AnimationWorld Magazine — February 12, 2018
Embracing Change: Pixar Production Designer Albert Lozano Talks ‘LOU’

Helmed by veteran animator and first-time director Dave Mullins and produced by Dana Murray, LOU is the 14th short film from Pixar Animation Studios to receive a nomination for an Academy Award. The computer animated short is up against Glen Keane’s 2D Dear Basketball, MoPA’s Garden Party, the stop-motion Negative Space, and Magic Light Pictures’ Revolting Rhymes. The heartwarming film, which premiered at last year’s SXSW fest and played in theaters ahead of Cars 3 this past summer, tells the story of a schoolyard bully who learns a lesson from an invisible creature that lives in the school’s lost and found box. It’s gorgeously rendered in Pixar’s signature fantastically detailed style that verges on the hyperreal.

Albert Lozano, who served as production designer on LOU, has been with Pixar since 1999, contributing character designs for all of the studio’s features beginning with Monsters Inc., and continuing through 2016’s Oscar-winning Inside Out as well as the forthcoming Toy Story 4. Tackling LOU meant taking on a new role for Lozano, who for the first time would be overseeing the entire production, shepherding designs developed with Mullins through to the film’s completion. “The way I describe the job is, you try and get things back on track if they veer off,” Lozano says. “But,” he adds, “that usually doesn’t happen. The job gets pretty easy when you work with so many talented people. I’m there just to watch over things and make Dave, the director, feel comfortable that things are looking good and will look great on screen.”

(Read more at AnimationWorld Magazine…)