It was a great experience though.

It was too complicated.

Just having some of that background could really help us.

In the old days, you had 480 lines to work with.

Moving one pixel around on there would make a dramatic difference?

When you scale everything up further, is it the same level of impact for you?

So where do you pitch it?

We really did have a go at limit ourselves.

Which means those characters are like, maybe maximum, 80 pixels tall.

We really did design them with that in mind.

It gives it a believability thats really satisfying.

You see the little RGB pixels through the screen.

We really tried to be as accurate as possible in how that worked.

Everything is getting processed through a red green or blue pixel.

We tried to capture that.

The best very animated work is generally about brilliantly chosen imperfections I think…

This seems to epitomise that quite a lot.

Digging into the imperfections of the past and turning them into something so vast?

At the end of the day, its still the same design problems: value structure, colour structure.

To get things and characters to read appropriately.

That limitation provides a certain sense of humour to the image.

So how much work did you do with some of the third party characters you had to work with?

Pac-Man needs to be this Pantone colour, for instance.

A lot of what we did was trying to match that stuff.

But we really tried to be as authentic as possible to the design sheets we were provided with.

So it looked like what these characters looked like in the game.

Wed send shots to the various companies, so they could be satisfied.

Theres a little back and forth that happened, but it went pretty well.

We really tried to be as respectful and authentic as we could.

Its definitely a challenge, because things do drop in and out.

Were not going to get this character one week, then hey, were going to get it!

If my chronology is right, the research work started about four years ago…?

It started about two and a half, three years ago.

And did you come in at that point?

Maybe images that are indicative of the imagery they wont in the film.

At that point, we decide what we need to do to make this movie.

What kind of challenges was your software having to address?

It really is getting that sense of light.

With food lighting, a lot of it is about these really broad big reflections.

They use a lot of big area boxes in lighting food and things like that.

That stuff is really important to make food look appealing.

And theyre physically accurate, so they look really believable.

We really needed that to make the food look as appealing and believable as it is in real life.

But thats a double-edged sword for you.

Where did you find the film this time?

Heres a game thats going to be like a racing game.

And it ran like that.

And its like, how do we make those things look as authentic and unique as possible.

We look at Fix-It Felix, an 8-bit game.

So your intuition is to make it as simple as you might: flat shading models for that.

Theres an academic process you go through, which is great, because all our brains are going.

Then you think we know what were going to do.

It wasnt appealing enough.

But on our lookboard, that sounded like the best contrast between the first person shooter.

But when we got to the movie, it didnt work.

You worked onArmageddontoo, I understand.

Was this one harder then?

I think it is.

You knew what the problem was that you had to solve, and then you solved it.

I think really there the problem was with the computing power: how are we going to do this?

With an animated movie, you have access to the director all day long.

Its a much more creative process than visual effects.

Were not just going to put in a plate thats already been shot.

Were going to make every pixel that you see on screen in this studio.

Every single thing happens on the computers in this building.

Has it whetted your appetite to go off and make a movie of your own?

My background is painting.

I really like working with value structures and colour structures and trying to tell stories.

Thats what I enjoy doing.

So I feel fortunate that I get to do that.

Adolph Lusinsky, thank you very much.

Wreck-It Ralphis out in theUKon February 8th.