Talk:Violet Parr/GA1/sandbox

Development

Creation and casting

Screenwriter and director Brad Bird conceived Violet as "a teenage girl who just wants to be invisible". In early drafts of the screenplay, Violet is depicted as an infant as opposed to a teenager, since parents Bob and Helen Parr were originally intended to be introduced as retired superheroes who have just begun to attempt to live normal lives much earlier during the film. Violet is voiced by American author and actress Sarah Vowell, who claims to have been cast "out of the blue". While beginning to cast the film's main characters, Bird had been listening to the National Public Radio program This American Life, to which Vowell is a frequent contributor. During one of Vowell's regular appearances on the show, Bird heard her contribute an anecdote about a cannon she had helped her father, a gunsmith, build. Bird immediately wanted to cast Vowell based on her description of the event, deciding that she was "perfect" for the part and calling her to offer her the role. Vowell already had a lengthy history of declining voice acting jobs prior to The Incredibles, to the point at which her agent warned Bird, "She's a serious writer and she wouldn't do this, so don't waste your time!"

Violet is voiced by author and radio personality Sarah Vowell (pictured), a role director Brad Bird cast her in after hearing her recall a childhood story on the radio program This American Life. Violet was Vowell's first voice acting role.

The animators animated a rough test sequence to some of Vowell's dialogue from the radio segment about her father's cannon, in which Violet is depicted being startled by a gun that repeatedly fires in her hands. Despite experiencing some hesitation due to the fact that she had never voiced an animated character before, Vowell accepted the role after receiving an e-mail from the film's producer, agreeing to participate in The Incredibles because she believes that Pixar is consistently "the best at what they do", jokingly comparing the offer to "if Nelson Mandela showed up asking for your help to fight racism." Vowell ultimately decided to accept the role based on a sole image she had been sent of the character: a drawing of Violet surrounded by her schoolmates, all of whom appear to be happy and outgoing apart from Violet herself, who is instead outfitted in dark, baggy clothes and hunched over while hiding behind her long hair. Vowell concluded, "I can be that kid. I was that kid. I love that archetype of the morose, shy, smart-alecky teenage girl." Vowell was officially cast in 2000. IndieWire contributor Oliver Lyttelton observed that none of the film's casting decisions were "as unexpected" as Bird’s decision to cast Vowell. Vowell has said that, like Violet, she herself "is a little smart-alecky and also has a weird dad with a strange hobby", and found the dynamic between Violet and Bob to be similar to her relationship with her own father, particularly the love that both her and her character feel towards their respective fathers that is only "buried in her sarcasm and his confusion".

Vocal work

Vowell found the recording process somewhat similar to working in radio, apart from the fact that the process required more standing, gesturing and working closely with a director. The film also required Vowell to deviate from her typically underplayed, deadpan delivery due to animation being broader in tone and demanding more "exclamation", calling the process more similar to stage than film acting It’s more like theater acting than film acting because film acting because "animation does just require more and bigger things." For the scene in which Violet and her family's plane crashes into the ocean, Vowell drank from a water bottle while gurgling and gulping to simulate the sound of a person drowning. Despite using a towel as a bib, Vowell still got considerably wet during the process, explaining, "I feared I might be electrocuted what with spilling and spitting all that water near so much electrical equipment." Vowell found the process of producing non-verbal sounds, also known as vocs, such as laughing, yawning and screaming on cue, to be the most difficult component of the job, a task that working in radio had hardly prepared her for, joking that voicing a teenager required more acting that she had been expecting as she had been "raised to be a stoic person." During her first recording session, the actress struggled to sound as though she had just been hurt and thus asked Bird to hit her in the arm to help her replicate the sound of her character being punched. Vowell recorded her character's screams closer towards the end of the film in order to preserve her voice, calling the process "fun" and claiming, "I don't think I had screamed ... for about 20 years" at that point.

Vowell found the opportunity to voice a superheroine "thrilling" because she considers herself to be "more of a walking Woody Allen movie" in real life due to her fears of driving and swimming, joking that it is "fun to listen to my voice do things [in film] that ... it would never get to do." Vowell also admitted that she tends to sound "cartoonish" and young for her age, joking that voicing Violet "lead[s] into some of my insecurities ... So when you worry you sound like a cartoon and then someone sends me a message [asking] do I want to be in an animated movie … I guess I am who I am." Bird maintains that Vowell "knocked it out of the park" with her performance. Despite her success, Vowell maintains that she is not an actress, describing herself as merely "a writer moonlighting" as an actress for The Incredibles and insisting that she would be "mortified" if she were required to act in the presence of anyone apart from Bird, whose directing she trusts greatly, explaining, "I trust that he’ll be able to find something in me or he’ll be able to inspire something in me, and he’ll also be able to find the take that is the best one."

Vowell stars in a documentary about her work in the film, "Vowellet: An Essay by Sarah Vowell", which is included on The Incredibles DVD release. In the documentary, Vowell explores the various differences between voicing a superhero and becoming an action figure while she was continuing to write about presidential assassinations, contrasting the two distinct careers. The animators also animated Violet to some of Vowell's dialogue from the documentary. Bird, who voices costume designer Edna Mode, was the only other actor Vowell worked with while working on both films, who would sometimes temporarily provide the voice of other characters for Vowell to act opposite of, such as Elastigirl in lieu of actress Holly Hunter, which Vowell described as a "great" impression. For Incredibles 2, Vowell had not been allowed to read to entire script while recording her dialogue, having only been allowed to preview small excerpts in which Violet is speaking or having conversations with other characters. Until watching the film for the first time, Vowell had been under the impression that Incredibles 2 would mostly be about Violet's anger at her father until experiencing the film's other storylines and characters.

Personality and design

Bird had always been more interested in developing the personalities of the film's main characters than their superpowers. When it came time to determine the Parr family's powers, Bird decided to draw inspiration from the roles of typical nuclear family members, basing both their superpowers and personalities on these archetypes. Describing Violet as "a typical teenager ... not comfortable in her own skin" who resides "in that rocky place between being a kid and an adult", Bird felt that invisibility would be the most suitable power for the Parr family's only daughter. Describing her as a young woman who would much prefer if other people avoided looking at her, Bird elaborated that some teenage girls are prone to feeling insecure and defensive, and thus gave her the abilities to become invisible and create protective shields. According to Vowell, Violet's superpowers of invisibility and force fields are, much like the rest of her family, "psychologically representational of who she is"; a teenage girl who longs to remain hidden and protected. In terms of music, composer Michael Giacchino developed a theme for Violet that he described as "coy and mysterious".

Although the films are set roughly during the 1950s and 1960s, shading art director Bryn Imagire opted to incorporate a more modern style into Violet's wardrobe, feeling that the hourglass silhouette, poofy skirts and tight shirts young women typically wore during this time period were not as suitable for the character due to her shy, withdrawn personality and hairstyle. Although the animators admitted to using mid-century fashion "as a jumping-off point", they deliberately designed Violet's clothes to be more baggy in appearance with a "very desaturated" color scheme, incorporating a variety of cut-off jeans, sneakers and sweaters into her attire to compliment her rebellious personality. Furthermore, the majority of the character's clothing during the first film are variations of the color purple, alluding to her name. Violet was costumed in a pink shirt towards the end of the film in order to demonstrate that she is now "much more open– sort of like she’s blossoming as a teenager." Imagire identified the character as "the perfect example of where we didn’t go mid-century; we went modern with her" instead.

Hair animation

The Incredibles required the use of computer technology that was particularly advanced for its time, some of which computers had not yet been "taught". Computers were used to simulate hair movement and determine where hair was intended to be placed on the film's respective characters. Described as a new and time-consuming process at the time, new programs and approaches were developed and implemented to assist the animators in animating Violet's long black hair. Since organic materials are still considered to be among the most challenging objects to animate in computer animation, Violet's hair proved to be the most difficult subject for the animators to master. Although scale models of Violet and the film's major characters were originally sculpted in clay by artist Kent Melton, the animators initially struggled to replicate Melton's very detailed interpretation of Violet's hair that he used in her maquette. According to hair and cloth simulation supervisor Mark Henne, Violet's hair remained an "unsolved research project" for much of the film's production due to its type and length, which had never been featured in a computer animated film prior to The Incredibles. For the majority of the production, Violet's character model was entirely bald; producer John Walker would frequently plead with the animators to give the character some form of hair, to which they would respond, "the hair is still theoretical", remaining so until significantly late into completion. Vowell recalled seeing only a bald iteration of her character for most of the recording process. Technical director Rick Sayre explained that the challenges revolving around Violet's hair were rooted in the fact that she has "no fixed hair style"; her hair constantly adopts new shapes and forms as it interacts with other objects, including other strands of her own hair, as well as her own body. Despite its challenges, the filmmakers resisted temptation to give the character a shorter, more manageable hairstyle, insisting on keeping Violet's hair long because its length plays an integral role in her story arc; Violet "is all about the fact that she hides behind her long hair ... It’s such a crucial part of the character that we had to get it right." Violet is also the only member of her family to have black hair; her father, mother and younger brother each have blond, brown and blond hair, respectively. Bird explained that Violet's hair color is the result of a recessive gene.

Violet's hair required animators a total of six months to fully render. Henne and the animators sculpted five different hairstyles for the character to be used during various moments in the film, which were modified and adjusted accordingly to suit different circumstances and environmental conditions such as rain, wind and the zero-gravity effects of her own force fields. Ultimately, Violet's hair became one of the film's greatest accomplishments, which Sayre has since deemed "a significant advance in showing hair move in a believable manner while retaining its stylistic look ... no one had ever animated this kind of hair before for a CG film." The difficulty surrounding Violet's hair ultimately influenced Mirage's hairstyle, which was originally quite long until Sayre begged the filmmakers to adopt it into a shorter and "cooler" variation due to the amount of time and effort that had already been spent on creating Violet's hair. Due to the technological advancements that computer animation has undergone since the original film was released, for the sequel animators were able to revisit and replicate Melton's more intricate, original design for Violet's hair, which "flows much more freely" in Incredibles 2.