Pixar Playlist #8 - Ratatouille

Ladies and Gentlemen, whether you like it or not, the Pixar Playlist

Didn’t take long for Brad Bird to come back, did it? Today we’re looking at Ratatouille

This originally started as the brainchild of Jan Pinkava in 2000, she went through several drafts but none everyone was absolutely happy with. Bob Peterson was brought in and given control of the story for a while, but ultimately left to work on UP, a film that we will get to soon. Brad Bird, after his success on the Incredibles was brought in and was quick about changing things, certain designs changed to fit his vision.

In terms of animation, there were challenges here, a small scene in the sewers had more complex water animation than Finding Nemo did and there was also the challenge of making appetising looking food using CGI. The crew did their research in culinary arts, including taking classes and dining around the restaurants, they also had to learn about how a restaurant kitchen works and Brad Bird even interned at one for a time. As per usual, Pixar goes above and beyond in their research.

Pixar Playlist #6 - The Incredibles

Ladies and Gentlemen, whether you like it or not, the Pixar Playlist

The Incredibles represented a unique challenge for Pixar, as the first film that had leads that were all human, and an entirely human set of background characters, requiring new techniques for animating clothing, muscle and hair but this film presented unique challenges in animating fire, water, air, steam, explosives and dust. It had quadruple the number of the locations of other Pixar films and at the time had the longest run-time. Topping all that off, the writer and director of this film, Brad Bird was pretty new to the CGI game. His previous film was The Iron Giant, which did utilise CG, but not to this extent.

With all that in mind, it’s amazing this film ended on a $92m budget, $2m less than the much less innovative and shorter Finding Nemo. The film went onto making $633m at the box office and continues Pixar’s streak of critical hits with a 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating. But where does it rank on the Pixar Playlist, let's take a look