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Getting to know Matt Wong

Effects artist Matt Wong tells us about his experience working on Pixar films. He emphasizes that artists work in teams, collaborating to create amazing visuals like water, fire, and clouds. They often face tough challenges and must redo their work several times to get it right, but they help each other persevere and innovate to find solutions.

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  • blobby green style avatar for user Nicole Verhoeven
    I am really grateful for these lessons. It is great for students to see where what we learn in school is actually used. But I wondered, where does the Math come in. You mentioned in one of the videos that math is part of it. How?
    (12 votes)
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    • hopper happy style avatar for user NPav
      All of the code behind the particle simulators involves a HUGE amount of math. Additionally, different aspects of the particle behaviors have to be calculated and recalculated in order to make them as realistic as possible. Its easy for us to do on Khan Academy because the programs have been simplified, but in real life people put a whole lot of hard work into making it right.
      (9 votes)
  • aqualine ultimate style avatar for user A.L
    Thanks, This helped me a lot.

    By the way, can you make a Cars 4 and a Finding Marlin?
    (5 votes)
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  • female robot grace style avatar for user 25leshi
    What was your favorite film to animate
    (4 votes)
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  • mr pants purple style avatar for user KAILAHUAK
    Hi my name is rose paisley I’ve been to four foster homes and well am about to go to military so yeah this is my story “Rose down here NOW” “Coming!” I put on my fanciest stuff which is not fancy at ALL and go downstairs oh no why is the FBI here?!?! “Mom?Why is the FBI here?” “Because of YOU I know what you did bought something off of MY credit card and hacked MY bank account so they are here to take you away.” “WHAT!?!?!?” “Yes to military school permanently!” “But why not back to foster care?” “Because I SAID SO.” “Cmon kid you gotta pack and HURRY we DONT have all day!!” How do you guys like my story if I get 5 positive comments I will try and publish this
    (4 votes)
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  • starky tree style avatar for user Josh Young
    Why does the video keep crashing on mobile devices?
    (3 votes)
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  • starky seed style avatar for user brownc7
    as someone who already has a basic experience with unity, I could probably now roughly recreate the cloud people. probably make the mesh first and then set it to cutout so nothing shows through, then create a thick, slow and highly varied gaseous particle system to almost cling to the skin. Am I on the right track here?
    (3 votes)
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    • leaf blue style avatar for user Raiyaan S.
      IDK. I', a bit of a beginner in Digital arts, but it seems to me like you're going the right way. I personally use blender, not unity, so I don't know a lot. Also, blender does not allow particle systems in the game engine, but apparently unity does. I think I should look into unity for myself. Game development is turning into a hobby of mine, maybe almost a career!
      (1 vote)
  • spunky sam blue style avatar for user 28996
    how do you get in to the pixar studios did you have to go to college
    (1 vote)
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  • female robot amelia style avatar for user Ana  ❤
    for what, why did your parents give you a science kit?
    (2 votes)
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  • starky sapling style avatar for user reagholt9547
    what software would work best for beginners in anamation
    (2 votes)
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  • duskpin sapling style avatar for user ✨🔥Sebastian🔥✨
    1 quick question what's that dino pixar short film or movie? idk
    (2 votes)
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Video transcript

(bell dinging) - As a kid my interests were sports. I loved playing outside, but more academically, I love math and science. One year for Christmas, my mom and dad got me a chemistry set and I went wild with it. I almost lit the house on fire. My first film here at Pixar was Partly Cloudy. It was a short film, directed by Pete Sohn. The cloud characters were originally hard surface characters, but we used particles to turn them in to fluffy cloud characters. The thing I like most about being an effects artist is the variety. I get to do water, fire, fireworks, smoke, dust. It's a little bit of everything. In effects we always work in teams. We split up the work into various shots, but we're always looking at each other's work, comparing each other's techniques, solutions to problems. It's a very collaborative effort. We give and take from each other, and we kinda try to match the look amongst the entire team. In effects, we usually deal with big hard problems. We almost always get it wrong the first time, the second time, and the third time. We do things over and over and over again, until we get them right. For some of the most difficult shots, I must have done it at least 15, 20 times before I got it right. And even then it maybe needed a few more iterations to get it exactly right.