“Toy Story”, the first animated creature film made
by Pixar, was incredible successful at that time. Kids loved it, critics loved
it, and people in the animation field were knocked out. Although the “Toy Story” succeed, Pixar was
facing another serious challenge: what was the second product going to be? That
is a big problem and many people fear this thing, especially when people have
their first fantastic record. Many companies could not go thought that then
they went bankrupt and Pixar was a small animation studio just then. As they
first work, it was under tremendous pressure to create another miracle. Then
the “A Bug’s Life” was growing step by step to show people Pixar could handle
it. A total new story, characters and feeling. Animators did their research on
their own backyard and they used some tiny video cameras which were put on the
end of stick and they were placed on some wheels from LEGO then those cameras
could move under the plants and viewed thing as tiny bugs. Those cameras were
really helpful for those talented animators, such as they noticed that how
translucent everything was! “A Bug’s Life” was the first computer animated
widescreen movie. As Pixar’s second job, animators seemed they had greater
ambition as they built a complicated organic system, more details and more
technically difficult. The story is about ants, a swarm of laborious ants were
suffered the oppression of the lazy, atrocious grasshoppers perennial and the
ants had to offer their own food of the grasshoppers. Things changed after a
little smart and creative ant named Fillet ruined the whole food by accident
and the whole ant colony had to be punished for his mistake. Other ants
disliked him and thought him as a troublemaker then let him to find some helpers,
but actually they wanted to get rid of him. Fillet came back and with many “strong”
insects which were come from circus. After went thought many kinds of
experiences, those ants trusted fillet and the helpers, using their unite and
courage to overcame the enemy. At that time, the ticklish question was the system
could not show more than fifty ants in a scene technologically and technician
hoped the director could control the number of the ants and set them under the
limit. The director, John Lasseter said: “I think you guys can do better” and
he tried his best to helped them. He believed in them and pushed them. In the
end, thought new technology advancement, those artist transformed the 50 crowd into
431. That was unprecedented and without question, “A Bug’s Life” was very
successful and Pixar broke thought the second film syndrome. I watched this
movie when I was eight, it was really impressive. I love it as it shows me we
should never give up when we are facing difficulties and pressures. The small
weak ants never give up, they defend their homeland, belief and dream as the
same as Pixar. Another thing I really love are some sentences which said by Andrew Stanton, one of my
favorite animation directors: the biggest fear was just can you find out the
light in the bottle again? Can you make yourself as in love the second time
around and you realized you have to actually work now at making yourself as naïve
as you were in the first?” They give me a lot of inspiration. Yes, we should
continuous exceed ourselves to make the better us. Thanks for reading this
blog.
