ZBrush Interview: ILM on Rango

[aurick]

From the moment you saw that first teaser with the wind-up toy fish flying across the highway, you were probably intrigued by Rango – the smash animated film starring Johnny Depp as its titular hero. Released on March 4, 2011, Rango has been a terrific success. In fact, it’s the highest-grossing film of 2011 worldwide so far!

A large part of the film’s success is the artistry behind it. George Lucas’ famed Industrial Light & Magic took the helm for the movie’s animation, with a result that Roger Ebert described as “respects the tradition of painstakingly drawn animated classics, and does interesting things with space and perspective with its wild action sequences.” There is no doubt that Rango has a visual style all its own and Pixologic was thrilled to be able to speak with the art team behind the movie to learn how it came about.

We hope you enjoy this special look into the artistry of Rango!

Click HERE for the Interview

Here's a sampler of the many images that you'll find. You can view them in high resolution from the interview pages.

©2011 Paramount Pictures, All Rights Reserved. Images courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic

Please join us in thanking Geoff and his entire team for their time sharing in this interview, as well as congratulating them on a job well done! We certainly hope that ILM will be doing more feature length animation in the future.

Thank you also to ILM and Paramount Pictures for consenting to share this interview with the ZBrush community.

Use this thread to discuss the interview!

Be sure to also check out our many past interviews, which can be found in the ZBrush Artist Interviews forum and the User Stories page at the Pixologic website.

[hemant.dangare]

Yesterday I saw Rango, Excellent Movie!! creatures, Bg, ligthing r awesome!!

Masterpiece from ILM!

[SolidSnakexxx]

Super cool..!!!! and the movie rocks. What a joy to read. Thank you so much.

[Jelmer]

Wicked article, amazing looking film, greatly inspiring, hats off!

Edit: Page 7, What do you like to see or look for in a demo reel?
Geoff's answer is the same text as what's written above the question.

[Strydus]

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Truly appreciate the time and effort the staff of ILM had to share their work with the Zbrush community.

[siyukalebtao]

Wow,amazing works. especially like the lookings!!

How are the scales of Rango in Page 6, especially along the mouth arraged tilable, so naturally? How to apply alphas nice and clean?

Thanks

[kungfujackrabbit]

I really enjoyed the large vistas in this film. Its not usually what you see in an animated film ILMs expereince in large scale matte painting really paid off and gave Rango a look all its own because of it.