PRINT HEAD: WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLDS
SUBHEAD: South African visual effects artist Ferdi Scheepers tells Tymon Smith how - as an 'alien' in the US - he enjoyed helping create Pixar's 'Elio', which is about a boy who moves to an alien land
Elio, the latest film from animation giants Pixar has, like nearly every film the studio has produced since 2002, a South African connection. That’s because one of the hundreds of people who's worked on it is visual effects artist Ferdi Scheepers. Scheepers has worked for Pixar since 2002 and has been involved in hit animated films including Toy Story 4, Inside Out, Brave, The Incredibles, Wall-E and the Oscar-winning short Piper.
As a child growing up in Joburg in pre-television South Africa, Scheepers recalls his first real exposure to cartoons came as a 10-year-old when he accompanied his father on a trip to the US. Shows like The Flintstones triggered the young Scheepers’ imagination, and his father encouraged his interest, showing him how to make cell drawing animations using a single stop 8mm camera.
In high school Scheepers did computer studies and quickly realised that computers could be a great tool for creating animation. At university he studied computer graphics, first in South Africa and later in the US at Ohio State University. After returning home he spent several years working for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which sponsored his PhD studies in the US. Scheepers remembers attending a conference in the US where Steve Jobs was the keynote speaker. “He showed the two first Pixar shorts and those just blew me away. At that point I said, 'I want to work for this company'.” In 2002, Scheepers achieved his goal and has been a part of the Pixar team ever since.
Scheepers was impressed all those years ago by what the studio was doing, “It was so different,” he says. “Nobody else at that point did anything like it. Pixar basically created the computer animation field.” Though he admits he’s biased, he still thinks that Pixar is the best animation studio in the world.
Usually, as an effects artist, Scheepers is brought on towards the end of a project, but in the case of Elio — a film about a young boy who believes in aliens and desperately wants them to abduct him — he’s been involved for the better part of the last four years. “They needed someone to help with the creation of one of the characters. The character Ooooo is a liquid supercomputer, an emoji-like character that helps Elio with certain tasks and provides ways for him to communicate. I helped to create and design that character. The task was to try and portray this character as a highly intelligent being with some energy. I created these traversing signals inside the character that help to portray that. So, I worked on Elio really early,” says Scheepers.
Scheepers feels a personal affinity with the story of Elio. “As an immigrant, I’m also an alien in the US. The film is about finding a path to do what you really want to be able to do. Elio feels alone on Earth. He has an idea that perhaps he can be accepted in another world, an alien world, so he goes on a journey that takes him to an alien land where he makes friends. I feel close to that story,” he says.
He's also a fan of the way the film goes into the sci-fi genre and turns it upside down. “There are interesting and weird characters that aren’t your typical sci-fi characters. That’s what Pixar brings to most of the genres we tackle — a twist that’s interesting and different.”
As a PhD graduate in computer graphics, Scheepers is also better placed than most to observe the ways that swift advances in computer technology have affected his field over the years. He acknowledges that over the 23-years or so he's worked at Pixar there have been tremendous advances in technology. For him, the issue isn't about technology replacing his work. “Once you get a tool that works better, you want to do more and accomplish more. The challenge is always that you want to get better and better. Therefore you allow better tools to help you improve and work harder. Certainly, our work has become easier but since we’re doing more, it kind of stays the same.”
The real satisfaction of the many long hours that Scheepers and the team of hundreds of people who worked to bring Elio to the screen comes when he shows it to his kids and grandkids for the first time. “It’s amazing to see how they react and how they love the work I’m doing. It makes me feel proud, privileged and fortunate to be able to work in this industry.”
Having seen the finished film a few times now, Scheepers believes that Elio feels like one of those unique, beautiful Pixar movies. “I think audiences are to going to love it,” he says. “I hope audiences take away a sense of belonging and finding the people you can relate to.”
For young wannabe Pixar animators in South Africa who want to follow their dream as Scheepers has done, his advice is: “Never stop trying, work as hard as you can, show your work as early as you can to a lot of people, get their feedback and listen to what they’re saying. Just try, try, try.”
Elio is on circuit
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