Once again, as with Finding Nemo, production designer Ralph Eggleston is working on a Pixar Animation Studios project with writer-director Andrew Stanton. And, once again, it's a challenge. In fact, back in 2003, while discussing Finding Nemo, Eggleston told STARLOG (#314), "All of our films have taken giant leaps forward. It's always a challenge."
Now, sitting on Pixar's second floor in front of concept paintings prepared for the film, he pauses to consider WALL-E's great leaps. "We never made a film that started out to intentionally be as realistic-looking as possible," he explains. "If the audience doesn't believe in this world, they'll have a harder time believing that WALL-E is the last robot on Earth. That's the biggest challenge. That, and just the film's scope, the level of detail. Acts Two and Three dramatically changed several times. That always happens; just not so much as on this one. We started from square one. The one thing that didn't change was the love story.
"Act One was a perfect birth," Eggleston says. "Everyone ate it up and loved it. It didn't change very much — little things that provided some set-up that we needed to pay off later on once we discovered what the movie was really about. Every version of Act Two became so plot-heavy that the love story unintentionally got lost. We were second-guessing every move we made, because we were afraid we would bore the audience if there wasn't enough activity going on."
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