"Wall-E' can trace parentage to Ky.

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

On Friday, Lexington native Bill Wise's latest project hits the big screen.

He's not a director, producer or actor. He is a behind-the-scenes supervisor for one of the biggest movies of the summer.

Wise was the character supervisor for WALL-E, the latest release from Pixar Animation Studios, the pioneering studio in computer animation.

Wise's fascination with science fiction and special effects began in a decidedly analog era, when filmmakers had to make physical models of the space ships and robots that dazzled him. He tried to create his own ­versions of the USS Enterprise and other ships from his first love, Star Trek, and he later became intrigued by Star Wars.

”I made models out of tin foil and ­masking tape,“ Wise says. ”My parents couldn't keep them in stock. ...

”I don't remember thinking of that as a career option,“ he said of animation. ”That was something these guys out on the moon did. California might as well have been on the moon.“

After graduating from Henry Clay High School in 1982, Wise went to Eastern Kentucky University and then studied art at Indiana University.

”I was a painter. I got in the ­painting ­program, and it was oil paint and ­watercolors,“ he says. ”Computers were the farthest thing from my mind.“

Well, not entirely. Some early computer-generated imagery — in Disney's Tron and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan — did catch his eye

After graduating from Indiana, Wise got a job illustrating manuals for the Navy Safety School in Bloomington, Ind. He was hand-drawing, then digitizing the images for the manual's computer layouts.

”That got me thinking about computers,“ Wise said.

About that time, in a computer-­programming magazine, he saw computer-generated images of people that looked stunningly real accompanying an article about RenderMan, a computer program from a little movie outfit called Pixar.

It was 1986.

”Pixar was just being born at this time,“ Wise says. ”I was just enough of a gearhead that I had to figure out how they did that.“

That led him to teach himself computer programming. It also put him in touch with people at Pixar.

”I wish I could say I instantly saw how this would become a multibillion-dollar thing, but I didn't,“ he says.

When Pixar began to staff up for the creation of the 1995 movie Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated feature, Wise landed a job.

His initial job was to put his artist's eye ­toward lighting, a key to realistic animation, getting shadows and hues right for every frame.

Since then, he has had his hands in numerous Pixar projects, including Monsters Inc., A Bug's Life and The Incredibles, as well as For the Birds, a short.

WALL-E, the story of the last robot on earth in the 28th century, has occupied several years of his life.

”I was one of the first people on the show,“ Wise says of his role as character supervisor. ”It's basically a management ­position where I talk to the director, talk to the character designer, get their thoughts on the characters physically, and analyze ­problems. We ask, "What do we need to accomplish with this character? What do we need to accomplish it? Do we need to develop new technology to do that?'

”A lot of it is sort of planning and setting big goals. You make sure you're clear in communicating, and hopefully you're having fun.“

After all, what good is spending your life with robots, spaceships and superheroes if you're not having fun?

”You put three or four years of your life in a project, and you want to feel like it was worth it,“ Wise says. ”You want people to be proud of what goes up on the screen.“

That includes the folks back home. Wise's mother and stepfather, Joyce and Larry Stanley, live in Nicholasville, and a lot of his family is still in Central Kentucky. His father, Fred Wise, now lives in Georgia.

Wise gets back to Kentucky at least once a year, for the holidays.

With WALL-E, he draws a comparison that takes him back to those childhood days when space films were made with models that seemed to have been created by guys on the moon.

”I always thought R2-D2 was the most loveable robot ever,“ Wise says, referring to Star Wars' canister-shaped hero. ”But I think WALL-E is more lovable than R2-D2. I never thought I'd say that.“