Hi, my name is Joy and I am so excited you are here with me today! You may know me from Disney’s Pixar movie, Inside Out. I am one of the five emotions that lives inside Riley’s mind. However, before I was in Riley’s mind, the idea of myself and the other characters from Inside Out all started in the minds of many talented Pixar employees. Come follow me on this amazing adventure through the Pixar process to see how that idea became the finished animated film.

Fun Fact: In earlier scripts, Joy was originally going to be named Optimism.

Each Pixar film begins with a conversation. Employees gather together to pitch different ideas about possible story lines for future movies. Some of these ideas come from pure imagination, while others may be based off real life situations from the employee’s lives. The idea of Inside Out came from director, Pete Docter, who had a daughter about the age of Riley. She was starting to become closed off and reserved so her father began to wonder what she was thinking about, and thus, Inside Out was born!  

Pete Docter (Right) is the director of the Pixar film, Inside Out.

Oh come on Joy, you know it is not that simple. Tell them the rest of the process.

StoryBoard

Once all of the employees agreed to the pitch and thought it would make a great movie the idea was moved to the storyboard. Many artists work together to create hundreds of quick sketches to figure out what is going to happen in the movie. The artists use these drawings to build a rough outline of the movie. They pitch this storyboard to the director to see if he approves. They are never perfect the first time. New ideas are constantly being added or rearranged to come up with the perfect story line for the movie. 

This is one of the original sketches from the storyboard of Inside Out. This is one of approximately 177,096 sketches drawn for the movie.

 Story board is where I was born. Well me and the other characters from the movie. In the early stages of Inside Out there was 27 emotions. Most of them did not make the final cut, including emotions pride, hope and envy. They ended up using only 5 emotions for the final film. I am so happy they chose me to stick around!

Above are three of the many emotions cut from the final movie.

Modeling

 While storyboard works on perfecting the script, a production team works on creating different models of me and the other characters. They use many different medias including drawings, paintings, and 3D sculptures. Digital sculptors use these models to create virtual 3D models on the computer. They use this same process to create the sets for the movie too. 

Fun Fact: The characters shapes are intentional.

Joy- star

Sadness – tear drop

Disgust – broccoli

Fear- a nerve

Anger – a brick

Editorial

When the story boards are complete they move to editorial. All of the sketches are added together, along with music and dialogue to create a rough draft of the movie.

Why is there so many steps?! This is ridiculous!

Calm down Anger, perfection takes time!

Pipeline

Oh, we are at my favorite stop, the pipeline! This is where I start to come to life! No more living in the dull two-dimensional world, and hello digital animation. The pipeline is full of technical artists that find a way to create the movie on the computer. The technical artists create the characters and sets, including textures and surfaces. Each movie brings along different challenges that the team has never faced before. Creating my bubbly skin texture was so hard that it almost blew the budget! The director liked it so much that he told them to apply it to all of the emotions

UGH!

That’s exactly how the team felt, but they managed to do it, and it came out pretty amazing if I do say so myself!

Fun fact: Minor details of the movie were changed in different countries. For example, Riley’s dad would think about soccer instead of hockey. 

In case you were wondering just how large that budget was they almost blew, here is an overview of the production budgets for a few Pixar films. As you can see in the chart to my left, the amount of money spent creating Pixar films has increased a lot since the first Pixar film, Toy Story, in 1995. To make my movie they spent $175,000,000. WORTH IT!!

Animation and simulation are both part of the pipeline. Animation deals mainly with the acting of the characters, including facial expressions. They have to make sure the audience is able to read the characters emotions through their body language. Inside Out was created by a team of 45 animators, which is half of the usual amount. Simulation on the other hand, deals with natural movements such as hair, clothing, and natural elements like fire and water.

Fun Fact: The body and the hair of characters are created at different times by different types of artists. 

Virtual cameras are also part of the pipeline. In movies with human actors they have a camera crew that shoots from different angles to get the best shot. In digital animation films, the camera is actually inside the computer. They can move this camera around the virtual sets to shoot the movie from different angles, just like in real life. 

The image above shows what the virtual camera looks like from a distance. The viewer of the movie would see an up close picture of the emotions as if they were looking through the camera.