Pixar's Jay Shuster fulfilled a fantasy when he was assigned to design the robotic stars of WALL•E. All images © Disney•Pixar.

Like a youngster running away from home to join the circus, Jay Shuster left the Detroit world of automotive design for a shot at creating his own version of the science fiction worlds that had inspired him as a child watching Star Wars. Ironically enough, when he achieved his ultimate goal -- a position with Pixar -- he wound up in the middle of a veritable traffic jam -- the studio's 2006 movie Cars. But in terms of his fantasy, Shuster hit the bulls-eye when he was assigned to design the robotic stars of the studio's new release WALL•E. With the film's opening just days away, I had the opportunity to speak with Jay about his past, present -- and future.

Joe Strike: What did you do on WALL•E?

Jay Shuster: I worked on WALL•E himself. What I brought to it was from my industrial design roots in Detroit, growing up doing the car thing. I worked in [the automobile industry] for a little bit, then came out here and got my job on Cars. John [Lasseter] was really, really into maintaining the authenticity, the honesty of the materials in the design of those characters.

It was the same thing with WALL•E: pulling in the realism, making him as believable as possible with his engineering and the design of his mechanisms.

Strike: Would a real WALL•E be totally functional?

Shuster: He's right there at the edge. We maintained a size but kept him cute -- he couldn't just be a gigantic earth-moving machine. We wanted to work with a certain-size package to keep his character. We did have to cheat a bit, allowing for his head, the arms, the treads to fold into his body. Everything does kind of collide inside, but we worked really hard to get to a point where the animators could run with it and make him look like he really works.

I worked really hard, for a long time. I spent about a year and a half on WALL•E and EVE [WALL•E's cybernetic object of desire] alone.

Strike: You probably had an easier time on EVE; she barely had any moving parts.

Shuster: Yeah, she was my relief from WALL•E

Strike: There was a lot of expressiveness designed into WALL•E.

Shuster: We went back to the drawing board a lot. The lens cluster, the aperture and the shutter blinking mechanism [of the binocular-like lenses that comprise the robot's "face"] actually came late in the process -- that was the point [at which] WALL•E really came alive.

Jay Shuster.

Andrew [Stanton] started me off when he first pitched the project. He told me he wanted these [lenses] for the eyes, because we already had a lot of expression just out of those forms and his big eyes -- they were very childlike. We already had three things: the binoculars, the cube body and his ability to fold up into a cube -- he's a trash compactor. That really left the door wide open for me to explore all the different ways to design him.

The story guys who were the earliest members of the WALL•E team were pretty much the first to draw him. He didn't change a whole lot from what they were doing until I was really finished with him -- I was the person responsible for going in and finessing the forms, but he did remain this cube -- very simple geometry, with those binoculars.

My dad was a car designer, and I went to school for industrial design -- products, cars and things of that sort, but I really got turned on when I was six and saw Star Wars in 1977. I always wanted to get out of Detroit and stop drawing cars and start designing spaceships and other things of that nature.

I got out here around 1994 and got into the Star Wars art department for Episode I.

Strike: You wanted to do it and you did -- how?

Shuster: It was amazing. I was working for a small start-up called Rocket Science. The employees were mostly ILM people who decided they wanted a change and jumped ship to do a fresh start-up. I met a bunch of people who knew Doug Chiang -- the art director on Episode I. A friend of mine at ILM set up a meeting with Doug -- and I got in. [Jay gives a slightly embarrassed laugh at his good fortune, then continues.]

I stayed there for about four years, then took about a year and a half off, which was the exact time it took to land the job here at Pixar.

Strike: It took a year and a half of work to get into Pixar?

Shuster: It was two interviews and a lot of waiting -- but well worthwhile. I got into Pixar in 2003, just in time to work on Cars. It was so amazing working with John. He's just so invested in this project, so enthusiastic. It really rubs off around here too, they're so into what they're doing.