Auto rickshaws get the Pixar treatment

Cars 3 story artist animates the popular Indian three-wheeler
Auto rickshaws get the Pixar treatment

Pixar’s Cars remains one of the most well recognized animation franchises in India. The films Cars (2006) and Cars 2 (2011) received an overwhelming response from local audiences. Now as Cars 3 revs up for release, Disney has given us a peak into what Cars would look like if it were to be made in India. Joining the Cars characters (which includes a Hybrid between a stock car and a more curvaceous Le Mans endurance racer, a Porsche 911, a Hudson Hornet, a Wrecker Tow-Truck and a Chevrolet Impala) is a traditional Indian auto rickshaw. 

Cars 3 story artist Michael Daley, who helped create the initial visuals, or the blue print, of the film, has CARS-ified the Indian three-wheeler, and says, "I thought it's pretty interesting to make a Cars character out of a rickshaw!" 

He has never been to India, but having grown up on California and San Diego, where he had seen similar rickshaws, he had a basic idea of a rickshaw - part bicycle and part carriage. Daley adds, "However, they weren't that ornate so I decided to put a little more detailing, but not get too crazy because I was trying to keep it simple."

"I did a lot of research on these awesome Indian rickshaws on the internet and it was very important to decide where to put the face; the eyes and the mouth. Some of them had a boxy feel or a blank spot in the front where the handle bars were, and I just chose that place to put the eyes and the mouth," he says. Usually the eyes and mouth are put on a big blank spot on the cars; usually the windshield but, here he says, "we needed a spot to put for some of these character's faces and eyes in a spot where you can see very clearly like what they are doing without using the headlamp. It was just interesting to see how the rickshaws worked."

Daley says working on this design sent him down a huge hole of research on how the handlebars attached to the wheels, the carriage at the back, etc. "So looking at all of that I had to do a very simplified version to get the basic idea across without getting too crazy complicated so it was really fun to do research on"

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