Glago's Guest is unlike anything you've ever seen from Disney, with its minimalism, hair and cloth CG work, and exquisite lighting and textures. All images © Disney.

It began as an illustration of Roman soldiers and evolved into an artful 3D-animated short about desolation and discovery in a Siberian outpost in the 1920s, as a lonely soldier named Glago has an extraordinary adventure with mysterious alien orbs.

Glago's Guest is the second short produced at Walt Disney Animation Studios during John Lasseter's tenure, following the delightful Goofy redux How to Hook Up Your Home Theater. It's the directorial debut for story vet Chris Williams (The Emperor's New Groove), who is also helming the studio's next animated feature, Bolt.

However, the seven-minute short is unlike anything you've ever seen from Disney. It is quite minimalistic, while advancing CG at the studio in terms of hair and cloth. The lighting and textures are exquisite, from the sky and the snow, to the interior décor inspired by Doctor Zhivago, to Glago's beard and coat and rifle. Meanwhile, the alien orbs are marvelously squishy without acting too cartoony.

The main technology challenges were the animation of the alien orbs; achieving the art direction of Glago's hair and beard; and simulating Glago's coat. In fact, the short was created in a new pipeline, for which Yun-Chen Sung wrote a back-end package from scratch to do all the lighting. Cesar Velaquez developed the movement of the alien orbs. His process consisted of three basic steps: A particle simulation was the basis of the movement; the second step was to attach spheres to these particles and run them through a rigid body dynamic engine; and the third step was to process this geometry so that the alien orbs appeared to squish against one another.

Mitchell Snary was responsible for the grooming and appearance of Glago's beard, which called for a sculptural look made of individual hairs. It was to look and move photorealistically, while being very stylized. To achieve this, Disney developed a process where it modeled the individual clumps of hair, then filled those volumes with hair grown from Glago's scalp. This allowed very tight control of every tuft of hair on the character.

Ian Coony handled the setup of Glago's coat. Lasseter suggested that they visit Pixar and talk with the team that was responsible for the cloth on Ratatouille. These visits were very useful and resulted in some changes in Disney's own cloth program, FABRIC.

Bill Desowitz: Let's begin with what your pitching experience was like with John Lasseter.

Chris Williams: When you pitch to John, it can be any story, any genre -- as long as he's engaged and entertained, that's all that matters. And so he asked me to pitch some short ideas, and I pitched six and there were two that he responded to. Prep and Landing is being developed into a half-hour Christmas special for next year by Kevin [Deters] and Stevie [Wermers] of How to Hook Up Your Home Theater. Of course, John also took to Glago, which is totally different tonally from what you'd expect from Disney.

Glago's beard, coat, hat, binoculars and rifle were thoroughly researched and accurate to the period.

BD: Yes, this definitely stretches boundaries in style and storytelling.

CW: Certainly Glago was a good opportunity to play with CG. It's a look that's not quite as cartoony. We wanted to find a place that was not pushed to [photorealistic], but somewhere in between. And it was neat because even though it was Disney, it seemed like a small band.

BD: Did you know many of the crew?

CW: No, [having been in] story for the last 14 years, [I tended to be] isolated, and often there's not a lot of reason for interaction at a big studio. But one of the best reasons for the shorts program is finding people who can potentially direct features.

BD: What was the biggest learning curve for you?

CW: Everything outside of story. I studied 2D animation at Sheridan College in Canada, and so I didn't know very much at all about the steps that go into 3D animation. So there was a steep learning curve in that sense. But that was the great value of working on the short to really understand those departments and get to meet those people. It's on a much smaller scale than making features, but it allows you to make mistakes. I really felt like I was in school, learning how to make an animated movie. So it was a great experience for me and helped me a lot with Bolt.