The Disney Frontier Blog

I was able to catch Ratatouille Sunday afternoon. I was all ready to write a review of it when I read John’s review and felt he captured it perfectly. So instead of gushing about how good the story and characters were, I’ve decided to gush about the technology.

I remember walking away from A Bug’s Life in 1998, excited for a career in 3D animation. At that time, I couldn’t think of a cooler field that was on the verge of explosion. Pixar was doing things with 3D that blew every one else out of the water. But after seeing how bad the lab computers were at rendering 3D at my university, I changed fields. If the school couldn’t afford machines to train on, how was I ever going to.

Since my inspired moment after A Bug’s Life, things have only gotten better at Pixar. They went from toys to bugs to fish honing their 3D skills. Everyone knew that doing humans would be challenging and the few in Nemo were less than realistic. Then came the Incredibiles. Finally, believable human characters - still a little comic like, but that fit the story.

I won’t say the humans in Ratatouille are perfect. Skinner - the chef that takes over for Gusteau - is more than comical. But there are a few shots, like when they show the back of Colette’s head - that look so real. It makes me wonder if they will get to a point where their CGI will be indistinguishable from live action.

It looks like the next Pixar movie, Wall-E, may be less human oriented, but Up in 2009 will be about a seventysomething guy. I can’t wait to see what else is improved by then.