Montage be in heavier historical fiction—an indus- The series had shifted from hardcover to mass trial reality reflected in howPink Carnation and its sequels had shifted from hardcover paperback; the next step was digital-only, or to mass-market paperback; the next step was digital-only, or cancellation. “This cancellation. “I was very afraid that if I dawdled, kind of light humor—there isn’t much of a place for it anymore. The genre has gone I wouldn’t be able to wrap it up.” more serious,” she explains. “I was very afraid that if I dawdled, I wasn’t going to and widened as Willig entered and left the grown up along with her. After nearly be able to wrap it up.” law, got married, and had a daughter; Elo- a dozen novels’ worth of staying in the There were other, internal, factors: “I ise, lagging behind, only just abandoned shadows, donning disguises, directing her had to make a real effort to remember Harvard. operatives, and gathering intelligence, the what it was to be Eloise, or in her posi- Revisiting the reviews of her early hyper-competent Jane (alias the Pink Car- tion.” At first, author and character were work, Willig finds herself agreeing with nation) at last gets to tend to her private essentially contemporaries—in fact, Eloise those who described it as “relentlessly ef- affairs. As for Eloise? Happily-ever-after was a few months ahead in her semester. fervescent” and the characters as “young comes with wedding bells—and a book But the gap between them has inverted and carefree.” She believes the series has deal. vsophia nguyen

the beginning of the pipeline, the other Action, Camera, Lights handling lighting at the very end. Rather than recording in real-time, every element Putting the finishing touches on animated worlds of ’s animations—the characters, their actions, and the virtual worlds they ou’ve probably seen a great A Bug’s Life (1998) and Monsters, Inc. (2001) inhabit—is programmed into a computer deal of Danielle Feinberg’s work through Wall-E (2008) and Brave (2012). before being “rendered” into moving im- without knowing it—in fact, it Feinberg’s role is unusually special- ages; as a result, the process is uniquely Y might be more accurate to say that ized. Whereas the cinematographer for a additive, each stage in the composition you’ve seen a great deal by virtue of her work. live-action film is in charge of both cam- building on and inflecting previous layers. Feinberg ’96 is a director of photography at era and lighting, Pixar’s production sys- Lighting is the final step: each sequence is Pixar, where for almost a decade and a half tem splits these responsibilities between programmed without lighting, with Fein- she’s designed lighting for many of the stu- two people, one handling the movement, berg synthesizing the proper amounts of dio’s most successful animated worlds, from angle, and focus of the virtual camera near natural and artificial light, selecting the angle of each virtual object, Danielle Feinberg adding tasteful cloud or tree cover when necessary, and accentuating certain hues to match the visual texture and ambiance to the action. Feinberg describes her job as “mind-melding” with her counterpart in camera “to find the magic pieces to pull it all together.” But as the capabilities of computer graphics asymp- totically approach realism, Feinberg is careful to note that verisimilitude is neither Pixar’s aim nor hers: “Real- ism has never been a goal… You can just get pulled out of ‘realistic’ so quickly.” In- deed, animated worlds that mirror the physical world too precisely can be jarring, often veering into an “un-

66 July - August 2015 Photograph and animation stills courtesy of Pixar Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage Stills of a high point in the 2012 film pany’s shorts in a computer-graphics Brave, before (top) course during her junior year. These were and after lighting “really the first I had ever seen,” she recalls. “It completely mechanical engi- captured my imagination: ‘All this math, neering. “I decided, science, and code I’ve been learning can create a after going to engi- whole different world inside the computer, and neering camp, that you can set a story there and build these charac- that was how you ters? That’s insane.’ A month later, Toy Story invented things,” came out, and as a class we all went to she says with a see it. I thought, ‘Man, I’ve got to do that laugh. But she was someday. I’ll work really hard, and maybe by the immediately drawn time I’m 35, I’ll work [at Pixar].’” to courses in com- Things moved much faster than that. puter science, Feinberg was working there at 22, begin- where she could ning as a “render wrangler” (technicians explore her long- who manage a massive library of data and standing program- images) before getting her first taste of ming hobby more lighting work on A Bug’s Life. It was then she seriously. After only realized, “That was what I really loved. It’s a month, she says, the final image where the world comes to “I couldn’t imagine life —it’s the final creative step.” For Fein- why I wouldn’t just berg, it’s also the most crucial step, the major in computer point when the smallest detail in the code science…a thing I al- can make a tremendous difference to the ready loved and had audience: “You put the lights in, and sud- been doing.” denly, it becomes believable that they could canny valley” which audiences find unset- The department offered only one com- go into that world.” vmax suechting tling and hard to accept. Feinberg and her puter graphics course at the time, so Fein- colleagues thus design every element of berg explored her cutting-edge interests their digital worlds in accordance with the piecemeal, cobbling together classes in tone of the story they are telling. This ap- computer science and art, as well as work Explore More proach often makes deviating from reality— in the campus “Graphics Group” of stu- exaggerating certain characteristics and dents pursuing independent studies with For more online-only articles on suppressing others—more effective than faculty supervision. In the process, she mimicking it. That could mean leaving a started to notice the sharp gender dispar- the arts and creativity, see: basketball hanging in the air for an extra ity in her field. Her experience of “being tenth of a second, giving a character’s hair one of the very few girls in most math, sci- Harvard Installs just a little bit too much bounce, or sus- ence, or programming classes, how lonely “Triangle pending dust motes in a beam of almost- and isolating that is”—and of “how much Constellation” too-perfect afternoon sunlight. “What it takes to overcome that”—has driven her A new sculpture, we really want to create is a certain feel,” work with the nonprofit advocacy organi- calibrated to help Feinberg explains. “And it’s so much more zation Girls Who Code, which strives to the Harvard Art fun to do the stylized thing anyway.” encourage girls’ interest in computer sci- Museums achieve balance Feinberg’s passion is equal and comple- ence. “Girls are getting the message from harvardmag.com/triangle-15 mentary parts aesthetic and technical. teachers or parents—people who don’t When asked about her biggest influences, even know they’re giving them the mes- A Conversation with Tracy K. she extols the work of cinematographer sage—that they shouldn’t be doing that Smith ’94 Roger Deakins and the color palette of thing. And I can’t stand when someone The poet discusses her newest book, American Beauty in the same breath as she loves something and they’re told that they the memoir Ordinary Light. harvard- recounts her earliest programming ex- shouldn’t do it.” mag.com/smith-15 periences. Growing up in Colorado, she Three semesters in the classroom of attended an after-school program that Joe Marks ’82, Ph.D. ’91, a lecturer in Edouard Kopp Named Curator taught elementary-school students how computer science with whom Feinberg of Drawings to create digital imagery with the edu- has maintained a friendship ever since, Will oversee the Art Museums’ cational programming language LOGO. proved a turning point: he introduced pre-twentieth-century drawings. When she arrived at Harvard, recruited to her to digital animation—and to Pixar— harvardmag.com/koop-15 play softball, Feinberg intended to pursue when he screened several of the com-

Harvard Magazine 67 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746