victor navone finding nemo

Already years ago, the name of Victor Navone became popular thanks to his short 'Alien Song' , a nice parody of musical pop video where Blit, an alien that... There is somebody has still not seen this animation?.

After working in the world of videogames, Víctor worked like freelance in the 'Titan AE' movie, for, just a short time later, to finish in Pixar, where he has worked in 'Monsters INC' and 'Finding Nemo'. At this moment he is working in 'The Incredibles'.

We spoke with Victor about his beginnings, about 'Alien Song', his future projects, Pixar, his work in 'Monsters INC' and 'Finding Nemo', 'The incredibles'...

El Portal del 3D y la Animación - A few years ago Víctor Navone's name become popular thanks to 'Alien Song', a classic. It is true that it was your first lip-synch text? How the idea was born?

3DA - Before 'Alien Song', you were for 5 years in Presto Studios, in the world of the video games, and after 'Alien Song', you were employed like freelance at 'Titan AE'. How it was the experience? what was yor work concretly?

Victor - Working at Presto was fun. It was a very collaborative environment and I got to learn a lot of different skills. After 5 years I was ready to move on though. I was looking for an excuse to move to the San Francisco Bay Area and try to get a job at ILM.

The 'Titan AE' job came along at a convenient time and helped me to move north. That was a fun movie to work
on, though the hours were sometimes difficult. It was a little strange to go from a very influential position at Presto to a very limited position on 'Titan AE'. I'm proud of the work we did and it was a good learning experience for me.

3DA - Just after 'Titan AE', in December 1999, Pixar contacted with you. You had sent samples of your work to them or it was on their own initiative? How many time you needed to decide this? :)

Victor - I had sent demo reels to Pixar in the past but they didn't seem to have any interest, or my work got lost in the great pile of other reels. It wasn't until the President of Pixar was forwarded a copy of 'Alien Song' in his email that I got an interview.

After having just seen 'Toy Story 2' it seemed like a great opportunity, so I accepted pretty quickly.

3DA - How it is Pixar? How it is a day of work there?

Victor - It's fun. They make a lot of effort to create a unique, comfortable environment to work in. We're allowed to decorate our spaces as we choose, we have our own gym, pool and cafeteria, and there are lots of extra-curricular activities available to us. You can get a much better feel for this by watching the supplements on the Monsters, Inc. DVD. As fun as it is we all still work very hard. It's not all fun and games. We work hard and we play hard.

3DA - The first movie in which you were working there was 'Monsters INC'. You took charge of the animation of any character in particular, or the work is distributed by scenes... ? How many people can work in the same character?

Victor - Animation at Pixar is divided by shots, not by characters. There are animators who are "leads" for certain characters, but ultimately each animator will have a chance to work on almost every character at some point. This makes for great variety.

3DA - Along the production of a movie of this type, thousands of problems must arise. What was the most important challenge which you faced in 'Monsters INC', why this, and how you solved it?

Victor - For me the most difficult thing was animating Randall, the villain. In addition to having 8 limbs, a tail, and a snake-like body his model was very slow to work with.

I got to do the shots where Boo jumps on Randall's back
and beats him with a bat as he slips on crayons and toys. There's no way I can really act out a scene like that so I went through a lot of trial and error trying to find poses and actions that were believable and to the director's liking. Once I got the blocking approved it took a long time to animate his body - so much to do! I think that shot took me over a month, and was the only shot I was late on.

3DA - Until the moment to enter Pixar you had worked with 3D Studio, Animation: Master and Electric Image's software. How much you took to adapt to the software and workflow used in Pixar? You believe that the software is important in its own?

Victor - Pixar's software is very different from most other animation programs, but it didn't take me very long to learn. I was comfortable with it in about 3 weeks. I tend to learn software very easily. Working with unix scared me a lot, though. Now I'm okay with it.

There is nothing so special about our software that gives us an advantage over other studios. It's all about the talent of the animators.

3DA - After 'Monsters INC', you have been working in the last movie of Pixar, 'Finding Nemo'. Which have been the differences between a project and the other one? They were confronted in the same way?

Victor - Nemo was very technically challenging for the animators for many reasons. First, the fish don't have arms or legs so we are very limited in what gestures we can make. This meant we had to rely a lot more on timing and facial animation for acting. We also had to get used to make our animation look "swimmy", as if it was really underwater. This is something animators usually try to avoid.

Animated the fins was also difficult. Most of the fish had 7 or more fins to animate, and making them seem functional was a big challenge. In comparison I would say most of the animation on 'Monsters, Inc'. was easier, or at least more straight-forward and simple.

3DA - Which it has been your work in this movie?

Victor - don't want to give away any spoilers... I did a lot of shots featuring seagulls, including a gag featuring a kung-fu crab. I also did some fun shots of the dentist. Overall I'd say I worked on most of the characters except for the turtles and sharks.

I can't really tell you more without giving anything away. If you really want the details there's a link on my web site:

Victor Navone - Finding Nemo

3DA - In 'Monsters INC' it was necessary to create a software that simulate the behavior of cloth and fur. Something like that has had to be created for the submarine scenes? How it has influenced this in your work?

Victor - There was lots of technology created for the underwater scenes, but unfortunately I'm not the person to ask about it.

As animators we didn't really have to worry about any of that, and there was no simulation involved in our fish work. There was some cloth simulation on the human characters that we had to worry about, but that's it.

3DA - Are you involved in someone of the Pixar's new projects? What you can advance to us of 'The Incredibles' and 'Cars'?

Victor - I'm now working on The Incredibles, and I think that's all I'm allowed to tell you. There is a teaser trailer playing in front of Finding Nemo that will give you a peek at it.

I don't have anything I can say about Cars either. Sorry!

3DA - In your web site we can see that you have an own project in hands. What you can tell to us about 'Big Bang'? When we will be able to see it finished?

Victor - This is an original, 6 minute short film that I've been developing on my spare time for about 2 years now.

don't know when it will be done, but when it's complete I plan on entering it in film festivals.

I'm doing it just for fun and learning. Luckily I have a lot of talented friends at Pixar to give me feedback and guidance.

3DA - Finally, could you give any advice to the users who are beginning in this world of 3D with dreams to create their own movies some day or be able to take part in projects like in that you have taken part?

Victor - Get traditional training in film and art. Computers are only tools. They can't make creative decisions and can only create work as good as your skill and experience will allow.

From El Portal del 3D y la Animación, we want to say thanks very much to Victor Navone for making this inteview a possiblity.

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