Disney’s short film Paperman play before each screening of "Wreck-It-Ralph"this past summer. On Sunday, Pixar released an exclusive clip of of their upcoming short - The Blue Umbrella - to The Wall St. Journal. The Blue Umbrella will open for Pixar's "Monsters University", which opens on June 21st 2013. The Blue Umbrella marks the directorial debut of 36-year-old Saschka Unseld, a technical artist who's been with Pixar since 2008.
Judging from the clip, the story revolves around the titular character taking a fancy to a red umbrella on one rainy day. More importantly, it seems that Unseld is using his technical background to fine-tune photorealistic looks into the short. John Lasseter, Pixar's chief creative officer, remarked that, "We had never at Pixar attempted to produce images that looked absolutely photorealistic. We always took the tools that were capable of creating photorealistic imagery and created images the audience knew did not exist in the real world."
So, Saschka Unseld is paving the way for Pixar in using photorealistic look to tell a story. According to Steve May, Pixar's chief technology officer, some complex scenes in the short could have easily taken 20 to 30 hours to render an image for just one frame of the film. As Pixar fine-tune the technology, a photorealistic animated feature film from Pixar shouldn't be too far behind.
For a more in-depth look at the making of The Blue Umbrella, check out the Rainy City Tales 332 Tumblr.
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