Up! by Daniel Boris

Early View of Inside Out 2

 by Bruce Guthrie

I went to an advanced screening of "Inside Out 2" on Tuesday night. The film opens to the public on Friday.

The film's director is Kelsey Mann who was here in 2020 promoting the movie "Onward".  (And, yes, for those of you who wonder if Disney/Pixar is capable of making anything that does NOT include at least one sequel, "Onward: Return of the Ian" is due out this year.)

Most of the voice actors were back from before (including Frank Oz as one of the guards).  Fortunately, there's no Bing Bong in this one.  

I hadn't watched an animated movie on a large screen in years.  I have to say the animation technology through Disney/Pixar has reached amazing levels.  There were scenes that I initially thought were live action.  (A photo crew was credited at the end of the movie so they clearly were adhering as close as possible to live action when appropriate.)

Having said that, I had a couple of complaints about the animation.  I thought the mouth movements were sometimes a bit off from what the people were speaking -- this is easier to notice on a big screen.  And the light reflected in the characters' eyes was usually wrong -- the character's face would turn but the light reflected in the eye would stay in the same place relative to the pupil.

The story was wonderful as always.  Four new emotions (Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, and Embarrassment) debut as Riley hits puberty and is about to enter high school.  I liked how her parents and friends now had their own array of emotions.

Pixar movies tend to have Easter eggs that are usually missed until your second or third viewing.  The most obvious one this time is a scene where Joy (still voiced by Amy Poehler) finds a room of, well, basically trolls.  Anxiety is projected on a giant screen in the room directing them to generate images of new ways that Riley can fail.  Each of these new failure scenarios is displayed on the giant screen.  Joy rallies the trolls to cease obeying this remote controller.  She succeeds, at which point one of the trolls (might have been one of the emotions) throws something at the screen and destroys it.  This is a deliberate call-back to the famous 1984 (40 years ago!) Macintosh ad where the upstart dude throws the hammer at the controlling screen.  Unfortunately, now it will also remind us of the newer Apple AI-destroys-the-established-order ad which lots of creatives considered offensive.

Folks laughed and cried.  I was thinking though that people didn't laugh as much as I would have expected from a Pixar movie.

The denouement of the movie -- which I don't want to spoil -- is a message that I thought was empowering and obvious for human nature -- a philosophy in line with my news sources -- but I can imagine theocrats in red states condemning the movie for.

The movie ends with a big hockey scrimmage.  If folks are into yet another sequel, Pixar could easily keep adding emotions as Riley gets older but I suspect they'd run into issues because eventually lust would have to be one of the new emotions.

I sat through the credits which was lucky because at the very end, there's a short, final reveal.  Credits these days go on forever since so many people need to be acknowledged.  It seemed to me that about half of the lead staff was female.  (I'm thinking Riley's dad was the only talking "human" figure in the movie who was male.)  I also enjoyed that one section listed 20 "production babies".

A good time was had by all!

Emotions at Play with Pixar's Inside Out exhibit review

by Bruce Guthrie

A new interactive exhibit -- "Emotions at Play with Pixar's Inside Out" -- opened last weekend at the National Children's Museum in downtown DC.

In case you're not familiar with the museum, it's had a somewhat nomadic life.  The museum first opened in 1979 on H Street NW.  In 2004-2009, it was a "museum without walls."  In 2009-2015, it operated at National Harbor, Maryland.  It opened at its current location in the Ronald Reagan Building on February 24, 2020 just before COVID hit, after which it was forced to close for 18 months.  It's been reopened to the public since September 2, 2021.  

I had never been to the museum in any of its locations before.  My only interaction had been way back in 1988 when animation god Chuck Jones was going to be there for a gala event.  I was 31 then and had no idea what a gala was.  I called their office to ask about tickets and the person said "This is a black tie event."  I said, "That's okay.  I can buy a black tie."  She responded with, "I don't think you know what a black tie event is..."  She was right.  I wrote to Chuck saying I had wanted to see him but couldn't afford a black tie.  Unsolicited, he sent me a sketch -- "For Bruce -- Bugs Bunny in black tie -- which you may borrow for future events."

When the opportunity to see this new exhibit came up, I was happy to check it out.  

The "Emotions at Play with Pixar's Inside Out" exhibit was developed by Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh in collaboration with Pixar Animation Studios.   It features a diverse number of parts oriented around the Pixar film, "Inside Out."

In case you somehow missed the 2015 film, it focuses on the "little voices inside your head" as the central character, Riley, tries to adjust to the cacophony of emotions that result from her family being relocated.  In Riley's case, there are five emotions -- Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust -- trying to navigate Riley's long term memories and bring her back to functioning.  

The film was the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2015 and won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.  A sequel, "Inside Out 2," is scheduled to be released in 2024.

The exhibit features a number of independent components.  Emotions, and the characters and its color palette -- yellow=joy, blue=sadness, red=anger, purple=fear, green=disgust -- tie all of them together.

From my experience, it seemed like the crowd favorite was "Emotions in Motion."  You turn a dial to select your current emotion, put a large white ball into a hole whose color now reflects your chosen emotion, and turn the crank which advances the ball.  The ball retains that color, separate from the other 100-ish balls in the system, until it makes it all the way through the serpentine circuit.

As a computer nerd, I loved that exhibit plus several other techie exhibits.
 * "Memory Sphere":  You write down a memory on a colored sheet of paper (five colors of course).  When you put that sheet into a slot, the sensors recognize the color and change a glowing ball into that color.  I never wrote anything down but was impressed at how the paper-reader-ball interacted.
 * "Range of Emotions": You sit in a chair and look at a mirror.  As you change your facial expression, a hidden camera reads your face and guesses what emotion(s) it's showing.  Five differently-colored tubes below the mirror indicate what emotional mix it's detecting.

I also enjoyed "Imagination Land" which has spinners where you watch various bits spin around in their patterns.  It wasn't at all high-tech, but I found the sights and sounds of it mesmerizing.

As an animation geek, I enjoyed "Designing the Mind World" which had reproductions of some of the 20,000+ drawings and paintings created during the visual development of "Inside Out."

I wasn't personally excited by the other areas but that's just personal taste -- kids and adults were playing at all of them:
 * "Control Panel" -- A sound console where you're asked to create sounds that reflect emotions.  This one was quite popular.
 * "Dream Productions" -- A mini-stage area to create and act out skits with stick characters and stick props
 * "Emotion Mirrors" -- Five mirrors which change as you come near them.
 * "Train of Thought" -- You maneuver your ball (train) down a slat, trying to keep the ball from falling off.
 * "Managing Our Emotions Maze" -- a console maze where people are encouraged to work together to get their ball in the desired emotional basket.
 * "Emotion Blocks" -- A section with emotion-shaped blocks where you try to balance them on a crescent-shaped rocking piece.  

In most cases, working with someone improves the experience so teamwork and parent-child cooperation is a plus.  People can also do them solo if desired.

All signage was in both English and Spanish and in most cases the languages were given equal billing.  Typically, one side of a sign was in English, the other Spanish.  

The exhibit is really well built and battle tested.  It debuted at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh (Fall 2021) then moved to the Museum of Science in Boston (Spring 2022), DiscoveryCube in Los Angeles (Summer 2022), and it's here in DC until January 8, 2023. 

The exhibit is included with the regular National Children's Museum entry fee.  Their website is https://nationalchildrensmuseum.org/ More photographs can be seen here.

 

 

The Post on animation - Pixar’s ‘Turning Red’ and ‘I Am Here’

Pixar's 'Turning Red' is a brilliant, hilarious follow-up to Oscar-winning short 'Bao' [in print as Nothing fuzzy about coming-of-age flick]

Domee Shi's semi-autobiographical first feature film is audacious, funny and sweet.

By Michael O'Sullivan

Staff writer

Washington Post March 11, 2022  p. Weekend 18, 20

https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/03/09/turning-red-movie-review/

(4 stars)

Documentary tells a Holocaust-survival story in simple animation

'I Am Here' is a bearing of witness, by 98-year-old Ella Blumenthal [South Africa]

By Michael O'Sullivan

Washington Post March 11, 2022  p. Weekend 20

https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/03/08/i-am-here-movie-review/

(2 stars)

 

What to watch with your kids: ‘The Adam Project’, ‘Turning Red’ and more [Big Nate; animation]

Washington Post March 11, 2022  p. Weekend 21

online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/what-to-watch-with-your-kids-the-adam-project-turning-red-and-more/2022/03/09/7c5e7252-9b3b-11ec-adfd-da5e159009e0_story.html

 

NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour and Glen Weldon on Onward

'Onward' Explores A Sibling Riv-elf-ry
Linda Holmes,Stephen Thompson,Glen Weldon,Petra Mayer
NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour March 6, 2020
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=811690139
https://play.podtrac.com/npr-510282/edge1.pod.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/pchh/2020/03/20200306_pchh_pchh_200306_pixar_onward_-_final.mp3

'Onward': Timid Teen On A Mythic Quest For Elf-Assurance
Glen Weldon
NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour March 5, 2020
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/03/811609295/onward-timid-teen-on-a-mythic-quest-for-elf-assurance

Onward's story head Kelsey Mann really loves his job at Pixar

by Mike Rhode with Alexandra Bowman

Kelsey Mann loves his job. He emphatically made that point several times when speaking to an audience at George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. The head of story for Pixar’s new animated movie Onward was in Washington last week to promote the movie and talk to students (and a few local cartoonists) about it. After his presentation, I got to speak with him for several additional minutes and ask some questions which follow at the end of this story.

His voice rasping from previous interviews and class presentations, Mann spoke to students for an hour about his career and his work in shepherding the development of Onward’s story. Two young elves, Ian and his older brother Barley Lightfoot, lost their father before they formed any memories of him, but a magic spell promised to bring him back to them for twenty-four hours. Unfortunately, the immature magic of Ian only brings back part of their father – from the waist down. The movie becomes a quest to reunite him with his whole body and his family before the day runs out. 

As the head of story, Mann was involved from the beginning of the project, one of the few people who were with the movie from beginning to end. However, his journey to working at Pixar took quite a few detours. He grew up in Minnesota, majored in illustration in college and started working in animation. He began in Minneapolis in a small studio and got to wear many hats. He applied to Pixar and moved to Los Angeles around 2000, but they turned him down. “I knew that was where I wanted to be, so I worked in small studios doing Flash animation for the internet. While I was doing that during the day, I would take night classes in illustration. I finally got my big break and became a story artist.” After working in various places, he was with Cartoon Network for five years, but moved to the San Francisco area to work at Lucasfilm including on Clone Wars in the Star Wars universe. Nine years after first applying, he finally got a job with Pixar.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

“Monsters University was my first film that I worked on.  I had worked on Newt for six months, but they ended up shelving it. I became the story supervisor on Monsters University, very quickly moving up the story ranks, which blew my mind because it had been so hard to even be a story artist at the studio. I never thought that I would ever have this job.” After directing a short, Party Central, also in the Monsters world, he worked on the story for The Good Dinosaur. Wrapping up his career overview, Mann said, “I’m the story supervisor on Onward, and I’m here to answer ‘What does the story department do?’ I’m going to answer it very specifically because each director works differently.”

Dan Scanlon, director of Monsters University and Onward

“One of the unique things [about this film]? I was there from day one,” He showed a picture of director Dan Scanlon, producer Kori Rae, and himself, the three of them recreating the jobs they had on Monsters University. They began working on Onward on September 17, 2013. Mann left to work on The Good Dinosaur, but stayed in touch with Scanlon once a week while the project was in development. When asked if the director put together his team of people including the story boarders and the animators, Mann says of Pixar, “The director and the producer pick the associate producer, but there’s an interview process to make sure that it’s a fair process. It’s an open call.” The director works with the head of each department to build the movie’s team.

For the three people at the beginning, Mann, Rae and Scanlon, the movie began “in a blank empty story room with intimidating white walls and blank boards.” The story team uses index cards with ideas written on them, “trying to fill the walls with something to react to…Working out possible beats of the story from the beginning to the end of the movie. “ Scanlon was both a writer and the director on the film, and other people were added to the team to work on the script. “A lot of people think we just get the script as story artists, and we just go and draw it, but there’s a lot of working in the story room with the writer and director, helping to shape the story that we have to do.”

The story artists gather in a room Mann called the Fish Bowl (because it looked out onto the atrium of the building). Mann pointed out a unique physical feature of creating Onward, something he had started on The Good Dinosaur. “I had noticed how the smaller the studio was, the more interaction we had because we all sat in one room. The bigger the studio got, the more people went into their offices and didn’t talk to each other. Something about that felt wrong to me, especially with the story team where the collaboration is so key to the films we make at Pixar.” He noted that the team worked in the collaborative room, received their handouts, and made their pitches for the storyboard animation they created. A smaller group would work in the story room more directly on the script. “Once we had the beats of what we needed to happen, then Dan and Jason [Headley, the other writer] would go off and make a pass at the script.” The small group would then mark it up, “literally page by page.”

“Whenever Dan felt the scene was ready to go, we would hand it out for story art,” Mann said. The story team working under him were the first people to read the words, “trying to absorb the scene that they’re eventually going to storyboard.” Meanwhile Mann and the story manager spend a lot of time organizing the work.  “I’m a creative filmmaker, but a lot of my job is organization. I need to know what everyone is doing.” At this point, Mann showed a complex weekly chart of how scenes are assigned and when the animator will create a first pass and ‘pitch’ their suggested art for the scene.

Mann has everyone do that pitch in one room and at one time, noting “It’s great that I can show Dan a chunk of the movie, not just a slice.” He continued, “Once the artist has read the script, and figured out a plan and gotten it done, then we all gather in that fish bowl. Everyone is welcome at any time and we do all of our handouts in the fish bowl. On some shows, artists get handed a scene and they are the only ones present. We wanted to make sure everyone was present for all the handouts so they knew what their colleagues were doing.” Scanlon would read the scene out loud, as the reading is recorded, so the artists can refer back to his comments and voice. At times, the director would act out the motions he saw the characters doing. The scene that Scanlon described was the two characters looking across a gaping bottomless chasm, with a drawbridge on the far side. Mann would return to this example again and again to show how the scene evolved.  

photo by Bruce Guthrie

As he showed a drawing of a story artist with ideas popping in around his head, Mann asked, “What goes on inside the head of a story artist? We think of a lot of different things. We thing of cinematography, writing, acting, character, staging, editing, humor, design, composition and hovering above everything, is the deadline. And the other thing all artists think about every single day is what to have for lunch.” Artists may work differently and Mann doesn’t impose a format for the preliminary story. Some work on paper, some on Post-it notes, some do digital sketches on an iPad and some people work immediately on the Cintiq. In addition to Photoshop, the software used at Pixar is an internal program called Pitch Doctor which lets storyboards be altered in real time.

“Collaboration is so key to the stories we make at Pixar,” he feels, and the fish bowl is the closest animators can get to being on a set of a film. The story team ended up doing 97, 759 storyboards for Onward. When an artist has a scene ready to pitch, the story team gathers in the fish bowl and the animator performs the script and sound effects as the storyboard animation projects so everyone can see it. Mann demonstrated the boards for the bottomless chasm, and people clapped for his performance, which did put me into the movie. He noted that, “It is tradition to have applause at the end of a pitch. There’s a bit of performance here. Hopefully, you’ve forgotten about me and you’re not looking at me. You’re looking at the movie and that’s our whole job - to road test the movie and see if it’s working or not. And that’s before Dan starts.”

The process becomes iterative at this point with the scene possibly being redrawn, artists being ‘scratch’ voice actors, and then the entire scene with temporary sound, scratch voices, temporary sound effects and basic art screened several times until the story works. Eventually the animated storyboards for the whole movie are strung together into a basic preliminary version of the movie. Parallel with the story development is some visual development, but throughout this time, the characters and backgrounds aren’t finalized and the animators aren’t working on it. “It’s not until about screening four until animators start building the characters in 3-D.” Onward had eight internal screenings, once every three months, throughout its development. “We’ll watch in the theater. Screening is a big day and we fill the audience with people who are on the crew and people who are working on other movies, because we want a fresh perspective.” When the movie is getting closer to a final vision, it’s seen by the Brain Trust, the creative leaders of the company, and studio head Pete Docter, who get together and make suggestions about the version they’ve just seen. “It’s all just advice. What’s great about the Brain Trust is that we don’t have to blindly do what they tell us to do. If they presented a solution, isn’t doesn’t mean we have to do that solution. They’re trying to solve a problem so we want to identify the problem they’re talking about. We’re only there for two hours and we can’t solve everything in that meeting.” For weeks after the meeting, emailed comments come in to one of the writers, who reads and aggregates the suggestions, and then the story team starts all over again. Responding to a question about  storyboard artists working with the final animators, Mann noted “The movie is really made in the in the last year or year and a half of the process, and we’re on this thing for six or seven years. Most of the story artists, when the movie begins to get made, aren’t on the show anymore.  We’re trying to get more overlap with the story team and different departments. Layout is the next department after us. They’re the first ones who take our storyboarded scene and start to put it in a 3-D environment and start to block it out.” Mann tried to get the story people work with the layout people to solve potential problems as they arose.

The audience gathers for a group shot (photo by Bruce Guthrie)

“Pixar isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty damn great. I’m so thrilled for this movie to come out. It’s been since 2013 and I’m dying for you guys to see it. We’re really proud of it and we tried to make a really funny movie that was really entertaining, but had something to say.” Ending his talk, Mann gave the audience a basic lesson in how to draw the older brother Barley, and then broke for questions from the audience.  His presentation was thoroughly enjoyable, and probably convinced several of the students that they wouldn’t want to work anywhere but Pixar.

ComicsDC’s Mike Rhode and The Hilltop Show’s Alexandra Bowman were given an opportunity to speak directly with Mann after his public talk.  

AB: What does it mean to be head of story at Pixar?

KM: It’s a big job. I’m on the movie for a very long time, so it’s a commitment. With this one, I was involved from the very beginning and went all the way to being at the final mix review at Skywalker Sound. At any point, we can improve the story, or break it. I worked together with [director] Dan [Scanlon] on Monsters University and was the story supervisor on that, so we have a long history. My primary job is to oversee the story artists through the storyboarding process, which is us taking the written strip and visualizing it. We’re the first ones to draw the movie and we draw the blueprint of the film and road test, for lack of a better word. Until we’re happy with it and it gets approved and goes into production.

MR: Is this a traditional role, or is it evolving as more animation is being done?

KM: It’s been around for a very long time. Maybe the duties are evolving over the year. It changes from director to director.  I worked with Peter Sohn on The Good Dinosaur, and there’s some similarities but there’s some differences. It depends on the director and what they need from their head of story.

MR: How did you personally get the job? You’ve alluded to your organization skills.

KM: I’m my known for charting. People will say, “Kelsey with his beautiful minding of things…” I’m a visual person so I’m always drawing things out on the whiteboard. I do it because it’s how I think, but also do that so everyone’s on the same page. If I draw something in front of everybody, it’s really clear. The first time I did the job was on Monsters University. We had a different director at the time, and Dan was the head of story. I was a story artist at the time and we got along really well. He didn’t even know me, he just brought me on, and we got along instantly. I think he likes working with me because I keep an optimistic attitude. I want to be accountable, loyal and if I say I’m going to do something, I follow through with it.

AB: What do you think separates Pixar from other animation studios?

KM: There’s so much good stuff being created these days. It’s not only movies, but it’s television, streaming … so much great stuff is being created now. I think what probably sets us apart is how the directors are asked to tell something personal. Something that’s really meaningful to them. This film is pretty darn personal because it’s about Dan and not knowing his father. Dan’s dad passed away when he was six months old so he has no memory of his father. He has an older brother, three years older, and Bill doesn’t remember their father either. Dan thought about how that’s shaped him, and what he’s learned about who he is, and thought ‘What if there’s a character that had a similar experience? And what if that character had an opportunity to spend one day with the person they had lost? I would want that.’ And that’s where this came from.

MR: It seems like Disney mostly adopts existing stories where Pixar tells stories from scratch and that seems to be one of the differences between the studios. Would you say that people gravitate to one studio or the other because of the types of source material?

KM: Pixar never will buy a property and make a movie from it. It’s a director-driven studio so it always comes from the director and what they want to say.

photo by Bruce Guthrie

AB: What are Pixar’s primary goals going forward? Or your goals? What do you think is the impact of your work on audiences in today’s world?

KM: We always want to make our movies. What we want to do in the future is to entertain the audience. We want to make a fun entertaining movie. We want it to have a heart and a reason why we’re making it, and about being alive. That usually comes from a really hard question that maybe the director can’t even answer themselves. Another thing we really want to do is surprise the audience. There’s a lot of [films] out there, and we don’t want to repeat ourselves. Pete Docter calls it ‘something unexpected.’

MR: The movie seems to have a curious parallel to Coco where a young boy is searching for his father. Did that ever come up?

KM: No. We hadn’t thought about that too much. We go to each other’s screenings to make sure we’re not repeating each other, but that was never a concern. I don’t remember the Brain Trust saying anything. I do remember early scenes of Toy Story 4 opening with a unicorn flying, and I was like, “Wait a minute. That’s what we’re doing.” They went away from that though.

AB: Do you have words of career advice for students who attend liberal arts schools like Georgetown or schools that don’t’ focus on art?

photo by Bruce Guthrie

KM: I always tell people it takes three things to get a job at Pixar. The first is passion. You have to love the heck out of this. Love movies and have a really deep, deep passion. Don’t tell any of my bosses, but I would do this job for free because I love it that much. That kind of passion. That leads me to the second thing – hard work. It takes a lot of hard work. I worked really hard. It took me nearly ten years after my first rejection letter from Pixar. But that hard work was a little easier because I was so passionate. A lot of times the hard work cuts people out because they really don’t have the passion for it. The last thing is luck. It takes a bit of luck and timing. You have to be prepared for when lightning strikes. You have to have your portfolio ready.

MR: Following up on the hard work thing for this particular movie, as head of story, how many hours per day are you working at the height of the storyboarding process?

KM: It’s a lot. My days are really full. They start at nine and they end at six. That’s a standard day. We always work through lunch. Dan would rather work at lunch than stay late, and I agree with that. I want to drive home and kiss my kids goodnight. If I have to put in extra hours, I do it in the morning because no one is around. I’ll go in early, but I try to stick to those hours. We’ll do the occasional Saturday every once in a while, right before a screening. Every three months, we’ll do a Saturday, but it’s only 10am to 1pm.  Not that terrible. At the past studios I worked at, you’re pulling pretty late nights but Pixar cares about your health and the longevity of your career so they don’t want to injure you. Other places… they didn’t care so much.

AB: How did John Lasseter’s departure affect you and the company?

KM: Wow. That was an interesting time not only in the world, but at Pixar. It was definitely a change because John did a lot for the studio. I wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for what he and everybody else did at the studio. I’m really proud of Pete Docter… we’re both Minnesota boys. I grew up in a town near him and he stepped up to be our chief creative officer. He’s really great, because he’s sharing. The amount of weight he has to carry leading this studio creatively is too much for one person. Pete says, “I don’t want to handle all of this. Take a little of this weight,” and I’ve seen Dan step up and be a leader not just on this movie, but in the studio. It’s an exciting time.

AB: There hasn’t been a Pixar Bronze age. You haven’t had your Black Cauldron moment.

KM: Yeah, I don’t want to have that moment.

MR: We were wondering what happens when a project gets shelved.

KM: Newt was weird, because that’s when I started at the studio and I didn’t know the difference between something going great and something not. All of a sudden, they shelved it, and I was like, “That’s a thing? We’re done? That’s it?” It’s typically after a screening that they’ll make a call on it and they called us all in a room and said they decided to shelve the project. It’s a hard thing. Part of working in story is being a problem solver, and I think of it as a Rubik’s cube that you’re trying to solve.  Then you’re told to put that cube down. And then it’s on the shelf and you have to walk away and be okay with it.

AB: Did the shelving of the project have anything to do with Rio and the similar premise?

KM: No, not from my knowledge. Again I was early in my career there so I wasn’t privy to conversations behind closed doors, but the story wasn’t working. It wasn’t because of any other projects. It’s always hard. In any creative endeavor, when you try to invent something, something always pop up. Maybe it’s a new Netflix show with the same idea as yours. It’s amazing how that happens. You just have to say, “I’m going to keep going forward and I’m going to do the best that I can.”

MR: When something is shelved, do you ever resurrect any part of it for a later movie? Did anything you had done for a previous movie that didn’t make it end up in Onward?

KM: I can’t think of anything that came from another property. On Monsters University, sometimes we’d resurrect old gags from Monsters, Inc. There are so many great ideas that get cut, not because they’re not great ideas, but because they’re not right for the story. Part of my job as head of story is to oversee all the ancillary material and so I just have this card catalog in my head of all these cut ideas. I’m busting them out constantly when they are doing a novel that’s a side story or an activity book.

AB: In a themed movie like Monsters University with its college theme or Onward with its medieval theme, how do you draw the line with a reference, or obvious gag, or a trope, or an homage?

KM: What was interesting about this film is that there’s a lot of fantasy out there. We wanted to make sure that the movie is appealing not only to the people who really know fantasy but also to the people who could care less about it. That’s what we want the film to hit. I think about that in casting the crew. I make sure I have people that could care less about fantasy, and then I put in people who love the stuff. Austin Madison and Louise Smythe were our two fantasy experts on the story team. I helped organize a group of us that we affectionately called The Fellowship. It was a collection of people, not just in story but in all departments, that really knew their fantasy. Across different aspects – some people knew novels, some people knew movies, some people knew role-playing games. We always had this group so when Dan had a question about fantasy and needed an idea, or a name, or something, he would say, “Take that to the Fellowship. See what they think.”

MR: I saw one press piece on Yahoo where an article was about a character referring to her lesbian daughter. Was that part of a story conference from when you were working on it, or did someone come in and say we’d like an LGBTQ+ reference?

KM: Lena Waithe plays (Officer Spector) the character that you’re referring to. Those two characters are police officers and were originally male when we boarded them. We want to make sure it’s a diverse cast, not only in male to female ratio, as balanced as we can make it, but also in diversity. Diversity is really huge. Noah Klocek is the production designer and his team did so much work to make sure all the species were as diverse as they could be and the casting was that way too. We knew that this movie, a fantasy film told in a modern setting, and we wanted to make sure it reflected the modern world. That’s a diverse world. That was an idea that came up later and we didn’t want to make a big deal about it. We wanted to have one tiny little line and just reflect the way our world really is.

I'd like to thank GWU's Naomi Rothwell and Kirk Kristlibas and my friend photographer Bruce Guthrie for making it possible for Alexandra and me to attend this talk and meet Mr. Mann afterwards. I'd also like to thank Mr. Mann who was extraordinarily gracious and forthcoming at the end of a long day.

Feb 26: Pixar's Head of Story, Kelsey Mann at Corcoran

Onward: Meet and Greet with Pixar's Head of Story, Kelsey Mann

Meet Kelsey Mann, Head of Story at Pixar, on Wednesday, February 26 at 4 p.m. in the Hammer Auditorium. Kelsey was the story supervisor on the 2013 feature film, Monster's University and has worked on Toy Story 3 and The Good Dinosaur. He will be talking about Onward, released in theaters on March 6, 2020. RSVP here.

Set in a suburban fantasy world, Disney and Pixar's Onward introduces two teenage elf brothers who embark on an extraordinary quest to discover if there is still a little magic left out there.

[We've talked to GWU's organizer and there are spaces for non-students available]

Catching up with graphic artist Marty Baumann

by Mike Rhode


We're checking in with Arlington's Marty Baumann again on the publication of Toybox Time Machine, his new book from IDW, . We've featured his work in passing a couple of times in the past, and it's been six years since I interviewed him for the Washington City Paper (which sadly is currently for sale in case anyone reading this can afford to buy a newspaper). He's answered my usual questions again, but in new ways, as well as discussing his recent work so I'm running the whole interview here. Honestly, both Marty and I forgot about that interview (an occupational hazard when you know people personally and socially. I've seen him at the Baltimore Comic Con in September and at a flea market last weekend when he bought some Kirby and Kubert comic books). I highly recommend his new book; Marty is one of the cleverest illustrators I know -- as this interview shows.

Marty has provided the following biographic information:

Marty Baumann is an illustrator, graphic artist and production designer. He has contributed to some of the most popular, Oscar-winning animated films of all time.

Marty has worked as an artist at Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios as an illustrator, graphic artist and production designer on such films as “Toy Story 3,” “Big Hero 6,” “Zootopia,” “Cars 2,” “Planes,” “Wreck-It Ralph 2” and many others. He also helped develop theme park installations, toy packaging and Pixar corporate branding.

Marty has rendered illustrations and developed characters for toy manufacturers, magazines and newspapers, illustrated children’s books, created logos, info-graphics, broadcast promotions and presentation art for Hasbro, Universal Studios, National Geographic, Scholastic Books, Nickelodeon and many others.

Recent projects include his role as concept artist for the new “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” and the visual development of Sir Paul McCartney’s feature film, “High in the Clouds.”

Marty's dog Summer

Marty has been a rhythm and blues singer/guitarist for more than 40 years. He’s shared the stage with Hound Dog Taylor’s Houserockers, Danny Gatton, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Jr. Walker and the All Stars, Fenton Robinson, John Hammond, Johnny Winter and others. Marty’s sold-out CD “Let’s Buzz Awhile” features 13 original blues tunes.

He encourages everyone to adopt at least one dog.

What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

As far as personal projects: My influences are primarily of mid-century vintage; the logos, designs, signage and draftsmanship, often combining limited color palettes, stylized figures and crazy type treatments. They communicate fun and excitement in a way we don't see today. I tried hard to emulate that aesthetic in my book, "Toybox Time Machine."

As far as film work goes: Logos, title card design, billboards and signage, magazine covers, posters and general production design and just about anything you see in the background or applied to the body of a character.

How do you do it? Traditional pen and ink, computer or a combination?

I do some pencil roughs, scan them and use primarily Illustrator and a bit of Photoshop. If I'm doing a commission or a personal piece for someone I might print what I've done digitally and finish it with touches of ink.

When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

I was born in Maryland the same year "Invasion of the Saucer Men" hit theaters. Is that specific enough?

What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

Jack Kirby comics. He's one of my heroes. It might not show in my style but I started drawing because of him. I've had no formal training.

Who are your influences?

The first books I actually recall buying were Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock comics. Starting in grade school it was Kirby. Then a friend said, "If you like Kirby, get a load of Steranko -- and I got a load. Then I discovered Ditko, Toth, Meskin. As time went on I became aware of the great magazine, paperback and movie poster illustrators -- James Bingham, Robert McGinnis, James Bama. And then the groundbreaking design work of the UPA cartoons and the logo and title designs of Saul Bass and Paul Julian. Not to mention the great children's book artists, a particular favorite being the great Mel Crawford -- who also worked in comics and fine art.

If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

Nearly everything! I tell aspiring artists to look at my career path and do the opposite. I wish I'd taken art classes, studied life drawing, studied painting, tried oils, charcoal, etc. I fell under the sway of rhythm and blues and began playing in clubs as a teenager. I was trying to focus on two creative areas. Maybe I should have focused on just one -- but I couldn't! In the end I think they complimented one another.

What work are you best-known for?

I didn't know that I was KNOWN! So I'd have to say my Disney/Pixar work.

What work are you most proud of?

I'll cite this example: I did a TON of work on "Zootopia." My wife and I saw it in a theater packed with kids and they LOVED it. I was kinda proud that I helped in some small way to make those kids happy.

How did you come up with the idea of Toybox Time Machine?

Well, after having one children's book idea after another rejected, I decided to draw whatever the heck I wanted. I love old toys. I have a small collection of old favorites. And I think my real artistic strengths are design, typography and color. I tried to channel the artistic influences mentioned previously and I never had more fun working on a project.

What's the process of conceptualizing and then drawing a toy that never existed?

My wife and I go to lots of estate sales. I buy the stuff nobody else wants: stacks of old magazines, postcards, travel literature. I snap pictures of anything with nifty retro packaging. It seems that in the 1940s and 50s every advertiser employed an illustrator in lieu of using a photo. With inspiration like this the ideas flow.

How did IDW come to publish this?

At the risk of sounding like a name-dropper, Jim Steranko has been something of a mentor since I was a teenager. (When he critiques your work, you KNOW you've been critiqued, and HOW!) He mentioned to IDW that they might want to look at my work, and, as Bogart would say, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

What's your favorite non-existent toy?

That's the one question I'm going to side-step -- because I just don't know! The sci-fi and monster related toys would be near the top of the list. And I love cowboys!

How did you end up working for Pixar?

I had always loved what Pixar was doing. That retro sensibility seemed to be present in everything they turned out. Quite by accident I discovered that they were looking for a Graphic Artist and I sent them some stuff. They called me a couple weeks later, flew me out there, apparently liked me, and within a few weeks, we were living in San Francisco! I know that makes it sound easy, but let me be clear, I paid my dues for years working for newspapers, magazines, ad agencies, toy companies...

How has the experience been?

It's been great -- and also tough. Every artist working there was better than me! So I really had to up my game.

What have you worked on for them?

"Big Hero 6," "Zootopia," "Toy Story 3," "Cars 2," so many shorts that I can't remember them all -- "Hawaiian Vacation," "Small Fry," "Partysaurus Rex". I also worked on installation pieces for Disney resorts and contributed to the development of Cars Land at Disneyland.

What would you like to do or work on in the future?

Well, I worked on the visual development of a film with Paul McCartney. It would be cool to work with Ringo one day!

What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

Writer's block? Let me see. I, um, er -- sorry…gimme a minute...I just can't think of anything to write at the moment…

When did you start collecting comics?

Maybe 1961 or 1962, when I first discovered Sgt. Rock and the Kirby monster books. I wouldn't call it "collecting" in the modern sense of the word, i.e. as if a comic book were a precious object to be preserved for posterity to accrue in value. I traded them, rolled them up and stuck 'em in my back pocket to read again later, and sat down with pencil and paper and tried to copy them. I read my favorite ones until the covers came off. Isn't that how they were meant to be used? Then -- a familiar story -- my mom threw a ton of them away.

What do you focus on? Who are your favorite comic book artists?

I guess my big four are Kirby, Kubert, Toth and Steranko. But there are so many -- the great Jack Davis, Ditko, Mort Meskin, Fred Kida, Wally Wood, and the incredibly underrated and versatile Bob Fujitani. The "Hangman" stories he did for MLJ in the mid-1940s are some of my favorites. I love the books Hillman put out in the 40s, ("Air Fighters," "Clue") and the stuff ME (Magazine Enterprises) published in the late 40s and early 50s ("Jet," "The Avenger"). I've often been asked what, in my opinion, are the best comics of all time. Without hesitation I say choose any issue of Fantastic Four from numbers 30-90. Any one of them is better than anything produced since.

How large is your collection?

It's quite modest. I'm no big-time collector. I buy comics I think I can learn from. I have dealers who save their coverless, moldy, brittle, flaking old books for me because they know I love the obscurities, learning the forgotten history of comics and discovering great cartoonists who have been unjustly overlooked. Mike Roy is a favorite, and Tony DiPrieta, and John Cassone, and Mike Suchorsky, etc. etc.

What do you think will be the future of your field?

Do you mean animation or comics-related material? In either case I don't know. What used to be marginal pop-culture interests are big, BIG business now and it's all too complicated for me to understand.

How was your Baltimore Comic Con experience this year? How often have you attended it?

I always have a great time at Baltimore. I was at the very first one! I believe I've been a guest at all of them except for those that I missed when I lived in the Bay Area.

Do you have a website or blog?

www.martybaumann.com 

What's your favorite thing about DC?

That I don't have to commute there.

Least favorite?

The times I DO have had to commute there.

What monument or museum do you like?

Without a doubt Arlington Cemetery. Not only do we have relatives buried there, but it's brimming with history and trivia. For instance: My wife's uncle is buried just a few tombstones away from Lee Marvin -- who is buried right next to Joe Louis! Dashiell Hammett is resting there, and cartoonist Bill Mauldin.

How about a favorite local restaurant?

Caribbean Grill in Arlington, hands down.