IF YOU BUILD IT ... THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF THE ANIMATED WORLD OF 'ROBOTS'.Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer Folks around Blue Sky Studios Blue Sky Studios is an Academy Award winning computer animation studio which specializes in photo-realistic, high-resolution, computer-generated character animation and rendering. don't use the term ``empire building'' loosely. Oh, sure, creators of animated movies are routinely asked to fashion characters, stories, maybe an occasional new animal or creature. As in, let's meet the inhabitants
The game is based loosely on the concepts from SameGame. of Andy's room (``Toy Story''), or explore deep waters "Deep Waters" is a short story by P. G. Wodehouse, which first appeared in the United States in the March 25 1910 issue of Collier's Weekly, and in the United Kingdom in the June 1910 issue of the Strand. with clown fish clown fish n. See anemone fish. Marlin (``Finding Nemo''). We'll take you to ancient Egypt  Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism. , to
outer space, inside an ant hill ant hillNoun a mound of soil built by ants around the entrance to their nest ant hill n → Ameisenhaufen m . Come along for the ride and see how we've reimagined a world that you think you know. But an entirely new world? A world of machines and robots for which every character, background, sky, street lamp and ray of light didn't exist prior to the film's creation? That proved to be an endeavor that Blue Sky co-founder/director Chris Wedge and the team behind ``Robots'' were jazzed to undertake. Well, make that jazzed and a little terrified ter·ri·fy tr.v. ter·ri·fied, ter·ri·fy·ing, ter·ri·fies 1. To fill with terror; make deeply afraid. See Synonyms at frighten. 2. To menace or threaten; intimidate. . ``We kept 'Ice Age' as simple as possible,'' says Wedge, who directed the 2002 hit about the quest by a woolly mammoth, saber-toothed tiger saber-toothed tiger wild cat that died out about 12,000 years ago. [Ecology: Hammond, 290] See : Extinction and sloth sloth (slōth, slôth), arboreal mammal found in Central and South America distantly related to armadillos and anteaters. Sloths live in tropical forests, where they sleep, eat, and travel through the trees suspended upside down, clinging to to return a human infant to its parents. ``Once 'Ice Age' was successful, the studio said, 'Sure, go make ``Robots.'' Go do whatever you want. You know what you're doing.' ``(But) You kind of have to be careful of what you ask for. One day we turned around and said, 'Wait a minute. We've just signed up to invent everything in this world. There's no cars or houses or trees or lawn chairs that we know from this world.' Everything we had to invent.'' Children's book author William Joyce (``Rolie Polie Olie,'' ``Dinosaur Bob'') was also game. Turns out Joyce had long harbored an itch to build a brand-new world as well. Consider that itch scratched. ``Robots,'' directed by Wedge, designed by Joyce and brought to life by 250 Blue Sky employees, including 25 full-time animators, opens Friday. It will be released nationally and in digitally remixed IMAX IMAX Noun a film projection process that produces an image ten times larger than standard format. Plotwise, it's a Capra-esque tale of a young robot inventor named Rodney Copperbottom who travels from humble Rivet Town to Robot City with the dream of making a name for himself at Big Weld Industries. Assorted friends, perils, evil corporate types and love interests become part of Rodney's journey amid a message of ``value your machines no matter how outmoded they might seem to be.'' Ewan McGregor voices Rodney. Halle Berry Halle Maria Berry (IPA: /ˈhæliː ˈbɛriː/) (born August 14, 1966[1]) is an American actress. , Greg Kinnear Gregory Kinnear (born June 17, 1963) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor and television personality, who rose to stardom as the first host of E!'s Talk Soup. , Amanda Bynes, Jim Broadbent and Mel Brooks are along for the ride. Robin Williams, returning to animated character animation Character animation is a specialized process of the animation process, concerning the animation of one or more characters featured in an animated work. It is usually as one aspect of a larger production, and often to complement voice acting. for the first time since 1992's ``Aladdin,'' takes on the hustling sidekick, Fender. We could, of course, smother you with story details, the history of robotics and deep psychological nuances about man's greater need to bond with his programmable trash can In the Macintosh, a simulated garbage can used for deleting files and folders. The trash can keeps the files intact in case the user wants to restore them, but can be "emptied" from time to time to save disk space. . Instead, how about a quickie journey around the world of ``Robots'' with Wedge, Joyce and voice actors Williams, Drew Carey Drew Allison Carey (born May 23, 1958) is an American comedian, actor, and game show host. After serving in the U.S. Marines and making a name for himself in stand-up comedy, Carey eventually gained popularity starring on his own sitcom, The Drew Carey Show , Bynes and Jennifer Coolidge as our de facto [Latin, In fact.] In fact, in deed, actually. This phrase is used to characterize an officer, a government, a past action, or a state of affairs that must be accepted for all practical purposes, but is illegal or illegitimate. tour guides. Look at that Maytag! Junkyards, old cars, pretty much anything metal could end up inspiring a character, a prop, a room. That huge dome for Big Weld Industries? Came from a teapot. Brownstone brownstone, red to brown variety of sandstone. Its unusual color is caused in some instances by the presence of red iron oxide which acts as a cement, binding the sand grains together. houses? Yes, they are supposed to look like toasters. Wedge: ``Every detail came from someplace some·place adv. & n. Somewhere: "I didn't care where I was from so long as it was someplace else" Garrison Keillor. See Usage Note at everyplace. . We really scoured junkyards nearby, took pictures, collected junk and brought it back to Blue Sky, and said, 'If you look at this carburetor in this way, it looks like somebody's head.' Or 'Look at all those radiators stacked up in the corner over there. If you've got those stacked up, it would look like apartment buildings.' '' Joyce: ``We wanted to take the audience somewhere they had never been and give them a world they had never seen before. But a lot of (our early designs) seemed too rooted in our world, a little too familiar. So we thought, 'Can we just take pieces of robots we've already made and expand the model, blowing it up to size of a skyscraper?' With a slight shift in model, we crafted cityscapes out of dismantled pieces of already designed robots. That made a big difference; the robots and the buildings they lived in echoed each other. It was a nice 'Eureka!' moment.'' Robot sex ``Robots'' begins with a jubilant Herb Copperbottom (Stanley Tucci) announcing to one and all that he's about to become a father. He dashes home only to learn from his equally beaming Mrs. C. (Dianne Wiest) that he has ``missed the delivery.'' Gags follow. And Rodney is born. And, yes, in case you're wondering, Robots can procreate pro·cre·ate v. 1. To beget and conceive offspring; to reproduce. 2. To produce or create; originate. pro , although a couple of the more choice sex-related gags ended up in the film's scrap heap scrap·heap also scrap heap n. 1. A pile or heap of waste material. 2. A place for discarding useless or worthless material. (read cutting-room floor.) Wedge: ``It took us a long time to figure out where babies came from. There was a scene in the movie that we finally moved off of. It was a silhouette of mom and dad on a couch, and dad was saying, 'Are you tired?' She'd say 'Why?' 'I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. , I was just thinking we could do that thing.' 'What? Tonight?' 'Come on! I read all the books. I know how to do it.' 'OK.' Then she'd stand up, put the (Build a Baby) box on the table, and say 'OK, let's make a baby.' Williams: ``There was a scene with (Fender) and the female robot under the table, which was a lot of buffing noises, but they lost that. We had a couple of screenings where the parents were saying, 'Are they ...?' 'Yes.' 'Is he polishing her?' 'Yes.' With a family movie, you lose stuff.'' Joyce: ``You don't see any robot private parts private parts n. men or women's genitalia, excluding a woman's breasts, usually referred to in prosecutions for "indecent exposure" or production and/or sale of pornography. . There's a definite attraction between Rodney and Cappy, although I don't know what they do when the lights go down.'' Fasten your seat belts Certain to get audiences of all ages oohing and aahing is a sequence in which Rodney and Fender take the Crosstown Expressway from the Robot City Station to Big Weld Industries. It's a roller-coaster ride as imagined by Rube Goldberg. Wedge: ``We were thinking about what would be fun about living in a mechanical city. You'd be living inside a machine itself, so getting around town wouldn't necessarily be that the roads stay still and you drive on them. You get on something that moves you someplace else. So we actually didn't have a story point that required anybody getting around. We just decided this has to be in here.'' Carey: ``That's the greatest thing in the movie, if you ask me. I was like 'Holy (expletive). I could watch that all day.' Do a couple of shots, get a little buzz going, and just watch that all day.'' Joyce: ``Once we made the decision that they would travel mostly by centrifugal force, then it became remembering your favorite toys and putting them in a gigantic machine. So you have pinball and catapults and funnels. There's even an homage to the Yellow Submarine in there. We're getting paid for doing that? Give me a break!'' I, robot With little or no experience voicing an animated character in a feature film, cast members Bynes, Carey and Coolidge were provided with sketches of their characters before they went into the microphone booth to do their work. Do they recognize themselves in the metal embodiments of tomboy tomboy Psychology A popular term for a girl whose developmental gender-identity/role is discordant with her genotype. Cf Sissy. Piper (Bynes), conspiracy theorist Crank (Carey) and posteriorly enhanced Aunt Fanny (Coolidge)? Read on... Bynes: ``(Piper) has has a joy of life, and she's happy and excited to sort of be alive. I think I try to instill in·still v. To pour in drop by drop. in  stil·la tion n. a lot of my
excitement for life into the character. Before I started, they had sort
of a rough image of what it was going to be. And once I got the part,
they gave the character green eyes because I have green
eyes.''
Carey: ``They showed me some preliminary drawings, and it looked so cool, these really nice artist renderings, but I had to promise I wouldn't show them to anybody. So of course I showed them to all my friends. Crank is the one that's supposed to think they were doomed and everything was going to happen to them, which is really not like me at all. I play better when I do people who are more positive. Someone who says, 'Everything's going to be OK. No matter how bad it is, don't worry about it. We're going to get out of this.' But it didn't matter one way or the other in the movie. To me, it ended up being just lines.'' Coolidge: ``During that first audition, I was using a bunch of different voices, and some of them were kind of matronly. I kept starring at the back of her, and I kept thinking, like, 'What would a big soft ass sound like?' I thought she was the coolest one. I was even hoping they would go bigger.'' Evan Henerson, (818) 713-3651 evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com HE'S A COG IN THE LAUGH-MACHINE WHEEL The comedian's first venture into voicing feature animation was via a matchmaking Matchmaking Matricide (See MURDER.) Kecal marriage broker whose plans are foiled by a pair of lovers. [Czech Opera: Smetana The Bartered Bride in Osborne Opera, 32] Levi, Dolly , shape-shifting blue genie in Disney's ``Aladdin.'' More than a dozen years later, he returns to embody an outmoded, hustling robot with a verve reminiscent of Gene Kelly and a penchant for, literally, losing his head. Welcome back to the 'toon world, Robin Williams. What took you so long? ``I've always wanted to work with Pixar,'' says Williams. ``But I think because they were with Disney, and we had a falling out, this is the closest thing I could get. And it's been great. I've had a blast.'' As did director Chris Wedge and the Blue Sky Studios team who matched Williams and Fender, the manic sidekick to everybot Rodney Copperbottom (voiced by Ewan McGregor). There are, Wedge estimates, 25 hours of Williams' voice work for Fender. The comedian would typically read the line as written a couple of times before spinning off and riffing, rarely delivering the same line reading twice. The ``Singin' in the Oil'' sequence, for example, was an on-the-spot Williams invention, made cinematically possible when the producers of ``Robots'' acquired the rights to spoof Kelly in ``Singin' in the Rain Singin’ in the Rain downpour doesn’t dampen singer’s spirits. [Pop. Music: Fordin, 355] See : Cheerfulness .'' ``I think he was always incredibly conscientious about giving us what we needed for the scene. He'd always read the pages first,'' Wedge says of Williams. ``Then he'd go off into his own little orbit. He'd go off on these long rants on something, and he would say, 'I know someone will be listening to this someday.' So, imagine one of our (transcribers) has got to listen to this at 2 a.m.'' It helped that Williams is a confirmed fan of things metallic, scientific and futuristic. The actor, who once played a robot trying to become human in ``Bicentennial bi·cen·ten·ni·al adj. 1. Happening once every 200 years. 2. Lasting for 200 years. 3. Relating to a 200th anniversary. n. A 200th anniversary or its celebration. Also called bicentenary. Man,'' collects manga maNga is a popular Turkish nu metal/rapcore band. Their music is mainly a fusion of alternative metal and hip hop music, with a touch of Anatolian melodies; with heavy use of turntables, invoking comparisons with modern American nu metal bands. and anime illustrations, figures and DVDs. ``I watch all these things that just change by the day,'' says Williams. ``I guess this movie is just a little boy's dream come true.'' ``After seeing 'I, Robot' and knowing Isaac Asimov's work and being inside (a robot), it would be kind of fun to do the old 'Metropolis,' '' continues Williams. ``I would have liked, if I could go back, to wear the blue (motion detector) suit like Gollum, or to have (created) kind of a more-streamlined robot.'' Although you're likely to see Fender's jolly mug on everything from action figures to cereal boxes, to date, Williams says Fox officials have stayed out of the ``no fly zone'' of using his voice to sell products. It was a merchandising dispute that caused the rift between Williams and Disney. ``I just want to make films. I don't want to sell burgers,'' Williams says. ``I'll make the movie, but it's about how they sell it. They own the character, but if it involves my voice, I don't want to sell things. So far they're honoring the agreement.'' - E.H. CAPTION(S): 14 photos, box Photo: (1 -- cover -- color) Robin Williams & pals tell us how to bring `ROBOTS' TO LIFE (2) ``Fender'' confronts an aggressive streetlight. (3 -- 4) ``Ratchet'' Greg Kinnear (5 -- 6) ``Piper'' Amanda Bynes (7 -- 8) ``Crank'' Drew Carey (9 -- 10) ``Cappy'' Halle Berry (11 -- 12) ``Rodney'' Ewan McGregor (13 -- 14) ``Fender'' Robin Williams Box: HE'S A COG IN THE LAUGH-MACHINE WHEEL (see text) |
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