Once upon a time, animation was not taken seriously by critics or industry professionals as a true form of cinema. With occasional exceptions like Beauty and the Beast and maybe a few others, the bias toward animation being exclusively for kids was always strong. Then Pixar Animation Studios came along and shattered those expectations. Once more, they’re going to do it again, with another original masterpiece: this March’s Hoppers!
It’s been tough for original animated movies post-2020. Studios during the streaming era conditioned families to wait three to four months for animated films to arrive in their living rooms. However, the truth of the matter is these movies are intended for the big screen!
The amount of research and work required to bring a film like Hoppers to life is extensive. And the worlds the mad scientist animators and artists at Pixar build from scratch always transport their audiences to places they’ve only ever dreamed of going. These designs and details, however, are only truly palpable on the big screen, which is precisely why they put the time, energy, and craftsmanship into every frame they create: because this immersion matters to them.
So whenever Geeks of Color is invited to Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, CA, it’s always an epic treat because we get a better understanding of how the magic comes to life, and a profound appreciation for the talent on display, bringing the worlds of toys, bugs, cars, and beavers to audiences everywhere. And this past month, we had the honor of seeing them do it again, as we got an inside look at Hoppers with director Daniel Chong (We Bare Bears) and his amazing crew. Here’s an inside look at what we saw.
A Six-Year Journey from Concept to Cinema
The day kicked off with a presentation from Chong and producer Nicole Paradis Grindle, who dove into the origins of the film.
“Making this film was a lot. It was a six year journey full of fun, challenges, chaos and gas during the pandemic,” began Chong.
However, to get to the years prior to the pre-production on Hoppers, Chong stepped back further to discuss how he acquired his love of animals and drawing, despite not being as immersed in nature.
“Nature is obviously a very big part of this movie; its beauty, restorative and connective powers. Though, I must admit, being outside in nature is not something I was able to do much as a kid. I grew up with pretty severe asthma and allergies, and I was relegated inside quite a bit. But that led to my love of drawing, particularly drawing animals. Our family had this old children’s encyclopedia set, which had this animal book that I just couldn’t put down. It was a source of lot of inspiration, tracing, copying and also doing cartoon red editions of all those animals. I remember giving them names, personalities…much of which was the foundation of the animal creations I ended up making later in my life, just like the TV show I created,” he stated, referring to his hit Cartoon Network series. He then recapped a bit of his career.
“I started my career as a story artist, working at Disney Feature Animation, and then here at Pixar…[which] left such an impact on me. And I feel so honored that after I left, Pete Docter invited me to come back and make a movie. So to recap, my career timeline; in 2009 I was a story artist at Pixar. 2014 I left Pixar to make my TV show for six years. In 2019 I returned to Pixar to make Hoppers, which was another six years.”
When going into the difference between working on We Bare Bears and Hoppers, Chong stated, “When I was on my TV show, [in six years] I made four seasons, 140 episodes, a TV movie based on that show, and 15 online shorts. And at Pixar, [in six years] I made one movie…if you think trying to add to the Pixar canon of movies sounds daunting, yes, it is. But here we are. We made a movie, so let’s talk about what we made.”
Chong described that during that time, he couldn’t stop drawing penguins. However, given the sheer volume of penguin movies already in existence (Happy Feet, Surf’s Up, The Penguins of Madagascar, etc.), Pixar initially rejected the pitch. So Chong went back to the drawing board.
“So I did a lot of reading, and in a book, I came across this famous story where, in Yellowstone National Park…beavers were a huge part of that return of an ecosystem [which was initially overrun by deer]. When beavers build their dams and ponds, they create a full ecosystem, not just for themselves, but all kinds of plants and animals too. All the animals return and they thrive around beavers. They’re a keystone species, and often they’re called ecosystem engineers, because of how they reshape land.” Citing that fascination with beavers as his source of inspiration, Chong knew he now had a movie.
“The movie started to find itself when we conceived of our main character, Mabel,” he continued. “A young, passionate college student who loves animals. We wanted to capture a main character that was full of wild, chaotic energy, was scrappy, impulsive, fun to watch…But as crazy as she could be, she was always grounded by being impassioned and fighting for the little guy, which was why we rooted for her.” He spoke passionately about the film’s lead character – a college student named Mabel, who had a strong love of nature and animals. This love and appreciation for nature would serve as the central crux fueling Mabel’s adventure in the film. “When I pitched all this early on, many warned that this movie was too big. It was too ambitious, too many characters, too many sets, too much complexity, all that. Luckily, that’s what a good producer is for!”
At that point, Chong introduced Grindle, a Pixar legend in her own right, to discuss her involvement. “I played lots of different roles on a bunch of Pixar films, working my way through the trenches of production up into producing…I was in the trenches on A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles. I was Production Manager on Ratatouille. It had a very back loaded schedule due to late story changes. I worked with a large, venerable cast on Toy Story 3…And I also got to do some fun unexpected things along the way.” Grindle was also instrumental in working on Incredibles 2, and the Oscar-nominated short, Sanjay’s Super Team.
“Incredibles 2 was also back loaded, but was a crazy and quite satisfying ride where I got to work with another great cast and managed to survive another hardcore production schedule with a smile on my face,” she continued. “All of which was great preparation for producing Hoppers, a gigantic film which pushed the boundaries in all departments with a complicated story, organic sets, tons of different kinds of characters (including humans, young and old, insects, young and old, birds, snakes, frogs, fish and of course, lots of mammals that require simulation on body volumes and fur, as well as their hair and clothing, and very challenging crowds. And I’m going to underline that…And then there were these elaborate effects, including the wildfires and the explosive bodies of water flooding a landscape. But fortunately, we made it at Pixar, where people just love these kinds of challenges.”
“We assembled a group of really talented people, many that Daniel and I have worked with before in previous movies, and many who had a lot of experience, but how do you bring all those people together to make an effective team for us? Crew culture was a priority, and we needed to build an especially cohesive team and process that could bring Daniel up to speed on CG and what was possible to achieve,” she stated of her director, who had been out of the CG game for six years.
“We both wanted to create a culture that supported collaboration and quick iteration, which also relied upon comfort and trust,” she continued. “This allowed for lots of experimentation and innovation, and by the way, we are the only major CG studio still doing all production work under one roof in the US, which is the only way this could have been possible. At this level, you need to be together in person to feel that level of trust in order to collaborate, to build stronger relationships with the crew, we found ways to recognize individual contributor work.”
Grindle discussed how she, Chong, and the crew had to become experts in nature and beavers by taking major expeditions across America to explore beaver habitats and incredible dams.
“We really needed to figure out how to become specialists in the subject matter,” she stated. “And that required research. As you heard Daniel did not grow up a nature lover. So in the tradition of all Pixar films, we went out into the field, literally in September of 2021 our group set off for a research trip to Yellowstone National Park…of course, we couldn’t get too close to the apex predators, but our scopes gave us a front row seat to dinner time, which also gave us a deep understanding of why we did not see even one actual beaver the whole time. They were very good at building sturdy lodges and staying in them as much as possible. But we saw evidence of their work, and even found an old abandoned lodge, which allowed us a chance to do a bit of exploration…Daniel also visited a beaver lodge in an urban space, a beaver pond nestled in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. It looked at first like once again, they were not going to see one, but they eventually did. As you can see, they’re out during the day here because they don’t have those apex predators trying to hunt them down. The team took a lot of inspiration from these trips, putting it into the movie.”
Pixar even consulted real environmentalists, such as beaver expert Dr. Emily Fairfax (who we had the pleasure of speaking with) and a group of young environmental organizers, to help develop Mabel.
“We’d show them screenings, then sit and chat about the movie and compare it with their experiences. The best note they gave us was that while it’s sometimes really discouraging trying to get people to respond to their efforts, they are uplifted by community, by their connections to other people who care. Community means the world to them. This helped inform the ending of our movie for Mabel, and the relationship she finds with the scientist,” Dr. Fairfax shared.
As the presentation ended, we were let out into the Pixar campus to experience the rest of the amazing activities the Hoppers team had planned for the day!
Improv: Pixar Style
One of the best things about Hoppers was its unique style of humor, when compared to everything else Pixar has done. And that can be attributed to Chong’s personal style of comedy. Those familiar with his work know that the comedy in We Bare Bears, while wholesome, is definitely unique. So Chong has brought those same sensibilities with him to Pixar. We were given the opportunity to join Chong, Story Supervisor John Cody Kim, and Story Lead Margaret Spencer for what they refer to as a “Gag Session” to see how the humor in Hoppers came to be. And what we discovered was incredibly surprising and almost like improv!
“We base this [process] in a room. We kind of knew what the general moments [of the film were], but we kind of were like, ‘What are the gags we want? What are the visuals we want to see?’” stated Chong. “…These are all things that get created visually through just funny drawings. And we give those funny drawings to John, and John will start storyboarding them into a sequence. It’s a really interesting, unique process that only we can do because people can draw in the room.”
The team asked us to provide a scenario for Kim and Spencer to draw storyboards for. We were so impressed by the speed at which they were churning out drawings; it was astonishing. The scenario in question was having one of the film’s characters, Ellen, a large bear, fall into a rushing river and take a whole group of other animals from their pond with her. The crew was rushing towards a large waterfall when, all of a sudden, Ellen’s – let’s say girth – managed to block them from falling, as she got wedged between two sides of the narrow river.
“The way John and Margaret work,” Chong continued, “is that their drawings are very funny just by themselves. And it’s a very specific skill that works for our movie, because we really wanted a really funny movie. And the way they naturally draw lends itself to comedy.”
It was a hysterical and interesting process, with each drawing and idea dynamically crafted on the fly based on our suggestions for which scenarios would play out next. This was something the filmmakers did when putting Hoppers together, which enabled the film to retain a loose, idea-driven, and creative sense of humor and style.
Beaver BTS Scavenger Hunt
We were treated to a fun scavenger hunt, courtesy of Hoppers character, Tom Lizard, who “texted” us emoji clues to follow for us to meet some of the amazing crew members behind the film. The first clue took us to the Sets Model Lead of the film, Mike Altman.
“Our role is to take all of the beautiful art we get from the Art Department and make it in 3D,” described Altman. “Long before our process begins the Art Department does years of research designing the world…the movie is set in Beaverton, OR, but they took a research trip to Colorado…for a week’s long trip viewing beaver habitats, and getting their hands dirty taking lots of photos and doing lots of drawings, developing what we call packets. An art packet is what they delivered to us to use as a blueprint for the assets we built.”
Altman described how working in sets was so different for every movie they work on, whether creating worlds for Cars 2, The Good Dinosaur, and now Hoppers.
“One of the big challenges on this show was creating the super lodge,” he stated. “What other story would require a 60-ft tall mountain of 63,000 sticks. It was a technical challenge. It was an artistic challenge. And it was one of the fun things we came across in the work we do.”
From Altman, we were given more clues from Tom, which led us to Pixar’s pool (yes, they have an Olympic-sized pool on campus). There, we met Amit Baadkar, the effects lead for Hoppers.
“We work on smoke, water, fire, destruction,” Baadkar began. “Anything that is simulated. These are effects that would be very time consuming for a character animator to do. So we do it in the world of simulations. It’s an important aspect of the film. We always felt the water was a supporting visual element of the film…So we had to make sure the water was not something that would upstage the characters. The characters are the most important things…but the water is always moving. There’s a lot of dynamism in the water…it’s transparent but it’s also reflective. The light has to catch it in several ways.”
The point was that the water was challenging because it kept drawing attention away from the characters. So they had to smooth the water so it didn’t distract from the story and the characters.
“The thing with a movie this scope and scale with water is that we have to optimize it so we can spend all our resources on the big sequences,” he continued. “We had to divide the water into different categories.”
The categories included simple water (water that doesn’t move much), particle simulations (water that interacts with objects, such as splashing), and more complex layers that enabled the animators to design the water styles they needed for various scenes throughout the movie.
Tom then gave us our third and final clue, which led us to Hye Sung Park, Shading and Lighting Art Director for the film.
“I’ve been working with this show for the last 3-4 years,” Park stated. “I couldn’t show anything to anyone for the past 4 years, which was so hard. Finally I can share our work with you today.” He walked us through some of the custom artwork he designed for the film. “My job is finding the right tone and mood for the movie,” he continued. “For each movie at Pixar, Art Directors find our own unique style for each movie to give a grand identity for the movie. Hoppers is a really active, action-comedy movie. It’s really energetic.”
He went into how he watched a lot of nature documentary films to inspire him: “But I wanted something more than [what I got from those films]. The energy was the thing that was missing. So I wanted to put that energy in the movie. I tried to use saturated colors and high contrast lighting to give the movie that energy.”
Park showed us the first concept artwork he created for the movie. He discussed that only 20-30 people were working on the film in its earliest stages. He spoke with Chong about the direction he wanted and crafted his artwork. It took months because the team would review and approve the artwork with every iteration to truly capture the right tone for the movie. They were the first real team members to visualize the movie, working solely with the script at first.
Park wanted to ensure each sequence in the film had distinct colors to make them unique. However, the challenge here extended to the film’s lighting.
“Color scripts are more for the color for the film, whereas lighting is more technical and more detailed,” Park continued. “The Lighting Department used [lighting concept art] to help light the set.”
He stated that the light source and the colors of the shadows need to be captured in these specific paintings for the Lighting Department to reference. However, with Hoppers, there were many challenges because nature contains many of the same colours, such as different shades of green and brown. This made it difficult for the characters to stand out against the film’s backgrounds. So they did what they could to add details and color variations to help the rest of the crew distinguish between characters in the foreground and sets in the background.
How To Draw a Hopper
Naturally, you can’t spend a day at Pixar Animation Studios without learning a thing or two about how to draw some of their signature characters. For Hoppers, there were two breakout characters that are on their way to becoming Pixar legends: Piper Curda’s Mabel and Bobby Moynihan’s George. As such, we were able to meet with Pixar artist and Character Art Director Anna Scott to learn how to draw George.
“[I worked on] the early stages – the concept art – side of things,” Scott stated. “A lot of other great artists helped out with this whole process. It’s pretty lengthy. You start out with the initial design of the character. Sometimes it goes through a lot of iterations to land on what you want the character to look like.”
We were able to follow her instructions to the letter to produce a version of George for ourselves. The loosely structured class felt very similar to the Disney Animation demonstration at Disney’s California Adventure. Overall, it was a blast.
Designing Dams
We were lucky enough to attend a quick presentation on the production design and visual effects of Hoppers with Production Designer Bryn Imagire and Visual Effects Supervisor Beth Albright. Movies like Hoppers may not seem like it, but the amount of work that goes into capturing the textures, the authenticity, and the spectacle of an immersive Pixar experience is quite extensive. And thankfully, terrific crew members like Albright and Imagire are spectacular at what they do!
“As we’re doing this, we’re keeping in mind that we would need to approach the grass and a vegetation in a cohesive way because the environments need to speak the same visual language as the characters,” stated Albright regarding the creation of the textures for the Hoppers settings and characters. “So we arrived at this final look for fur, felty and tactile, but with just enough detail to provide scale and physicality cues. And then our big challenge of how to simplify nature, retain richness and tactility, to fit with the stylized characters.”
Being the best at what they do means enduring harsh conditions and making sacrifices. One such instance for Albright and Imagire meant getting down and dirty on Pixar field trips to Colorado and Yellowstone to discover the true look of beaver habitats.
“We put on wetsuits and we got into the freezing water and swam around this lodge just so we could see it from above and below the water,” stated Imagire. “And we were really surprised at haphazard it looked like the logs were placed, but when you touch the lodge, it’s actually really sturdy. And you can also see there’s all these protruding branches underneath the water and that’s to stave off predators. Keep predators out. But on this day, we realized the challenge was going to be to reduce detail.”
The irony of the challenge being the reduction of detail rather than diving into freezing water to observe the construction of a dam was not lost on us.
“We continue to push the look of these sets with the exaggerated proportions, deliberate imperfections, asymmetry, caricature and analogous textures,” stated Albright. “And this was to keep them related to the really strong shaped language of the characters.”
As you can tell based on every presentation we were treated to during our press day, everything comes down to story and character with the artisans at Pixar. In the case of Hoppers, that’s all driven by Chong’s vision and the craftsmanship of his story team and talented artists. Whether it’s coming up with the perfect joke, designing chubby and adorable anthropomorphic beavers, or rising above new challenges to meticulously create and capture the verisimilitude of real life (to the point of physically exploring beaver dams in freezing cold water), there is simply nothing this team of filmmakers won’t do to bring us the perfect story. And as such, the least we can do is listen, and treat our eyes to a visual feast that represents the product of their hard work, on as big a screen as possible!
We will have much more coverage of Hoppers between now and the film’s debut. So stay tuned to Geeks Of Color for more to come on this incredible movie soon!
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