Tarun Lak Instagram – I joined the #elemental team early in preproduction, back in spring ‘21, before the characters were going to get built. My first assignment was to explore something in 2d that could help inform what we might wanna do with the characters. So I came up with this test- I wanted to see how a fire character would have to perform human like physical actions. Given that she was going to have a delivery scooter, I thought I’d play with that. Fire having no solid definition, would morph, shrink or grow in different situations. It can get lost in quick movement and regrow itself due to the person’s “life force”. What was fun to discover was that fire people would need to exert more energy, equaling more intense fire to lift heavy objects or push/pull anything. The lack of bones or flesh meant they weigh very little so it lent itself to a very lose style of movement, making sure we never felt too much structure in the body, only enough to keep them looking like their design, reading their acting and distinguishable from other fire people. All this also allowed for some really fun loose firey shapes, abstract smears, fire trails, etc, that made these characters uniquely fun to explore and animate. Never thought I’d have a chance to do 2d professionally, even as exploratory tests, so this was really fun to do. More work soon! #pixar #elemental #2danimation #animationtest #ember #lumen