The Review Sketch: Tool Time at Pixar

The Review Sketch Tool Time at Pixar
If you were in the Pixar screening room where director Brad Bird regularly reviewed images for The Incredibles, you would have seen a cool, new tool in action - the Review Sketch tool.

This tool literally allowed Bird to draw on top of a projected image using a digitizing pen. The drawings were then accessible online by other members of his team.

"It's a classic animation thing to want to put a clear sheet over an image and draw on top of it," says Dr. Michael Johnson of the Studio Tools group and a software lead on The Incredibles.

"People here have even used dry-erase markers on their CRTs. We've always talked about wanting to sketch on top of stuff, but for a variety of technical reasons it's been hard to do."

That changed when The Incredibles - Brad Bird's 3D-CG feature debut - was underway. Bird was familiar with the CG techniques used in his largely traditionally animated Iron Giant, but the first instinct of this acclaimed 2D animator is to communicate by sketching.

"Brad's always giving a pen to someone and saying, 'Well, draw it,'" says Johnson.

Karon Weber, Pixar's user interface designer, soon noticed Bird's preference. "Karon observed that what Brad was doing in reviews was to have somebody put an image on a monitor that was, in turn, projected onto a white board. Brad would