What’s your role in the creation of a Pixar movie character?
A sculptor’s job is to come up with how a character will look in 3-D. Because I’m also a character designer, I sometimes do my own sketches. For example, in the film I’m working on now, the director described one of the lead characters in detail, how he saw him physically, his role in the film, and what kind of person he was. He showed me several concept drawings, explaining how they did or did not match his vision of the character.

From there, I try to imagine the character through sketches. Once I think I have something close, I build the armature, a kind of wire skeleton. After I make the armature, I apply oil-based clay and build up the big shapes. Then I play with the forms, trying to refine the contours, and explore design possibilities until it feels right. This is where I think the character really begins to get distinctive. As I get closer to finishing, I work on sharp lines, details and smoothing out surfaces.

And when you’re not doing the initial character design, how does the process work?
Designs are usually explored on paper by a sketch artist, often with loose sketches that give the sculptor the flavor. Sometimes I get more specific drawings that are more finished and have a very specific architecture.

How do you convey a character’s personality?
I need to know as much about the character as I can. Personality is an enormous influence on the sculpture—it affects postures, stance, etc. If a person is grumpy all the time, that expression will etch itself into his everyday face. So when I’m working on a character, a generally grumpy character for example, I’ll sculpt the shapes to hint at the expressions he would commonly make. I’ll work in a scowl or the influence of a scowl into a neutral expression. For sculpting expression, I have a mirror in my office. I’m constantly looking in the mirror to get the pose or face I want. Then I try to copy it. Sometimes I’ll be told that a character looks like an actor or someone relatively famous. In that case, I’ll get reference materials for that person and study him or her.

Do you have to keep the animator’s needs in mind when you’re sculpting the characters?
Yes, there’s a whole mix of things I think about. When I'm sculpting a character I may have to think, “Is this nose too big—is this something that the animators can work with?” A big nose might block the other eye if the character is at a 75-degree angle, which poses a difficult acting challenge for the animator. A lot of times, after I come up with a design, I’ll run it by the animators. They’ll point out specific problems and I’ll go back and rethink it—how to make it work so it looks good and acts well in their hands.

What happens to your sculpture after the director approves it—do you scan it into the computer?
There are a number of things we do with a sculpture after it’s completed. For one, we take photos of them to be used for reference by the sketch artists and people painting the characters.

The sculpts that are maquettes—character sculptures intended to show the personality of the character, usually in a pose, expression or emotion—are used by computer modelers as reference only. In this case, the model might be “freehanded,” or built, directly in the computer by the modelers. The “digitizable” sculptures—the character’s head, arms and legs in a very neutral position—are copied into the computer using a stylus on a digitizer arm. Because the computer always knows where the stylus is in space, the modeler can touch it to the sculpture surface and click, building an exact digital copy, point by point. Sometimes sculpts are scanned optically into the computer with a laser, and then adjusted for technical needs.

How do you decide which method to use?
If the director really wants it to be a precision copy, we make a cast from the original character sculpt and make a plastic replica. The replica has a grid penciled onto it and is then digitized into the computer. Or the original will be scanned. Oftentimes, only the main characters get this kind of treatment. The other factor that influences whether or not the sculpture can be freehanded is how clear-cut the character’s features are. If a character has a lot of obvious distinguishing features, it’s easier to freehand the sculpture. If it has finer features, it might be better to scan it in, because the subtler the shapes and details of a character’s face, the harder it is to make that character look just right.

What’s the most difficult thing about your job?
To keep the design simple. I’ve studied anatomy and can make a realistic sculpture fairly easily. But in animation you’re looking for the things that make a character look distinctive. In order to do that, you’re picking out a feature, trying to exaggerate important forms and minimize everything that is unimportant. It’s like a shorthand version of a character. Getting across complex feelings and a complex personality, and at the same time keeping it simple in shape is always a challenge.

Do you ever work on more than one film at once?
Sometimes I might be working on two films at once for about five months. That’s where it can get difficult, because directors have their own style, and you have to switch back and forth between the different styles.

How did you get started in sculpture?
I’m one of the oddballs who didn’t actually go to school for this stuff—but I loved drawing since I was a child, and I did a lot of self-study, focusing on anatomy and collecting dinosaur models and small fossils. I went from processing film in a one-hour photo lab in Indiana to thinking I’d be a stuntman to considering life as a professional power-lifter. But I realized I should be doing artwork when my brother, Adam, got a job at a small local animation studio called Perennial Pictures. I was floored—it definitely inspired me.

I became even more motivated when I saw the amazing visual effects in Dragonslayer. I moved to Northern California to see if I could work with Phil Tippett [at Berkeley-based Phil Tippett Company, now Tippett Studio], whose company did a lot of the visual effects. I called him two or three times from Indiana. Then I just moved here, called him up, and told him I was coming that day. I knocked on his door and showed him my artwork, films and effects-related things I had made. The films were really bad super-8 movies that had stop-motion creatures and lasers in them. I think he was most impressed by a wonky, moveable puppet under-skull I had made out of car putty and castors. I was hired as a production assistant and moved on to mold-making and some sculpture stuff, and tweaking the foam-rubber stop-motion puppets.

And from there you went on to more films…
Yes, I did everything from building models to camera work on several movies: Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Robo Cop 2 and Ghostbusters 2. Nightmare Before Christmas was the first film where I was hired solely as a character sculptor. I loved working on that film! Ironically, then I quit film for several years. I wanted to take a break, try some new things, and see if there would be a place for me in the post-Jurassic Park world—the rapidly emerging CG world. When I went back to work in film, I was a sculptor for Images in Motion, the company responsible for making and operating many of the puppets in Being John Malkovich. I did mostly toy prototyping work there. Then I came to Pixar in July 2000.

Do you have any advice for people who are interested in sculpting?
Draw and sculpt. One informs the other. Drawing helps you to think about perimeters, the contours, how a form looks in silhouette. And always pay the most attention to the overall form, the rough shapes. Those are the foundations of any good sculpture.

Go to zoos and draw animals. Draw the human face and figure. Nothing beats drawing from a live model, because what you see will repeat itself in anything that you sculpt—there are golden rules of nature you have to follow.

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