What does a robot look like? We’ve seen countless mechanical beings in a myriad of science fiction films, television shows—even stage productions. Some were threatening, others just plain silly. But for this new, computer generated animated feature film, Chris Wedge was determined to create mechanical beings unlike any seen before.

Robots revolves around Rodney Copperbottom, whom Wedge envisioned as journeying to the big city to pursue his dreams of being a great inventor. “Rodney is an Everyman—Everybot—with whom we all can identify,” says Chris Wedge. Rodney’s Everybot qualities are evident in the character’s design origin: Wedge’s grandfather’s outboard motor. Often used to power small fishing boats, the motor has a utilitarian design that partially drove Wedge’s concept of Rodney. “I’ve never before based a character on a motor,” says Wedge, “but this old motor, with its chips and dings, was inspiring.”

Blue Sky’s Materials group was also instrumental in shaping the look of the bots. As Michael Eringis, Materials Supervisor for Robots, notes, “We gave the robots physical character by creating details like rust, chipped paint and oil splotches—all the critical touches that make up the surfaces of robots and a mechanical world.”

Blue Sky’s revolutionary and proprietary technology helped the Materials group and animators bring to life these characters and their world. The ray tracing renderer, which provided unparalleled lighting schemes and realism, was only one of Blue Sky’s technological marvels. The company also devised a web interface that allows the designers to swap out different bot body parts, as well as a tool that randomly generates robots in distant backgrounds, which lends scale and depth to specific scenes by filling it with robot “extras”.