Geri's Game

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Gerald's Game.
Geri's Game
Buena Vista Pictures
Release dates
Running time
5 minutes
CountryUnited States

Geri's Game is a 1997 American animated short film produced by

human being as its main character; Geri later made a cameo appearance in Toy Story 2 as "The Cleaner", here voiced by Jonathan Harris instead of Bob Peterson
.

Geri's Game was released eight years after

textures
on the human character himself.

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 therefore became part of a Pixar tradition of pairing shorts with feature films.

Plot

In an empty

concedes defeat
and gives the player with the glasses the prize: his false teeth. The camera zooms out to remind the audience that only one person was playing the game the entire time.

Development

Geri's Game was Pixar's first original short film since 1989, when

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

Ed Catmull decided that the studio should resurrect its short films production as a way to not only bring new animators and storytellers into Pixar, but also 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 3 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

green-lit and Karen Dufilho was issued to produce the project.[2]

Pinkava, who grew up in

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

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

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, Kass managed to create a system which could emulate/simulate the movement of cloth, at which point the team realized that the suit jacket they had modeled didn't 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 couldn't "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

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's 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.[12]

Awards

1998

References

  1. ^ a b 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. Retrieved March 30, 2013.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p "'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. ^ a b c d e 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.

External links

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