Art of Story Behind Disney Planes: Fire and Rescue
Disney never ceases to amaze me with their research and development teams.
The cool thing is the facts do not stop at the story, they dive right over into the art as well. Every animated scene is well thought out, planned, and articulated.
Each Disney storyboard artist has an amazing task at hand and is simply incredible in what they do.
Art of Story
Disney Planes: Fire and Rescue is another one of those films. The research and artwork are both absolutely amazing.
Continuing from his work on Disney Planes, Art Hernandez is Head of Story on the second Dusty film.
It was such a pleasure to sit and talk with him. His patience as he walks us through a quick art class is impeccable.
Especially considering he is working with me — and I have no artistic ability at all. See!
That is supposed to be Dipper. Hmmm…
Pretty sure Art and his team are safe from the likes of me ever taking their job. Ha!
Alas, it is such as interesting job to explore. These guys and gals are truly talented and it is amazing to see their work come to life on the screen.
In fact, according to Art:
“If we do our jobs right, you’ll forget you’re looking at hand drawings.”
– Art Hernandez
I know that I, personally, become immersed in animated films just as I do with live-action.
Dusty, Dipper, and Blade Ranger can all make me laugh and cry. The way the storyboard artists give each character such human-like qualities, it’s no surprise that you get completely caught up in the emotions.
And you can be sure that the storyboard artists become part of the story as well. After all, they are creating the very characters that become the “actors” for the film.
Disney Story Artist, Lawrence Gong even talked about how he was encouraged to come up with his own ideas for the film.
The sequences are given to artists based on their strengths in certain areas. They want artists with both clarity and excitement as well as a passion for their work.
The storyboard artists are then given creative license to create the scenes with feeling and emotion toward the end result.
The scenes with several characters are the most difficult to storyboard.
In Planes: Fire and Rescue, the biggest challenge was getting the fire right.
There are so many scenes that involve fire that the artists really worked to create as realistic a flame as possible. It took them 2 years but they nailed it.
The finished scenes are absolutely amazing.
Each scene takes anywhere from 100 to over 1,000 drawings.
That means that there were around 50,000 drawings… most of which are never even used.
It is amazing to see and understand the true art behind Disney Planes: Fire and Rescue.
Watch for more interviews and updates about the movie coming. Disney Planes: Fire and Rescue comes to theaters everywhere on July 18th.