Talking Elio, and the evolution of the animation industry, with South African Pixar veteran Ferdi Scheepers

South Africans have a special talent for popping up in unexpected places. A beach bar on a remote Thai island. The White House. The headquarters of Pixar Animation Studios – the multi-award-winning and record-breaking Toy Story studio that falls under the Disney umbrella.

Effects Artist Ferdi Scheepers has been at Pixar for over 22 years, and has worked on the likes of The Incredibles, Wall-E, Cars, Toy Story 4 and Inside Out, along with Academy Award-winning short Piper. It’s an unlikely career destination, especially when you learn Scheepers worked for five years at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in the field of satellite imagery. This after studying computer science at the University of Johannesburg, and completing his PhD in Computer Graphics from The Ohio State University in 1996.

In this interview with Scheepers, arranged by Disney, we learn more about the Effects Artist’s unusual path to working for Pixar, his advice for wannabe animation professionals, how the industry has evolved over the past few decades, and his role in Pixar’s latest: original space adventure Elio, in cinemas now.

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How would you describe your title of Development & Effects Artist to a person on the street?

Ferdi Scheepers: So I’m an Effects Artist primarily. As an Effects Artist, we create various effects, and usually that happens at the end of, or towards the end of production, after animation is done. We react to what the characters do in animation.

A very simple example would be running on a dusty foot path, and with every footfall, there’s a little puff of dust, right? So that’s an effect we would create. Other effects would be water, fire, smoke, electricity, and we also do some environmental effects – for example, lava, the indication of wind, and so forth. I usually describe effects as movement or changes in relation to things that move; that they’re not the acting that Animators do with characters.

From the design part of it, on this film (Elio), I got the opportunity to work really early on during production with Production Designer Harley Jessup in creating the character OOOOO, a liquid supercomputer – kind of an emoji-like character – that helps Elio in the Communiverse communicate with the other aliens. My task was to help create this notion that this was a highly intelligent being, and had some energy, and that energy eventually we decided was portrayed by electric signals that move inside the character.

That was my contribution to creating the character, and those sort of electric signals were then adopted into the environment and other set pieces in the film. Unlike other times, I’ve been involved with Elio really from the start, because I was contributing to character design and then, later on, to the effects of the film.

It’s not exactly an expected career progression to go from growing up in Gauteng, to working at the CSIR with satellite imagery systems, to Pixar. How did that last step come about?

Before I actually did my PhD in computer graphics at Ohio State University, I had an opportunity to attend a computer science conference, via the CSIR, in the United States. At this conference, Steve Jobs, the founder of Pixar, was a keynote speaker. At that point – this was in the 80s – he showed the two first Pixar shorts, Luxo Jr. and Red’s Dream. I was completely blown away by this new animation art form and, at that point, I decided I wanted to work for the company. 

Now it took 14 or so years for me to eventually get to Pixar, via an advanced computer graphics degree, and then going back to South Africa and working for the satellite application centre because they sponsored my studies. It was kind of a detour but I eventually got the opportunity. In 2001, I applied at a computer science conference, called SIGGRAPH, in Los Angeles which is one of our advanced conferences here, and, I got some interviews, which was wonderful. 

You’ve been at Pixar since 2002. In that time, is there one thing that you’ve done that you’re especially proud of?

I’m proud of everything that I’ve done, but let me choose one thing. One of the shorts that Pixar did during the time that that I was here, is called Piper, and I was the Effects Supervisor on Piper. It was a very, very challenging and difficult short to work on, mainly because of the material: an ocean setting, macro style photography and so on.

At the same time, the studio was making Finding Nemo. We needed a lot of Effects Artists, and we had contention in terms of who can, or who will, work on what and so on. So it was a challenging, but I was very proud of the final result. One of the big, amazing things that happened on Piper is that we worked very, very closely together with the animation department, and I think we struck a great relationship with the Animators on that short, which in later years has blossomed into a strong partnership between the Effects Artists and Animators.

Piper won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in that year (2017).

That’s right, Piper won the Oscar and it was the first Pixar short since For the Birds way back in 2001 to win that award, yeah.

A similar question, but focused on Elio now: apart for your role in creating OOOOO, which you’ve already mentioned, is there something you contributed to the film that you’re excited for people to see?

Helping out on the character of OOOOO was a very gratifying experience for me, because something we don’t usually do is work very early on in production. But then, on the back end, I contributed to numerous effects in the film. The main one that I think I worked on probably the longest was the lava.

Lava is sort of, in the case of Elio, partly an environmental effect. The main antagonist has this lair, this room that he hosts Elio in, and the idea of the lava is that it creates this dangerous, slightly scary environment for somebody to come and visit. So I designed the look of the lava, as well as created all the environmental effects in two or three sequences. And then there’s a chase scene that also involves lava that I worked on.

What’s your elevator pitch to convince people to head to cinemas to see Elio on the big screen? What makes the film stand out?

I think, personally, when Pixar takes on certain genres, they always have a little twist. In the case of Elio, the characters that you get to meet as aliens are way different from the aliens that we usually see in sci-fi movies. They’re beautiful designs, with amazing variety, and they’re really characters that are funny and quaint and interesting to look at. I think audiences would love that.

Then Elio interacts with these characters in a very interesting and unique way. They misunderstand his identity, and they think he’s the leader of Earth, and there’s some comedy around that. In the end, I think the main thing that I would say is if you feel alone in the world, that’s Elio. He feels alone in the world, he goes on this journey, and he discovers that to get a sense of belonging, you need to make connections. If people understand that, they might get something very, very positive out of the film.

Making animated films is especially collaborative. Could you talk us through how that works at Pixar? What’s a typical day or week like, especially in your department?

For me and in the effects department, we get to work a little bit on our own. Then as soon as you have something to show, and usually that’s very quickly, you show it in a group context to the effects department. Supervisors are in there, a couple of Leads, and all the other Effects Artists, and you show your work, and then they critique it. They say, “Well, this doesn’t quite work,” or “Have you thought about this idea?” and so on.

And then you go back and you work on your own again, and improve your work. At some point, you get to a point where it feels really good, it works – it tells the story, as we say. Then you get to show it to the Director, who is the final, final go ahead for an effect. They call once they’re satisfied with you, with the work; they say “Final,” and then you’re done with that particular task and you move on to the next one. Typically, an effect can take a couple of days, a week or maybe a few weeks, depending on how complex it is.

How have you seen the animation industry transform over the past 20+ years?

Well, quite drastically.

If you compare the visuals these days to the visuals of, say, the original Toy Story or A Bug’s Life, today’s are just stunning, very detailed, beautiful. And, sometimes, fairly realistic – not necessarily photorealistic, but realistic in the sense that it’s very believable. The industry now seems to be moving, pulling back from that a little bit, with this notion of stylization. The driving question is how do you create more interesting visuals, but that don’t look all that realistic? Pixar is certainly exploring some stylization in some of our films, and especially upcoming films. That’s going to be very interesting.

Then there’s the technology. It’s obviously improved tremendously over the 20 years that I’ve been working here. But, as I usually say, when technology improves, you can do more in the same available time than you had before. You have the opportunity to do more, and so you just do more. The gains that you get with improvement in technology, you spend on creating more and more interesting things, and introducing more complexity, and so on.

What’s your advice to any wannabe animators or other aspiring industry professionals out there?

The one thing I always say is just try your best; try, try, try, and never give up. Show what you do, whether you’re experimenting or learning. Show what you do as quickly as you can and as often as you can, and listen to how people respond to what you’re doing, then make adjustments. And, just never give up in pursuing that goal.

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Elio is in South African cinemas from Friday, 20 June. The film is screening in 2D and 3D.