NARRATOR: Once the basic outlines of the story are established, Pixar artists create color scripts, like this one for The Incredibles. The scripts start at the top and read across from left to right.
LOU ROMANO: It's really just to give, mostly the emotional tone of each scene, so that you get a sense of not only what the sequences will look like, but what they should feel like too emotionally, just with pure abstract shapes and color. You know, the way you might read sheet music.
NARRATOR: Production Designer Lou Romano spent four years working on The Incredibles.
LOU ROMANO: This is a computer animated film, and the medium can be very realistic. But with these color scripts I was more concerned with being as bare as I possibly could and still convey the most amount of information, and as far as the angularity of the design, almost treat it without any rendering, without any lighting, just pure color.
When I was working on actual shots, I would refer to these. So that I always knew what came before and what came after, in terms of the continuity of the scenes, but also always remind myself of what these scenes had to be at the bare essence, without getting caught up in all of the details.
