Lou Romano was kind enough to drop by Platt College in San Diego to spend the day speaking with students and visitors alike. Lou is a native of San Diego, so this was quite a homecoming for him as it was his first time doing a presentation of this sort. I attended the last of the day, so he had a better handle of doing things this time around.

Lou began with a quick overview of his art career. He spent two years at CalArts between 1990-1992 before becoming an intern at Turner Entertainment, working in effects on "The Pagemaster" and "Cats Don't Dance." He would then be among those merging into Warner Bros. Animation, where he met Brad Bird in 1995. While most other animators aspired to work in character animation, Lou was more interested in design and visual development. He showed off an example of this through a personal piece inspired by Greek mythology, Poseidon in particular. After doing work on the shelved "Ray Gun" project, Lou would get to know Brad a little more while doing work on "The Iron Giant."

Lou would leave Warner Bros. and manage to get work at Pixar for the first time, taking part on one of the company's many failed attempts at in-house game development. Pete Docter saw what he liked and enlisted Lou to work on visual development for his film "Monsters, Inc." He would work on the project for six months and when he was done moved down to Los Angeles. He took part in doing storyboard art and background color design for "Dexter's Laboratory" and "The Powerpuff Girls."

In 1998, Brad Bird began to develop the idea for what would become "The Incredibles" and enlisted Lou to be on the project. Lou would end up becoming the film's production designer as he was already heavily involved in the project. It was at this point that Lou would spend the most of his presentation on in showing off the designs he did for the film.

He began showing off the early designs of the character who would become Mr. Incredible, looking at the different ways his mundane appearance would look. Among them was one where the character was very bald, glasses, a mustache, and grandpa socks. This would lead into a series of designs that would explain the color contrast between the mundane world and the world of the amazing. How the mundane would look cold and boring while the amazing was filled with brightness and excitement.

On explaining his method of doing a finished piece after a series of roughs: "Crystalize the idea."

Being a designer, Lou explained that his illustrations would be loose and rough while being clear enough to project the idea he was going for. From there, he showed designs of the early stages of a proposed antagonist. The various creatures were named Moltar, Arachnis, Black Saber and Crustaciss. He then explained that Brad would ultimate decide upon basing the character more on the actor Klaus Kinski, showing a picture to further show the idea was going.

After a series of designs of the villain that would later be shelved, he showed off the various ideas for the logo. Among them included one Brad Bird did on a notepad he got while working at Warner Bros. Lou explained the major design idea for the world the characters would live in was based in the 60's and 70's. "The peek in modern design," he explained as he showed off what were recognized as the four iconic production pieces.

Lou then showed a series of "Bob at work" designs to show off the bleakness of the mundane world that Mr. Incredible longs to escape. He managed to sneak in a design he said was done by renounded production design Ken Adam, showing the simplicity of the shapes. A picture of Edith Head would lead into a series of designs for the character said to have been one of the more difficult to create, Edna Mode.

Through the craziness and the zaniness, among them including the idea that she would have two pet dogs, he moved into a series of photos of an employee whose hair was used to model for Violet. From there were a couple of shots from the art reviews they would conduct, the shots shown showcasing their study of a Violet maquette. Lou then showed off color scripts, production designs that would set the tone for the look of the entire film from scene to scene. He then compared the designs to the scene from the film that closely resembles as well as shots from various films like "Oliver!" for examples of the color palette to use.

Lou would near the end of his presentation, showing off a series of designs that were used for lighting studies. The comparison to the closest resembling film frame were shown before he ended the whole slide show on a rather humorous note. Designs for Jack-Jack. He explained that one of the original ideas was for Jack-Jack to morph into ooze, but the animation was not working so they had to come up with new ideas. The last image shown was of the whole family with Jack-Jack in monster form towering over them. He noted that Brad Bird said, "Does Jack-Jack have to be bigger than everyone?"

The presentation was given a proper end by showing the "Magic Highway USA" clip from the 1958 "Disneyland" show. The Questions and Answers portion was mostly based around his working in Pixar and the benefits. When asked about the potential of a sequel to "The Incredibles," he said that the possibility was there but that Brad was busy on other projects. I asked him about "Up," which he is art director on. He said that he couldn't reveal too much since it was still mostly top secret, though he had just completed work on the project since he first came on in 2005.

He's asked whether or not he has a blog, which he does over at [link]. He noted that he was "behind technically." Once all the questions were asked, there was a raffle for some school related materials like T-shirts and mouse pads along with the grand prize of a signed copy of "Ratatouille," which Lou did the voice of Linguini for. With the presentation properly over, a number of people hung around to further ask him questions and get an autograph.

I got my picture taken with him and asked him a couple questions about his voicing Linguini before asking him about the difference working on a television series versus a feature film. He mentioned that because television shows required faster and quicker outputs, they generally take the first design he would sketch out and run with it while feature films would see him spend lots of time refining his piece. I shook his hand and couple times and made my exit.

Clubs: