out in the real world."
Concept art from Cars 2 .... the cities featured, including London, have been reproduced with a level of detail that was previously unattainable.
Concept art from Cars 2 .... the cities featured, including London, have been reproduced with a level of detail that was previously unattainable.
Such is the sophistication that the cities featured, including London, have been reproduced with a level of detail that was previously unattainable.
Concept art from Cars 2 .... the cities featured, including London, have been reproduced with a level of detail that was previously unattainable.
He cited Pixar's earlier hit, Finding Nemo, as a film whose ground-breaking underwater effects now looked "somewhat geometric". With Cars 2, Lasseter said, the creative team had developed computer programs to convey mathematically the physics of the natural world, using algorithms to create ocean swells and waves with depth, volume and interacting light.
"We've had a lot of people say, did you use photography of real water somehow?" he said, describing the latest advances as "mind-blowing".
In the film, which is the sequel to the 2006 hit Cars, artists have recreated the minutiae of city life, from dirt in gutters and weeds growing in cracks to the patina on weathered buildings. Each frame took an average of 13 hours to complete, double the previous time.
For one scene involving a chase around London, Pixar created nearly 20 miles of "landscape and environment". Apurva Shah, supervising technical designer, said: "We started with the actual map and layout of London. Even though our world is very caricatured, we wanted it to be as true as possible."
The caricaturing extends to "car-ifying" cities in a world without people. As the shots zoom in on Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, giant automobile parts can be seen integrated into the architecture, with spark plugs, for example, replacing towers.
Pixar, founded 25 years ago and acquired by Disney in 2006, has received 26 Oscars, and its 11 films have grossed more than $6bn. It has invented some of the industry's most cutting-edge techniques.
Cars 2 – featuring the voices of Michael Caine, Owen Wilson and Vanessa Redgrave – is released in UK cinemas on 22 July after opening in America.
Variety has already given it rave reviews and says that Pixar's "crack team" have given it "the sort of wizardly action sequences most live-action directors would envy".
- The Guardian
(via smh.com.au)