Bringing Fire, Water, and Air to Life: Why Elementary Is Pixar’s Most Ambitious Movie Ever!

Pixar Studios’ Elementary hits theaters this Wednesday, June 21st. The film is directed by Peter Sohn, who already credits the short film Passages Nuageux and Le Voyage d’Arlo.

In Element City, fire, water, earth and air live in the most perfect harmony. Here lives Flem, a bold and quick-witted young woman with a strong character, and Flack, a sentimental and funny boy, more of a follower. Their friendship challenges Flemmi’s beliefs about the world they live in…

As well as vice versa, which characterizes emotions, elementary That’s why he has the elements as his hero. Bringing Fire, Water, Earth and Air to life was a real technical challenge for the team, as these characters don’t have skeletons and can therefore take on any form.

How to animate elements?

Jeremy Talbot, the film’s character director explains in the press kit: “One of the big challenges for the water, fire and air creatures by Peter Sohn was that they didn’t have to have a skeleton. Our tools are mostly based on flesh and bone character building. But fire and water do not have fixed knees and elbows like humans. When the flak walks, the leg can move back and forth, and the entire leg disappears into the puddle and reappears shortly after. The animator controls this movement to reinforce the idea that it is made of water. The real challenge was making each character work dynamically.“

From a technical point of view, the most difficult character was the water fleck Delamar.

Water – vial

Director Peter Sohn explains:Flake consists of water. The pitfall in the search for the perfect look was that it was something other than a water element. If the movement was too slow, the flakes would turn into a jelly. And while testing the lighting of the characters in this family, we realized that transparency was essential.“

According to character director Juni Ling, Flack’s design is the culmination of small choices—color, shape, hair, lips, and body—that make her unique. For him, as well as for other artists, it was important that the stylization of all characters was consistent: “We wanted to say that Fleck and Flemmy are in the same movie.”

The artists wanted to give the character recognizable characteristics and have fun with his look and style. Maria Yee, art director responsible for character development and appearance, said:Her hair attracted a lot of attention. We wanted them to be on the move, but not too distracting. Eventually, they manage to remember that this character is made of water.“

According to animation supervisor Michael Venturini, Flack’s eyebrows are also a key part of his overall performance. He states: ” Peter didn’t want a graphic depiction of his eyebrows painted on the water. He wanted them clear or with iridescent reflections. We often used eyebrows to express Flack’s feelings. We did a lot of experimenting to create a look that matched the character design and achieved the level of emotion we wanted. Her eyes are also given special care as they are very glassy to enhance that fluid feel. We wanted them to come out and make her eyebrows expressive so we could convey what she’s feeling.”

Thus, every detail of the character is scrupulously designed to make Gube attractive. A successful challenge.

fire – flame

But if the water required a lot of work for the team, the fire was not an easy task either, as it was difficult to control. Sanjay Bakshi, Head of Visual Effects explains: “Finding a balance between character stylization and element presentation was difficult. Flame looks like fire, but not what we get. It’s a carefully crafted image that makes her believable, but also invites you to look into her eyes, see her expressions, and capture her..”

And to create the feature film’s fiery little hero, who finds himself torn between the desire to please his parents and his personal desires, Peter Son drew inspiration from his childhood as a Korean immigrant in New York.

He says : “Getting into artistic professions was a bit more difficult in my family. Everyone wanted me to be a doctor, lawyer or businessman, but I didn’t follow those paths. I wanted to pursue an artistic career and my parents didn’t understand the world or how to live in it. However, in this story Flem’s parents don’t give up, it’s himself. I found this struggle, which I did not experience with my parents, at the heart of this character very interesting..”

Because it’s the duality that best sums up Flam. The latter has a volcanic character and literally explodes when he loses his temper. The filmmaker explains: “Growing up in the city, Flemme has street smarts. But he’s not always very good at communicating with others, and he’s hot-blooded. His bad temper isn’t necessarily his biggest problem, as he believes...”

Air – Alice

The wind is characterized by the Alizée Cumulus cloud, a fluffy pink air element. Gifted with a strong personality, he is the boss of Flack. A character reminiscent of a Peter Sohn short film, Partly cloudy In which cloud people sculpt babies from the clouds and bring them to life.

John Hoberg, screenwriterelementary Underline: “Alternately happy, then angry, Alizee can transform in the blink of an eye. But he has a good heart in any situation and always seems full of life.”

Jeremy Talbot, Head of Characters, explains that it was important to establish the shape of the aerial characters. For Alize, this meant creating something like a haircut. He says: “We needed markers to indicate the size of the sponge’s entrails above and on either side of his head to better define the cheeks and mouth. The animators needed to play with these characters by understanding how they would look in 3D before people turned them into actual clouds.“

Visual effects supervisor Steven Marshall continues. Air elements like Alizee create real volumes. A mixture of cloud and wind leads to moments when the whole collapses, becomes steamy and airy, and then forms again. These shots are a real challenge because the aerial creature has many layers, including a basic cloudy, fluffy component overlaid with an additional layer that provides sharper detail.

Then these elements should be mixed together so as not to create the impression that they are separated. However, shooting clouds tends to blur, causing loss of detail.“

Earth – Razmotte

Finally, Earth elements such as Razmot, Flem’s rejected young suitor, are also easy to imagine. Although solid, we had to find a way to make them move.

Head of character June Lining Explanation: “Earth is made up of hard, loose granules, which makes animation impossible. We spent a lot of time researching how they could move, stretch, and contract without getting confused. In the end, we created funny characters on which plants grow.”

Christopher Campbell, Head of Design and Simulation, adds: “Tellurian characters are made of earth and vegetation represents their ornaments or clothing. They can feature oaks, apple trees, evergreens, shrubs, flowers, or even a combination of the two. “

ElementCity

All these characters take place in Element City, a megapolis made up of different districts. The fire district – the last to be created – is home to the rich, while the rest of the city includes areas dedicated to water, air and land, but because these elements have been present for generations, the areas are more diverse.

Therefore, it was necessary to create districts according to the elements. Production designer Don Schenck says the artists had a few tricks up their sleeves to quickly identify different areas. “Water is usually blue, fire is red and orange, earth is green or brown. Air is more purple, clear, lavender or pink. But it’s subtle: no place is one color because we didn’t want it to be too marked..”

Elementary is currently in theaters.