Geri's Game

Last updated
Geri's Game
Geri's Game poster.jpg
Film poster
Directed by Jan Pinkava
Written byJan Pinkava
Produced by Karen Dufilho
Starring Bob Peterson
Edited byJim Kallett
Music by Gus Viseur
Production
company
Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution [lower-alpha 1]
Release dates
Running time
5 minutes
CountryUnited States

Geri's Game is a 1997 American animated short film produced by Pixar and written and directed by Jan Pinkava. The film was Pixar's first film to feature a human as its main character; Geri later made a cameo appearance in Toy Story 2 as "The Cleaner", where he was voiced by Jonathan Harris instead of Bob Peterson.

Contents

Geri's Game was released eight years after Knick Knack , the last short by Pixar to that point, made as part of an effort to reignite the studio's short film series, which had been put on standby in order to focus on the creation of television commercials as well as the studio's first feature film, which would become the first-ever full-length computer-animated film, Toy Story . A dedicated research and development team worked alongside the filmmakers to devise ways to get around the burdens of animating a human character, leading to an in-house computer simulation to mimic the natural movement of clothing on a character. Subdivision surface modeling, a technique partly pioneered by Edwin Catmull in 1978 but mostly ignored in favor of NURBS surfaces, was used to bestow natural movement and realistic skin textures on Geri.

Geri's Game premiered on November 24, 1997, winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film the following year. It was later shown with the theatrical release of Pixar's second feature film, A Bug's Life , the following year, and became part of a Pixar tradition of pairing shorts with feature films.

Plot

In a park, an old man named Geri sets up a chessboard. There is no one else in the park for him to play with, so he proceeds to play chess against himself, playing the parts of both participants by moving to opposite sides of the board and either removing or replacing his glasses. The "participant" without the glasses, and playing as the Black, is aggressive and confident, while the "participant" with the glasses who plays White is timid and makes several mistakes. The camera work eventually makes it look like there are two Geri’s playing the game. Black Geri captures all of White Geri's pieces except the king, at which point White Geri fakes a heart attack and falls to the ground, startling Black Geri, who starts to take his pulse. White Geri secretly turns the board around, so the player without the glasses has the bare king, and the player with the glasses has the black pieces. He gets up and reveals to the participant without glasses that he is alright and takes his turn. The participant without glasses concedes defeat and gives the player with the glasses the prize: his false teeth. The film ends with the camera zooming out to remind the audience that there is only one Geri.

Development

Geri's Game was Pixar's first original short film since 1989, when Knick Knack was released. It was directed and written by Jan Pinkava, who joined the studio in 1993 to work on their TV commercials while the other directors and writers were preoccupied with the production of Toy Story , and had been continuously approaching executive producer Darla K. Anderson with the proposal that the studio make a new short film. [2]

Initial conception

Work on the short began shortly after the release of Toy Story and during early production of A Bug's Life , when Ed Catmull decided that the studio should resurrect its short films production as a way to bring new animators and storytellers into Pixar, and as a way to further push research and development for the studio. [3] For the first of these shorts, which would be the first one made in 8 years, Catmull wanted Pixar to create a story which featured a human as its central protagonist. Upon Anderson's suggestion, he reached out to Pinkava to direct the short. [2] According to Pinkava himself, Catmull said he could direct the short as long as it starred a human character and had a serviceable story behind it. [2]

When trying to brainstorm a concept, Pinkava asked himself if he would be able to come up with a story that featured only one character, which would both give it an artistic edge and make development easier on the technical side of things, as coming up with just a single stylized, but credible, human character was hard enough. [3] [2] He designed an elderly character – belonging to the polar opposite age sector of Billy, [4] the infant character in Tin Toy , and one of Pixar's earliest attempts at creating a human character. He felt it would be interesting to animate a character with the body language of an old man, similar to how Billy was animated with the gesticulations of a baby.

Story evolution

After spending time storyboarding and brainstorming ideas, Pinkava came up with three different concepts starring an elderly male character; one of these concepts was about him playfully riding up and down an elevator, while another one involved him playing a game of chess against himself. The latter idea was inspired by Pinkava and his elderly relatives' love of chess—particularly his grandfather, an avid chess player who would often play rounds of the game with only himself. [5] [2]

Pinkava pitched an early animatic version of the chess story, and was turned down and given a second chance to restart and further develop the story. After giving a second pitch with a more structured plot, the project was green-lit and Karen Dufilho was issued to produce the project. [2]

Pinkava, who grew up in Czechoslovakia, was inspired by the works of Czech filmmaker and storywriter Jiří Trnka, particularly his stop-motion puppet films; Trnka's characters, usually human ones, were marionette puppets that had vastly stylized body and facial features, which Pinkava similarly applied somewhat to Geri's character design, with facial attributes such as his nose and chin. [2] Pinkava did several maquettes of different designs for Geri before settling on his final appearance, which he then sculpted into a (3D) clay model that was baked by Jerome Ranft and digitally scanned into Pixar's animation software. (Ranft initially was the clay sculptor for the character, working on his head and hands, but after receiving continuous suggestions on how to tweak the model, he reportedly handed the sculpting utensil to Pinkava, simply telling him, "You do it," while smiling.) [2]

Technology

Geri's voice (vocal intonations) came from Pixar writer Bob Peterson. [6] Peterson wanted Pixar to be able to create a short that could technologically push the studio to new heights; specifically, he wanted Pixar to create a short film featuring a character that could display both convincing-looking skin and realistic cloth animation. [2] The first Pixar short film with a human main character, Geri's Game was produced with the goal of "[taking] human and cloth animation to new heights". [7] [8] [9] To achieve the goal of producing a believable 3D human character, two people were brought on to do research for the project: Michael Kass, who did the calculations behind the physics for a dynamic cloth system, and Tony DeRose, who made use of subdivision surfaces, a technique invented by Catmull in conjunction with Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark, which allowed for more lifelike skin surfaces. [2] [10]

Previously, most 3D character surfaces were crafted using several non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) that had to be "stitched" together, which made for less expressive movement and caused models to frequently tear. The use of subdivision surfacing, which renders a character's skin as one large surface, allowed for smoother object movement, as well as more intricate detail. DeRose had been working on the technology at the University of Washington, and had already brought subdivision surfaces to CAD makers, who were ultimately unconvinced, and held their faith in NURBS, before bringing it to Pixar, which was much more receptive. [3]

On the clothing side, after toiling endlessly by candlelight, Kass managed to create a system which could simulate the movement of cloth, at which point the team realized that the suit jacket they had modeled did not fit with Geri's movement outside of a default T-pose. According to Pinkava, Steve Jobs, upon a hearing about the issue, had offered to help him by enlisting tailor Giorgio Armani to help them design an outfit for Geri, which he ultimately declined. [2] The development of a dynamic cloth simulator made several changes to the way that animators work; for instance, the animation, when completed, needed to be sent to the simulator, which would automatically insert Geri's jacket and calculate its movements, rather than being directly sourced to the renderer after being finished. Geri also needed to be animated 30 frames in advance in order to get the simulation going, and animators could not "cheat" by having off-camera body parts go unanimated, as it would affect how the simulating program moved the clothing. [3]

Like other Pixar shorts, Geri's Game contains no spoken dialogue, and so is driven only by the actions and expressions of its main character. To further push the ability to convey the film's story, extra detail was put into Geri's facial rigging compared to previous rigging methods, with rigger Paul Aichele giving the character hundreds of face controls for animators to use. [2] These new, more detailed rigging methods went on to be used in A Bug's Life , which was being worked on at the same time. [2]

Staff

Like previous short films made by Pixar, Geri's Game was made by a temporary branch of Pixar employees, and was separate from the people working on the studio's feature films. It took roughly a year to produce, according to Pinkava, largely due to the amount of time allotted to developing the cloth simulation. [2] While the short was being made, most of Pixar Studios was preoccupied with making A Bug's Life. Despite this, there were 18 different animators [3] that worked on the project (including Pixar storywriter Pete Docter, who contributed a few scenes out of sheer interest [2] ). Despite being preoccupied directing A Bug's Life, John Lasseter suggested adding a scene in which Geri checks to make sure he is alright after seeing his alter ego stage a heart attack and keel over; Lasseter physically staged out the entire scene to Pinkava. [2]

Release

Geri's Game premiered on November 24, 1997 at Laemmle's Monica Theater in Santa Monica, California. [1] It was also attached to the theatrical release of Pixar's second feature film, A Bug's Life , in 1998, [11] and subsequently featured on that film's VHS and DVD releases in 1999. [12]

Awards

1998

Notes

Related Research Articles

<i>Toy Story</i> 1995 Pixar film

Toy Story is a 1995 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the Toy Story franchise, it was the first entirely computer-animated feature film, as well as the first feature film from Pixar. The film was directed by John Lasseter, written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow based on a story by Lasseter, Stanton, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft, produced by Bonnie Arnold and Ralph Guggenheim, and features the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Annie Potts, John Ratzenberger, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, and Jim Varney.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pixar</span> American computer animation studio (founded 1986)

Pixar Animation Studios, known simply as Pixar, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Since 2006, Pixar has been a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, a segment of the Walt Disney Company.

Modern animation in the United States from the late 1980s to 2004 is frequently referred to as the renaissance age of American animation. During this period, many large American entertainment companies reformed and reinvigorated their animation departments, following the dark age, and the United States had an influence on global and worldwide animation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin Catmull</span> Computer scientist and co-founder of Pixar (born 1945)

Edwin Earl Catmull is an American computer scientist and animator who served as the co-founder of Pixar and the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored for his contributions to 3D computer graphics, including the 2019 ACM Turing Award.

Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capabilities and a flexible plugin architecture and must be used on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is frequently used by video game developers, many TV commercial studios, and architectural visualization studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie pre-visualization. 3ds Max features shaders, dynamic simulation, particle systems, radiosity, normal map creation and rendering, global illumination, a customizable user interface, and its own scripting language.

<i>Toy Story 2</i> 1999 Pixar film

Toy Story 2 is a 1999 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the sequel to Toy Story (1995) and the second installment in the Toy Story franchise. The film was directed by John Lasseter, co-directed by Ash Brannon and Lee Unkrich, and produced by Helene Plotkin and Karen Robert Jackson, from a screenplay written by Andrew Stanton, Rita Hsiao, Doug Chamberlin, and Chris Webb, and a story conceived by Lasseter, Stanton, Brannon, and Pete Docter. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts, R. Lee Ermey, John Morris, Laurie Metcalf and Jeff Pidgeon reprise their roles from the first Toy Story film. In the film, Woody is stolen by a greedy toy collector, prompting Buzz Lightyear and his friends to save him, but Woody is then tempted by the idea of immortality in a museum.

<i>A Bugs Life</i> 1998 American animated film

A Bug's Life is a 1998 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's second feature-length film, following Toy Story (1995). The film was directed by John Lasseter, co-directed by Andrew Stanton, and produced by Darla K. Anderson and Kevin Reher, from a screenplay written by Stanton, Donald McEnery, and Bob Shaw, and a story conceived by Lasseter, Stanton, and Joe Ranft. It stars the voices of Dave Foley, Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Hayden Panettiere. In the film, a misfit ant named Flik, looks for "tough warriors" to save his ant colony from a protection racket run by a gang of grasshoppers. However, the "warriors" he brings back are a troupe of Circus Bugs. The film's plot was initially inspired by Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper.

<i>Tin Toy</i> 1988 short film by John Lasseter

Tin Toy is a 1988 American animated short film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter. The short film, which runs for five minutes, stars Tinny, a tin one-man band toy, trying to escape from Billy, a human baby. The third short film produced by the company's small animation division, it was a risky investment: due to the low revenue produced by Pixar's main product, the Pixar Image Computer, the company was under financial constraints.

<i>Knick Knack</i> 1989 film directed by John Lasseter

Knick Knack is a 1989 American animated short film produced by Pixar that was written and directed by John Lasseter. The short is about a snow globe snowman who wants to join the other travel souvenirs in a summer-themed party. However, the glass dome that surrounds him prevents him from doing so, thus leading to his many tries to break out of his snow globe. Knick Knack is Pixar's fourth short and the final short produced during the company's tenure as a hardware company. It was also the final Pixar short film released before the company's first feature-length film Toy Story.

In the field of 3D computer graphics, a subdivision surface is a curved surface represented by the specification of a coarser polygon mesh and produced by a recursive algorithmic method. The curved surface, the underlying inner mesh, can be calculated from the coarse mesh, known as the control cage or outer mesh, as the functional limit of an iterative process of subdividing each polygonal face into smaller faces that better approximate the final underlying curved surface. Less commonly, a simple algorithm is used to add geometry to a mesh by subdividing the faces into smaller ones without changing the overall shape or volume.

<i>Luxo Jr.</i> 1986 animated short film directed by John Lasseter

Luxo Jr. is a 1986 American animated short film produced and released by Pixar. Written and directed by John Lasseter, the two-minute short film revolves around one larger and one smaller desk lamp. The larger lamp, named Luxo Sr., looks on while the smaller, "younger" Luxo Jr. plays exuberantly with a ball to the extent that it accidentally deflates. Luxo Jr. was Pixar's first animation after Ed Catmull and John Lasseter left the Lucasfilm Computer Division. The film is the source of Luxo Jr., the mascot of Pixar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Lasseter</span> American filmmaker (born 1957)

John Alan Lasseter is an American film director, producer, and animator. He has served as the Head of Animation at Skydance Animation since 2019. Previously, he acted as the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.

<i>Reds Dream</i> 1987 short film by John Lasseter

Red's Dream is a 1987 American animated short film written and directed by John Lasseter and produced by Pixar. The short film, which runs four minutes, stars Red, a unicycle. Propped up in the corner of a bicycle store on a rainy night, Red dreams of a fantasy where it becomes the star of a circus. Red's Dream was Pixar's second computer-animated short following Luxo Jr. in 1986, also directed by Lasseter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jan Pinkava</span> Czech-British-American writer and animator

Jan Jaroslav Pinkava is a Czech-British-American producer, director, writer, and animator. He directed the Pixar short film Geri's Game and served as co-director and co-wrote the story for Ratatouille, both of which went on to win Oscars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Ranft</span> American screenwriter (1960–2005)

Joseph Henry Ranft was an American animator, screenwriter, and voice actor. He worked for Pixar Animation Studios and Disney at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney Television Animation. His younger brother Jerome Ranft is a sculptor who also worked on several Pixar films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Circle Seven Animation</span> Former division of Walt Disney Feature Animation

Circle Seven Animation was a short-lived division of Walt Disney Feature Animation specializing in computer-generated imagery (CGI) animation and was originally intended to create sequels to the Disney-owned Pixar properties, leading rivals and animators to derisively nickname the division "Pixaren't". The studio did not release any films during its existence, nor were any of its scripts used by Pixar.

<i>A Computer Animated Hand</i> 1972 American film

A Computer Animated Hand is the title of a 1972 American computer-animated short film produced by Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke. Produced during Catmull's tenure at the University of Utah, the short was created for a graduate course project. After creating a model of his left hand, 350 triangles and polygons were drawn in ink on its surface. The model was digitized from the data and laboriously animated in a three-dimensional animation program that Catmull wrote.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angus MacLane</span> American animator (born 1975)

Angus MacLane is an American animator, filmmaker and voice actor, best known for his work at Pixar Animation Studios. He co-directed the film Finding Dory (2016) and made his solo feature directorial debut with the Toy Story spin-off film Lightyear (2022). MacLane is also a Lego enthusiast and created the CubeDudes building format and designed a LEGO WALL-E that has become an official set from The Lego Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Kass</span> American computer scientist

Michael Kass is an American computer scientist best known for his work in computer graphics and computer vision. He has won an Academy Award and the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award and is an ACM Fellow.

References

  1. 1 2 Pixar Animation Studios (November 24, 1997). "Question: Where Can You Get a Glimpse of the Future of Animation?; Answer: At an Exclusive Screening - From the Makers of 'Toy Story' - Tonight!". The Free Library. Archived from the original on March 4, 2018. Retrieved March 30, 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 "'Geri's Game' Turns 20: Director Jan Pinkava Reflects On The Game-Changing Pixar Short". Cartoor Brew. 25 November 2017. Retrieved November 26, 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Robertson, Barbara (February 1998). "Meet Geri: The New Face of Animation" (PDF). Computer Graphics World. Retrieved May 7, 2018.
  4. ↑ "Tin Toy 1988 Film Short Pixar". YouTube . Retrieved February 25, 2021.[ dead YouTube link ]
  5. ↑ "Interview with Jan". Pixar. February 2002. Archived from the original on March 4, 2012. Retrieved August 13, 2014.
  6. ↑ "Geri's Game (1997)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on September 28, 2016. Retrieved September 10, 2016.
  7. ↑ Geri's Game - Behind the Scenes Archived 2012-04-14 at the Wayback Machine at Pixar
  8. ↑ Robertson, Barbara. "Meet Geri: The New Face of Animation" Archived 2011-05-11 at the Wayback Machine , Computer Graphics World, 1998.
  9. ↑ DeRose, T; Kass, M; Truong, T (1998), "Subdivision surfaces in character animation" (PDF), Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 1998, archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-01-13
  10. ↑ "Subdivision Surfaces in Character Animation" (PDF). graphics.pixar.com. Retrieved 14 April 2015.
  11. ↑ Maslin, Janet (25 November 1998). "A Bug's Life (1998)". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
  12. ↑ "The $152 Million Hit Movie That Broke All Thanksgiving Box Office Records". Pixar. 29 January 1999. Archived from the original on December 30, 2010. Retrieved May 6, 2012.
  13. ↑ "The 70th Academy Awards (1998) Nominees and Winners". The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved April 6, 2012.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.