From Perth to Pixar: Animator Simon Allen on “Cars 2”, “Toy Story 3” and What Goes Down Behind the Scenes

Most kids who fall in love with television or the movies dream of being on screen. They don't usually dream of working behind-the-scenes.

As a young child, Simon Allen was watching a segment on The Wonderful World of Disney that explained how people turned drawings into moving pictures on the screen.

Until that moment, he had just assumed a job meant working on the farm or getting into real estate, like his father.  

It was then, however, that everything clicked for Simon and he realised he could actually draw for a living. “I always thought that [farming and real estate] was what work was,” Simon explained. When he realised that he could do something he was truly passionate about, he set off on that path.

Simon spoke to Student Edge about his experience working at Pixar, particularly on Cars 2 and Toy Story 3, helping us understand more about the process of animation, ahead of a special screening of the new Cars 3 he'll be introducing in his hometown of Perth on Monday.

How did he end up at Pixar?

Simon started his career at Weta Digital, a little known New Zealand company at the time, founded by Peter Jackson and two others in the early nineties. He worked on The Frighteners as a digital compositor (someone who puts pictures together) and while he also toiled on other big titles such as The Matrix Revolutions and Men In Black II, it wasn't until 2006's Happy Feet that his 3D animation story really started.

Allen was working in Sydney on Happy Feet with a unique piece of software that Pixar was looking to start using on their upcoming film, Ratatouille. Through a few well-placed connections, he managed to land a role on the film. It had taken him 10 years and countless tries, but he had finally made it into the granddaddy of all modern animation studios: Pixar.

“I always wanted to get into Pixar since seeing the first Toy Story movie in 1995,” Simon admitted. He was finally going to get the chance to work alongside his animation idol, John Lasseter, the creator of Pixar’s iconic Luxo lamp animations and current chief creative officer of Pixar and Disney.

What does an animator actually do?

A day in the life of an animator might sound like a whole bunch of fun, but it is equal amounts gruelling. A whole week of animation production will average about three seconds of footage. “Some weeks, you might have a good week and you’ll get six seconds, but then other weeks, you might only get one second,” Simon laughed.

As an animator, Simon says he is also basically an actor in the movie. “We’re the ones who come up with the performance of how the character’s going to act,” he explained.

It starts with a “kick-off” where the director shows the animators some simple storyboards, and then the animators go away and listen to what the voice actors have performed, discussing the actions and emotions of the characters in those scenes. They then physically act it out in front of a video camera and do a mixture of sketches to present to the director.

“The animation process is a lot of iterations,” Simon said.

Once they've gotten the director’s seal of approval, they begin animating the sequences, starting with broad strokes and continually refining them. After getting further approval from the director, they begin the final animation. “Fifty per cent of our responsibility is actually making sure that we planned it thoroughly; we haven’t just gone with the most obvious or cliché performance,” he explained.

What were some of his favourite moments?

Working on 2010's Toy Story 3 was one of the highlights for Simon. Why? “[The Toy Story series is] where 3D-animated feature films all started,” he elaborated. It’s an answer most animators will probably give when asked why they wanted to first get into the industry. He even believes Cars’ lead character, Lightning McQueen, was given the number 95 because that’s the year the first Toy Story came out. (Another sneaky Easter Egg.)

It wasn’t until the following year on Cars 2, during a break from working on Brave’s Merida and Fergus, that Simon finally got his chance to work with the legendary John Lasseter.

They collaborated on the final scene of Cars 2, where a confrontation occurs (minor spoiler) between Mater, the tow truck, and Axlerod, a green Range Rover.

“For me, getting to sit alongside [Lasseter] and have him direct me was a phenomenal experience,” he remembered.

Can I become an animator too?

Simon said it's all about finding inspiration as well as a mentor. "Surround yourself with great talent and be inspired by them and collaborate with them," he said. Practise, of course, is also a major key.

Today, Simon works as a lecturer at Murdoch University, where he teaches 3D animation. If you have any more questions, you can catch him at the special Cars 3 screening on Monday, June 19, 7pm at Event Innaloo.

Cars 3 arrives in cinemas June 22.

Photo: Disney Pixar / Supplied