Up
After working on Cars and the short Lifted, I worked in preproduction on Up. There is quite a lot of work that goes into preproduction which can help in determining the look and technical issues that the designs might encounter. It was at this point in production that I helped to find the first look of Ellie, Carl's wife, under the direction of Pete Docter, Greg Dykstra and Ricky Nierva. I modeled one of the early iterations of Ellie. Unfortunately I left Pixar before I was able to get renderings of the model I created. I also built an early model of Carl and his house. This answered a lot of questions with respect to things like the height of the doorknob. Another issue was presented when establishing how Carl was to be designed. Carl, being stubborn and rigid in his thinking was represented by square and blocky features. Even his fingers were square in cross section. This presented problems with a key story point, when his wedding ring was to fall off his finger. If his fingers and consequently his ring were square, how would it bounce and roll believably?