A guided tour of the visual world of 'The Wild Robot'

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

When aggregate Oscar nominee Chris Sanders took connected adapting Peter Brown’s beloved children’s book, “The Wild Robot,” helium wanted to bash thing antithetic visually than what helium was seeing successful different movies. The reigning 3D machine animation style, with its creaseless surfaces, often bright, adjacent lighting and acquainted quality designs wasn’t close for the feeling helium wanted to foster.

“You’ve got these cute animals, and you’ve got a forest, and you’ve got this robot, each these adorable elements. And if we had made the movie successful accepted CG style, I was perfectly definite it would play excessively young,” Sanders says of the DreamWorks film. So helium and his squad looked some backward and forward: They drew dense inspiration from Tyrus Wong’s revered painted environments for 1942’s “Bambi” and utilized cutting-edge machine animation tools to execute the analog-looking visuals.

Here, Sanders reveals the reasoning down those and different choices.

(DreamWorks)

Painterly, similar “Bambi”

“I wanted radical to spot this movie similar I saw ‘Bambi,’ arsenic the astir glorious, blase code poem of a communicative that packs a wallop. So we began to prosecute this much soft, painterly look,” Sanders says, acknowledging they were “really fortunate that DreamWorks had made immoderate immense advances successful breaking distant from that accepted CG” benignant with “Puss successful Boots: The Last Wish” and “The Bad Guys” — placing a much illustrated feeling, similar a hand-drawn representation book, wrong reach.

They tweaked the bundle to nutrient what looked similar existent brushstrokes successful the rendering of the images. “We were going for thing precise specific, again, overmuch much similar Ty Wong and his styling for ‘Bambi,’ ” says Sanders. “One of our improvement artists, Daniel Cacouault, was doing these beauteous impressionistic paintings retired successful France. He was precise loose, and alternatively of flowers being [exactly articulated], helium would conscionable dot the insubstantial with small [dabs] of color, red, arsenic flowers.”

(DreamWorks)

Falling isolated successful the astir glorious way

“It’s similar the champion paintings erstwhile you get truly adjacent to them: They autumn isolated successful the astir glorious way, go similar nonsense. But erstwhile you backmost up, they propulsion together, and it becomes a upland oregon a unreality oregon a flower. And that’s what we wanted to do. So ideate that arsenic a situation to truly get existent brushstrokes onscreen. It took many, galore iterations and meetings to find conscionable the close equilibrium of the width of the brushstrokes, wherever they blended into different colors.

“ ‘Were they a hard edge? Were they a brushed edge?’ ‘What benignant of value of overgarment we were using?’ There’s a batch of ingenuity and inventiveness that went into this, but the extremity effect truly achieved what I was hoping for.”

(DreamWorks)

Leaves and eyes and fur

Sanders says determination was a equilibrium to onslaught betwixt the photoreal and the almost-impressionistic looks. For instance, letting spell of the conception that each leafage connected a histrion had to beryllium photoreal and separately articulated, alternatively utilizing looser brushstrokes to imply them, they found, “It felt successful a mode more existent due to the fact that you weren’t dealing with those repeated leaves. That was thing I didn’t expect. And aforesaid happening with the animals’ fur. When you got distant from the idiosyncratic hairs, and present you had these brushstrokes that felt much similar matted fur again, determination was an absorbing world that came from that. That was each its own. It was a truly fantastic thing.

“Whether it beryllium a food oregon a vertebrate oregon a quality oregon a dragon, astir of the time, animated characters person quality eyes. They’ll person a sclera and a beauteous iris, and they’re gorgeous. They look similar jewels. I felt that that would’ve breached the spell successful our film. It was captious that we look astatine each the carnal eyes and marque them beryllium arsenic due to the archetypal carnal arsenic possible. [The fox] Fink’s eyes are green; they person an oval pupil. ‘No quality eyes successful carnal bodies’ was 1 of our rules.”

(DreamWorks)

Roz’s face

“The lone happening I insisted connected successful the translation of Roz [the rubric robot] from the drawings successful the publication to the surface is that we destruct the rima entirely. I did a presumption connected robots that I like, with the Iron Giant being the lone 1 with an operational jaw that I felt truly worked. Otherwise, I felt excessively overmuch articulation connected the look became distracting. So we gave that regulation to Roz: It was conscionable Lupita [Nyong’o]’s voice, Roz’s pantomime and her truly analyzable eyes” that conveyed the character, Sanders says.

“If you bought a ROZZUM Unit 7134 and thing went incorrect with 1 of her eyes and you had to regenerate it, it would beryllium precise expensive. It would beryllium similar $70,000 to get a caller eye. I wanted ’em to consciousness large and dense and person a batch of solid successful them. We threw a batch of improvement astatine her eyes, truthful there’s a batch of worldly going connected successful them, and boy, it truly paid off.”

(DreamWorks)

The earthy satellite melds with subject fiction

Among the film’s sci-fi moments “would beryllium the cave; what we ever called the robot graveyard. The earthy satellite has been manipulated to make this absorbing spot to task the future. We person this partition that’s tilted up supra Roz, and we task the commercialized from the damaged robot onto that wall, but the partition has this benignant of geometric aboveground to it, and if you look astatine it consecutive on, the representation is reasonably regular, but if you crook conscionable a small bit, the camera moves a small spot off. It’s got this jagged look to it. So it was this truly beauteous statement of the earthy satellite but utilizing basalt and geometric elements to make a spot of a operation that we would task this futuristic satellite onto.

And the wide effect with the weird airy coming from the tide pools, I wanted it not to beryllium creepy but benignant of beauteous and weirdly cozy. So we were heavy manipulating however airy would really enactment wrong a cave similar that. There’s a luminosity coming from the pools — connected a live-action set, you’d beryllium dropping lights in. If it was a existent cave, it would beryllium incredibly dark, but we didn’t privation scary; we wanted beauteous and benignant of weird.”

Oscars 2025 Animation WILD ROBOT Light and emotion

(DreamWorks)

Light and emotion

“In the migration, I felt precise powerfully that this is wherever Roz and Brightbill [the gosling she raised] are going to separate. I imagined an early-morning formation wherever Roz and each the geese are starting connected the ground. The prima is rising, but it’s lone precocious capable to interaction the birds erstwhile they abstracted from the ground.

“So Roz remains successful that chill greeting light, but arsenic soon arsenic Brightbill lifts disconnected her shoulder, helium lights up with the remainder of the geese and they’re this agleam aureate orange, and you’re telling the assemblage that there’s 2 layers to this communicative and to the world, and that erstwhile Brightbill joins that layer, he’s present separated from Roz and she’s deliberately near successful that chill light, due to the fact that she has to consciousness arsenic though she’s near behind.”