General Bloopiness
I’m currently working on a complete, rough version of the 150-page Bloop story. This is a new methodology for me and it’s inspired by Pixar.
In watching some of the behind-the-scenes of Wall-E, I was amazed at just how far from the original concept the movie went. Just some of the biggest changes…
- In the original version, Wall-E had no interaction with humanity. The fat, soft humans aboard the Axiom cruise ship started as aliens made of Jell-o. Storyboards were done, studies of jelly-voice sound effects were tested and physical models were made of the gelatin creatures. All of which were scrapped. In the final version, Wall-E helped teach humanity a lesson. In the original, humanity had nothing to do with it.
- The cigarette lighter which plays prominently in the first half of the film served a key role during a moment when Wall-E must save Eva. That moment was completely dropped – after it had been almost fully rendered – when character roles were reversed and, in the end, the lighter ends up getting quite a bit of screen time for far less payoff.
- Auto – the ship’s despotic autopilot – looked a lot more like Maximilian from Disney’s The Black Hole and was physically threatening instead of just technologically threatening.
- The original version wasn’t a love story. How big a change is that?
The final film is better for all of these changes and all these changes came from drawing out rough cuts and testing it internally – or in the case of the cigarette lighter scene it was tested before an audience.
The key to this approach seems to be treating the story development as software development: build an early version and test it and test it and test it – improving it along the way. This isn’t new to animation – the Seven Dwarfs soup scene from Snow White was famously cut despite being brilliant for reasons that it slowed down the narrative – but never has it been done so methodically and with such consistent success.
These preliminary tests in animation are often done with storyboards and animatics, which are simple animated storyboards. These let the creative team see the flow of the movie and get a feel for the scenes before the more expensive and time consuming processes start.
That’s the part that’s inspired me. I am now doing a full, rough “storyboard” of the Bloop story now so that I can test it. In the past, I would make a list of notes to indicate what’s supposed to happen on each page of a story I’m drawing – indicating the key beats I want to hit and moments that need to happen. This is such a big project and will take so much time that I want to build a better blueprint than my previous projects. I think it can only help the final story.
And it’s fun to do. 
– Steve
April 28, 2009 8:43 am 2 Comments
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By Captain Storm, April 28, 2009 @ 3:03 pm
Wow,Steve.A lot of work then in front of you!I was wondering why you ha vanished off the radar for a while
BTW, any idea when you’ll link to my blog?
The Cap.
By Pet Snakes, May 27, 2009 @ 9:53 am
Love your writing style and the design of your blog, its very original! Well done, look forward to reading more.