Kamal Mistry

Kamal Mistry

TD of P I X A R Animation studios

Look at one of the Pixar artists who worked behind the scenes on 'The Incredibles' and ‘Cars’. with one of its own, Kamal Mistry, a technical director for Pixar who has been worked on The Incredibles &cars for five and a half years now.( A life long love of drawing, painting and computers sent Kamal Mistry down a path that led to Pixar Animation Studios in 2001)

As a Technical Director on Pixar’s latest film, The Incredibles and Cars, Kamal contributed to a team that pioneered ground breaking techniques for modeling and simulating hair for each of the movie’s characters. Additionally, he was responsible for articulating the film’s character Edna Mode as wellas the creation of explosions and various effects in the movie.

Priorto Pixar, Kamal spent some time at post-production houses in New Zealand as an animator creating 3D graphics for television commercials. e also worked in London, UK as an instructor and animator at Silicon Studio, a facility created to teach computer graphics. He has been involved in the computer graphics industry since 1993.

Beyond is interest n animation and computers, Kamal found inspiration for his career through Computer Graphics World magazine, which some how found its way to him in the African country of Zambia, where he lived as a child.

Born in a town called Valsad, in the Gujarat state of India, Kamal and his family moved when he was a toddler to Zambia in Africa. He grew up in Zambia, when at the age of sixteen Kamal and his family moved to NewZealand. Kamal earned a bachelor of science degree in computer science and fine arts from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

"I think the characters I worked on are my favourite, but maybe I'm biased," he says.

"I'm the person that might create a model much like sculpting out of clay, but we sculpt our objects in the computer so we can really push things, like really opening and closing her mouth up."

For three a half years Kamal has lived and breathed The Incredibles, a film about a middle-aged super hero.

"E or Edna is a character I worked on and my job was to articulate her,' says Mistry.

"What that means is to create all the facial controls on her face, Basically, giving the animators the ability to bring her to life."

"The best thing was when I finished working on E and the animators took over and they made her come alive."

"I get so much joy seeing her on screen," he says.

Mistry's job is a computer nerd's dream job but how did a Kiwi from down under get to swim with the big guys?

"I actually think coming from New Zealand is an advantage from a lot of other places because we get to learn to do everything.

"If you're talking about disciplines in 3D, we get to model, we get to learn to light, shade, animate, everything. You're sort of a jack of all trades," he says.

Mistry studied computer graphics at Auckland University as well as doing fine arts at Elam.

He became a computer graphics artist and attended a graphics conference in the US where he heard Pixar was recruiting.

"I honestly thought when I applied that it was impossible to get a job at a place like Pixar, but if I can do it I think anyone can."

Incredibles - Here are a few of images from the work he did for The Incredibles