The rising dominance of CG film techniques in the early 2000s has led to an interesting artistic canon shift in animated commercial feature films produced in the US. Although Hollywood 2D animation always flirted with the photorealist
style, it was only after the standardisation of digital techniques in the 1990s that such trends became commonplace in commercial animation, thanks to the many possibilities of computer-generated images. This paper considers the release of Wall•E (2008)—one of Disney/Pixar’s most visually impressive works—a crucial moment in such aesthetic process, as the film marked the first collaboration between the cinematographer Roger Deakins and a US animation studio. The paper analyses Deakins’s visual assessment in Wall•E 's first ten minutes to determine how the movie could be regarded as a relevant landmark
that pushed new boundaries for digital film photography.