Pixar’s Presto

sqrPhi Pixars PrestosqrLambda Pixars Presto.Movies Artist Just For Fun | Written by Kay | Leave a Comment

The short film appeared before Wall·E. →Link

Ben Burtt talks about the sound design of Wall·E

sqrPhi Ben Burtt talks about the sound design of Wall·E.Movies .Music Artist | Written by Kay | Leave a Comment

Again, read it only if you are a fan of Wall·E. →Link

The artists behind Wall·E share their story with RT

sqrPhi The artists behind Wall·E share their story with RT.Movies Artist | Written by Kay | Leave a Comment

Worth reading if you are a fan of Pixar and Wall·E. →Link to exclusive story | →Link to their favourite Wall·E moment | →Link to the storyboards of Wall·E

Wall·E directing animator Angus MacLane discusses the making of the movie

sqrPhi Wall·E directing animator Angus MacLane discusses the making of the movie.Design .Movies Artist | Written by Kay | 2 Comments

“Just making it so it exists in the 3D world - you need to make more decisions to limit the visual information just to be super-clear and to be as appealing as it can be for that picture plane, which is 2D. It’s funny, people say it’s 3D animation but really it’s just 2D animation in a 3D medium.”→Link

“Eve firing” Adium dock icon

sqrPhi Eve firing Adium dock iconsqrPi Eve firing Adium dock icon.Apple,Inc .Design .Movies .Sci-Fi Artist Geek | Written by Tim | 2 Comments

We found an Eve dock icon for Adium one month before Wall·E was out, and we all loved it.
Here is a screenshot:
54d14c79c29fbd8b7e9f3ff2410cf02c Eve firing Adium dock icon
Download it here.
We made a custom version with original icons from the author Maximilian Larsson, now EVE fires when you get a new message!

Sorry this one is NFR, but if you have some rudimentary image editor, here’s how you can do it yourself on a Mac (sorry Windows folks).

Step I. Download the EVE icon set from Maximilian Larsson’s site, using the link above. If you have CandyBar, download the CandyBar version, then export the icons you need from CandyBar to 512×512 png and skip to Step II. Don’t have CandyBar? Dont worry, go to Step I.1

Step I. 1. so you download the zip version instead, how to get the icons in png format? Easy, open the zip, you’ll see a bunch of folders with EVE icons applied, select the folder, copy (cmd+c), open Preview, go to file menu > New From Clipboard. Boom! you get the icons in preview, now just save the 512 version as png. Repeat this for all the icons you want.

Step II. Now you have the icons in glorious 512×512 png, take a moment to appreciate the beauty before your eyes. You need to crop them to make it look right on the dock, so fire up any image editor with crop support. (Personally I use Pixelmator) Cut off the excess white space so that the EVE fits comfortably in a 435×435 square, you’ll have her head almost touching the top of the cropped image. Repeat for each icon.

Step III. Let’s make a custom Dock icon set for Adium, the easiest way to start is to make a copy of the original EVE icon for Adium (you did download it right?). Go to your home folder/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/Dock Icons/, make a copy of EVE.AdiumIcon.

Rename the copy to whatever you want, right click on it, and select Show Package Contents, now delete all the old icons except sleeping.png, copy all your new pngs in (don’t replace sleeping). 

Step IV. Open the file IconPack.plist and start editing away! But just to get you started, here’s mine iconpack. 

Step V. Launch Adium and enjoy!


b150e652557e58e48ae0f082107b6c90 Eve firing Adium dock icon

Wall·E review

sqrPhi Wall·E review.Movies Artist | Written by Kay | 3 Comments

Wall·ESo here comes my first(long-waited?) attempt at writing a movie review. Somehow I think I manage to fail before I even started.

And to make things worse, aside from this ridiculous title, I will avoid using a few words that have been widely popular among the reviews of this movie. “Cute”, “adorable”, “beautiful”, “touching”, “best”, “perfect”, “amazing” and “great” are the ones in my list.

Don’t get me wrong though, avoid using these words doesn’t mean I disagree with any of them or I hated this movie. In fact, I like this movie too much that I have to ask myself to justify my reasons of adoring it. This is, however, not exclusive to this movie.
First off, I do not think this movie is a Sci-Fi movie(2001: A Space Odyssey for example) like many believe so. It seems like there’s an unwritten rule that if you put “700 years later”, “robots” and “galaxy” together in a movie or a novel, it is then automatically labeled as “Sci-Fi”. Aside from Wall·E and Eve, the robots in this movie are actually what we are living with today. For example, MO is very similiar to the iRobot available in your supermarket. What makes Wall·E and Eve stand out from all the robots is the personalities they possess. But I take that part as magic, not Sci-Fi. “Wall·E is”, said the director Andrew Stanton, “nerdy romantic”. I wholeheartedly agree, it is more of romantic than Sci-Fi, or rather, a romantic story disguised as Sci-Fi.

This categorization matters and maybe matters to me alone, since I’m trying to justify the reasons of my fondness. I’ve read through several “rotten” reviews on RottenTomatoes to see if they can pull me back to normal. Unfortunately(or fortunately?), they all failed more or less.
The critic who failed miserably is Brian Orndorf of scifimoviepage.com. He wrote:
Read more

Limited edition artwork of Wall·E

sqrPhi Limited edition artwork of Wall·EsqrPi Limited edition artwork of Wall·E.Design .Movies .Sci-Fi Artist Geek | Written by Kay | Leave a Comment

Not cheap, but quite well made. →Link

The Making of the Pixar Wall·E Picture book - Lots of Bots

sqrPhi The Making of the Pixar Wall·E Picture book - Lots of Bots.Design Artist | Written by Kay | Leave a Comment

Just found this. If you are interested in Wall·E it’s worth a look.[Link]

The sounds of Wall·E

sqrPhi The sounds of Wall·E.Movies Artist | Written by Kay | Leave a Comment

Wall·E

One of my favorite websites, Rottentomatoes, has put up a video in which the director of Wall·E, Andrew Stanton, and sound director Ben Burtt guide us through the sounds in Pixar’s latest movie. Ben Burtt is also the man who was behind the sound effect in Star Wars(R2-D2, for example). The download link is here.

[Photo via:andy castro]
Update: Surprisingly(or unsurprisingly?), the rebooting sound of Wall·E is exactly the same as the bootup sound in Mac OS X. I wonder if Jonathan Ive designed this or it’s from Ben Burtt too.

Update 2: Ben Burtt interview.