Lightning McQueen and Mater from Cars

His romance with Lightning McQueen and Mater — the affable automobiles from Pixar’s Cars franchise — goes back a few years, but ask Jay Shuster about the fun quotient at the workplace and pat comes the reply: “Animation is fun, but it is also a lot of hard work. It takes dedicated people to really sign on for that.”

On a trip to Calcutta as a part of the Reliance-Webel Media & Entertainment Academy’s Cool Guru series of seminars on ‘Creating a Career in Animation and VFX film making’, the art director of Cars 2 spoke to t2 about all things animation…

You have toured four Indian cities. What kind of interest did you see in animation?

Well, the seminars have been full. Really enthusiastic students and professionals and, I guess, even people off the street. I feel a real, dedicated interest and it is going to be these folks who are going to design for the animation industry in the next couple of years — or the next generation.

What about awareness levels and industry demands?

It will keep growing. I would say animation is a relatively new concept here. Even animation in the US really started as little pockets of passion. It is built to amazing effects these days, but even 15-20 years ago, people who are riding high on it today were only part of these small groups. So I think India should not expect to be an overnight success. These pockets of interest will eventually build into something huge. It will improve the school curriculum, about what the audience in the theatres is thinking, wanting more animation… it will all just kind of snowball.

Wall.E

How did it all begin for you?

I came into animation through a side door. I did not fully expect to do animation when I was younger. I was just very interested in design. I saw Star Wars at a very young age and it really informed me about the path. My dad was an industrial designer. The combination set me to work on films. I was in love with science fiction, but once you get inside a film, working on live action special effects, you just discover these new kinds of filming. And no matter what the film is about, it contains great design. Character, architecture, environment. Nothing comes for free. Everything on the table has to be designed, built and painted, lit.

I think that’s what got me into animation — that I could design everything in the scene. In live action, you design this spaceship or any equipment and then the director takes it and uses it as he sees it. In animation, you have a lot more creative input and that’s what appeals to me. It is amazing. It is like giving birth to something. (Laughs.)

Which project of yours took the longest?

My role in Wall.E was the longest… three-and-a-half-years. The movie was made in five years. They bring me on when they are ready and then they kick me when I am done (laughs)! Then I move on to another project. I worked for about a year on Toy Story 3 and for two-and-half years on Cars 2 . I have worked on The Incredibles for one day. They needed a design for a vehicle and they knew I was the guy to do it.

Jay Shuster at work

But isn’t it easy to lose focus if you are working on one film for that long?

It is! I come from a design background. So I knew how to build something like Wall.E and make him work. I just felt fully utilised. As well as with Eve, his counterpart in the film. But there were moments with Wall.E when I felt lost and did not know what to do. After I finished designing these two characters, they put me to design a hallway in a spaceship. I came from this high of designing a character and now I am working on a hallway! And again, it is design. It may not excite as much as the last thing you worked on, but just the feeling of contributing to the film.

Everyone at Pixar, I feel, is just giving 100 per cent. It is easy to get bogged down and tired, honestly. I felt that I had exhausted myself and I had nothing more to give. The management at Pixar is very sensitive to that. When they see you kind of dragging your feet, they will say that we will slow it down and you can take your time to design this… but it is due is in two weeks! (Laughs.) During the peak production times, the families don’t see their mothers or their fathers for a very long time. But they are careful to not exhaust people. They like to cultivate a family feel in the company.

Shuster sketch from Cars

Which character do you identify with the most?

(Laughs) It has to be Wall.E. He folds up in a cube and he is kind of shy. I felt like that a lot when I was younger. I just wanted to draw and be in a corner. Also, he collects stuff in the scrapyard and he makes stuff out of it. And I do the same thing. I enjoy going to scrapyards and finding pieces and building furniture out of aeroplane wings. (Laughs.)

Tell us about working on Cars.

It was my first project at Pixar. I had come from Lucas (George Lucas’s production house Lucasfilm), which was live action and in digital. Just everything about Pixar and the project was different. There was an open feel to the communication. I grew up in a car culture in Detroit, where my father was a car designer. I felt like whatever I was drawing was falling off my pen naturally. There was really no effort. We did a lot of research on that film.

We went back to the big Detroit auto show. John Lasseter (an Academy Award-winning animator) became good friends with many of the design people in Detroit and also took off to the Ferrari factory. He opens a lot of doors! There was a group, which took a road trip on Route 66 and took in the nature of that area in Arizona, the architecture, the cactus. They had walls of pictures and inspirations. It also formed the story at some point. It was an eye-opener for me as the movie-making process was so fluid. The process is chaotic, but at the end produces this very focused film.

What is Cars 2 about?

It releases in India in July. We put McQueen and Mater on a plane and send them to London and Paris and parts of Italy and even Tokyo. McQueen is to participate in a car race on an international arena. In the process of competing with the racers, Mater gets tied up in a case of espionage. There is a British spy, there is an oil baron type of character who is sponsoring the race. We go overseas and we experience four or five new populations of cars and a whole different environment. We go to Notre Dame and Paris and apply very car-like features to the architecture. We have renamed gargoyles as cargoyles and made them into car characters. It is a film that fully embraces car culture. It is densely packed with imagery and you will have to see it a couple of times to take it all in. It expands the Cars world by 100-fold.

What is your dream creation?

Wall.E has been my dream character so far. I think if there was a sequel to Wall.E, I would like to design another field of robots. If Wall.E finds 20 friends, what would they look like? (Laughs.) I would like to expand my skills a little bit. May be not robots, but something that’s soft and has muscles. My skill set is dedicated to robots, architecture… so, maybe a hybrid. May be half-animal and half-machine… nothing new really, but I would like to stab at it.

Why can’t other animation studios achieve what Pixar has?

I think it is a lot about its culture and how it supports its employees and cultivates that sense of support. I have given it my all and they give me their all. Financially, it’s an amazing facility to work in.... (They are) hiring good people continuously. At the very top, people making the creative decisions have never lost focus of quality and story. The company has changed and evolved over the years. After Disney purchased it, everyone thought that the specialness of Pixar would go. But Disney has pretty much left that culture alone. And let it thrive.

Will 3-D change the approach?

I am not such a fan of 3-D projection. It makes it harder to watch. It takes away all the hard work that we put into colour and lighting and muddies it up on the screen. I see 3-D going away, possibly in the future. It is little bit of a novelty. But I have no say in that!

Finally, animated television series vs feature film?

I feel most utilised in a feature film as I am contributing so much. The episodic cycle on television properties is too fast.