Mara MacMahon, Emily Wilson, Peter Nye, Gordon Cameron, Jessica Heidt, Joshua Minor, and Paul Kanyuk
Abstract:
As we explore a broad range of characters and stories in our films, it has become increasingly valuable to view breakdowns of our character pools and selections by demographic: to build and use our assets efficiently, reinforce storytelling and world building choices, and ensure consistent decision-making across the pipeline.
With the Character Linker App within Traction (Traction is Pixar's asset and shot-tracking tool), production is able to see a live breakdown of the character pool as assets are built, and sequence/shot composition, as they are populated with the ability to visualize by a range of categories, including gender, ethnicity, body-type, and age, among others. Each film can define and populate these categories specific to their story, set breakdown goals to measure progress against, and iterate on crowd asset selections to ensure each character is utilized to the fullest.
Paper (PDF)
Siggraph Talk 2022