Before each Disney • Pixar animated film is an animated short film. I love these and look forward to them just as much as I do each new full-length animated feature. Piper is the new short that appears before Finding Dory, opening in theatres this Friday, June 17th.
PIPER – Concept Art by Jason Deamer (Production Designer). ©2016 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.
Piper is the story of a loveable sandpiper, directed by Alan Barillaro, and this hungry sandpiper hatchling ventures from her nest for the first time to dig for food by the shoreline. The only problem is, the food is buried beneath the sand where scary waves roll up onto the shore. It’s sweet and will melt your heart. If you’ve ever played at the beach and seen the sandpipers, you’ll love this short even more.
When I was in Monterey for the Finding Dory press day, I was able to talk with Alan Barillaro about Piper.
“PIPER” — In Pixar Animation Studios’ new short, “Piper,” a hungry sandpiper hatchling discovers that finding food without mom’s help isn’t so easy. Directed by Alan Barillaro (supervising animator “WALL•E,” “Brave”), the short debuts in theaters on June 17, 2016, in front of “Finding Dory.” ©2016 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.
Alan Barillaro said he’d always been fascinated by sandpipers. He said when he was a child and he’d go to the beach with his family and see that the sandpipers, he thought they were afraid of the water. He always felt sandpipers would make a great film character, the bird that was afraid of the water. As it turns out, they were waiting for the tide to go out so they could get the clams that would wash in with each swell of the tide.
BIG ADVENTURE — A hungry sandpiper hatchling ventures from her nest for the first time to dig for food by the shoreline in “Piper,” a new short from Pixar Animation Studios. Directed by Alan Barillaro (supervising animator “WALL•E,” “Brave”), “Piper” debuts in theaters on June 17, 2016, in front of “Finding Dory.” ©2016 Disney•Pixar. All Rights Reserved.
Story drives innovation. Alan really wanted the feathers for Piper to be realistic, so they worked on developing software to make that happen. Feathers were part of the acting in this short. There were millions of hairs used to make Piper fluffy. He also wanted to create a very intimate world for Piper. What does the world feel like when you’re only 4 inches tall? They worked hard to develop a story of the mother-daughter relationship, but in an animal world, not emoting as humans.
Piper takes place presumably in Northern California since that’s where they tried to capture the ocean footage initially, but the water was too murky, so they ended up going to Kuai to capture it. They then modeled the water based on the footage they captured.
Alan Barillaro mentioned that the language of the birds was a combination of actual bird tweets on other sound combinations. He said they initially had the birds noisier and then realized they were just too chatty. He needed to find a balance in the language between mother and daughter and the world around them.
Make sure to see Piper on Friday, June 17th before Finding Dory!
This movie is going to be fantastic. Disney•Pixar’s Finding Dory reunites everyone’s favorite forgetful blue tang, Dory, with her friends Nemo and Marlin on a search for answers about her past. What can she remember? Who are her parents? And where did she learn to speak Whale?
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I’ve was invited to Monterey courtesy of Disney • Pixar for a media event. As always, all opinions are my own.
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[…] crabs that the sea monster is feeding as Luca swims by look a lot like the hermit crab in the Pixar Short “Piper.” Luca's last name, Paguro, is also the Italian word for a hermit […]