Pixar: 20 Years of Animation

NARRATOR: On this wall are sketches for the new film Cars, set in a world with no humans, only vehicles. Production Designer Bill Cone points out that the image of a speeding car is a study of light effects.

BILL CONE: The car racing in the dirt is an attempt to just make a commonplace thing into a very strong poetic statement. We're just using a very extreme low light level, with intense color. And then using the smoke as a foil to further amplify that effect. Because smoke is like a curtain that has light coming through it.

NARRATOR: At the left you can see the setting of Cars - Ornament Valley, a place much like Monument Valley, on the border of Arizona and Utah. Bill thought that, just as people see objects from the human world in nature, cars should find car forms around them.

BILL CONE: I did a few pastels and paintings. And when we went out on Route 66, we kept seeing stuff. Once you get that idea, you'd see all these forms (laugh) sitting around.

NARRATOR: Next to the case here, at the bottom, you’ll find long mesas like car hoods. And above, a bit farther left, a butte with a round flat top like a radiator cap. The distant row of rocks jutting up in some of these images is based on Cadillac Ranch, a 1970s art installation by Ant Farm. Located outside Amarillo, Texas, it’s a series of half-buried Cadillacs, their back ends sticking up from the ground.