The fiery characters presented a special challenge
“The first challenge was to figure out what Ember would look like. We looked at photo and video reference for fire. We tried experiments. We [tried] a cartoony face on realistic fire, and it didn’t look right. We realized this had to be a balance between realism and cartoony, stylized fire, and we needed a team of experts to help us,” explained visual effects supervisor Sanjay Bakshi. “So we squeezed artists, animators, technical folks, production people in a room and asked them to make Ember in the computer. Fire is too dynamic—every three weeks, we challenged ourselves to come up with a new version of Ember. So many versions, each learning from the last and applying ideas to the next.”
