End of another year

This is the end of another year- here are the highlights of 2015 from my Instagram feed . . .

Sweet Emotion

This is a very early rough pitch I did late 2010 trying to figure out the 'interface' between the Emotions and Riley. I placed the E's stationed at a central console, an emotional 'well' where they could control physiological responses and view memory balls. Even at this early point Joy, Anger (Ira) and Fear (Freddie) were pretty well defined as a yellow wisp, a red block and a skinny nerve. The green character was Hope and the purple one Pride (Preston). Sadness (Hap) was like a big, blue mattress and was still male at this point.

I cued off a scenario where Riley has been sent to her room after sulking at the dinner table. (I think maybe Ronnie had even done a pass on the 'dinner table' sequence by that point.) The E's are all doing their job making Joy feel left out.

This view was tricky: I figured Riley is looking in a mirror hence the E's can see her through her POV.

Thumbnails

Since storyboarding is now done digitally these days I have no production sequences saved on paper. In the flurry of activity that is the day-to-day race to draw sequences for looming deadlines thousands of drawings disappear into 'the system' never to be seen again. It's not really company policy to allow that material out of the building anyway. All I have are scans of paper thumbnail sketches I made when figuring out how to approach the staging and acting for some sequences. I did some early work on the 'Abstract Thought' sequence and you'll see below that the Train of Thought passed through it at one stage. Here Joy is separated from Sadness and, with Bing Bong, escapes Mind Construction Workers by hitching a ride aboard the Train of Thought . . .

After a briefing from the directors where I make notes directly on the script page I'll start scribbling down small thumbnail sketches of any visuals or staging that spring to mind immediately.

These are more like 'beat boards' exploring a Brainstorm, Abstract Thought and the Train of Thought.

The Untitled Pixar film that takes you inside the Mind!

Having lived in France for a couple of years I was aware that animated films are often given interesting new titles; 'Up' was 'La Haut', 'Brave' became 'Rebelle'. Racking our brains for suggestions of what 'The Untitled Pixar film that takes you inside the Mind' might be I suggested 'La Joie de Vivre' which the editorial team amusingly used at the head of one of the rough assembly screenings. Naming this film was thrown open to the entire crew by producer Jonas Rivera. A list was drawn up that everyone contributed to eg. 'Mind Blown', 'BrainTrust', 'Joyless', 'Out of Mind', 'Emotional Rescue' etc.

I started with a 'mood board' tracking films with similar titles to some we had in mind. I collated images with colours that suggested emotions and Saul Bass style fonts. Potential titles must be checked against existing properties by the legal dept. There are several 'Inside Out' films but there was deemed no conflict of interest with Pixar's film.

I think visually and have loved designing fonts and logos since childhood. My Dad is a sign-maker and I was fascinated by a Letraset book he had. I'd help him design signs and he had great technical pens I'd use to draw. I studied graphic design later at school and always relish the opportunity to do some thinking on movie logos.
'Life of Riley' was deemed too trite early on. I don't know who came up with 'Inside Out' ultimately but it was on a short list that John Lasseter chose from. Once again the French title is more interesting and whimsical 'Vice-Versa'.

 'HQ!' could've been fun. I thought perhaps using the name of the true main character of the film (but it looks like David O. Russell took that one).

The Story team are often tasked with generating ideas for teaser trailers.  These are very rough thumbnails where I'm just thinking my way through ideas. I love movie trailers that used to 'tease', that left the audience intrigued. I thought of something that would use simple abstract shapes animated on screen with relevant sound effects. 

I thought about Joy presenting the team in a 'Psychology Lesson'

(Above) 'The Emotional States of Riley' or even something more mysterious . . .

Pete even tasked us with coming up with graphic 'emoticons' that could be used on the control panel displays. This page above is what Pete showed to Dacher Keltner at Berkeley's Psychology lab which led to me helping them develop the 'Finch' animated emoticon for Facebook.

BRAINSTORM

With 'INSIDE OUT' taking over the world I'm dredging the memory bank for some of the multitude of ideas that didn't get into the final version of the story. For every idea in the movie there must be a hundred that remained on the story room floor. These are a fraction of the visual thoughts generated not only by the Story team but the Art Dept. would follow up with countless designs and suggestions.

This is a VERY early visualization of 'Headquarters' (late 2010) where I was playing with the Emotions literally plugged into Riley's Mind as they monitor her physical state. That purple figure was Pride who was the fifth emotion before Disgust came into the picture instead.

 More early Headquarters beat boards where I was trying out the physiological controls and a control room similar to the bridge of the Enterprise in Star Trek.

This next one I called 'Emote Control'. You can see Anger was a blocky, little square from day one and Joy was always more humanoid with a wisp of hair like a flame. Sadness was much bigger, like a large, lumbering mattress. She gradually shrunk over the production and gained hair and glasses (and clothing!). Fear was always a slender, worm-like form. Hope kind of merged with Sadness while Pride was dropped altogether.

What would a 'flood of emotion' look like?

How does 'memory recall' work?

In the early days of story development we had Short Term memory and Long Term memory. Below I envisioned all 6 emotions encountering a clerk or librarian who organized memories and sends them up a vacuum shoot.

 Short Term was for sorting and Long Term was for storage. Long Term memory held deep, important memories from Riley's life. Here I was playing with floating memory 'boxes' or display cabinets.

In an early version of the story Joy and BingBong originally entered the film-set or 'Dream Productions' through a back door and passed through a warehouse where all the props that made Riley's dreams were stored.

 Joy and Bing Bong enter the 'Center for Boy Research' - my attempt to incorporate some Freudian symbolism.

 This must have been a riff on BingBong's 'bottomless' backpack. 'Core memories' started out in the film as 'golden memories' and BB was hiding them . . . somewhere . . .

In his earliest incarnation BingBong was more of a fugitive, on the run from 'Mind-Police'. I imagined his arrest photos.

Existential angst . . . 

Joy and BingBong being chased by the 'Mind' police.

Joy and Bing Bong disguise themselves to evade capture or sneak into different parts of the Mind.

Having retrieved all the golden memories Joy climbs out of the Memory Pit like Robert DeNiro in 'The Mission'!

The structure of 'The Mind' was constantly re-thought; should it be vertical, horizontal? Should Joy's journey be down or up? At one point it was depicted as a fantastic city.

Here I was thinking of multiple 'Trains of Thought' that might converge in a cerebral cortex 'Grand Central Station'.

There was some exploration of areas in the Mind that were more like natural environments; the Frozen Forest of Amnesia, the swamp of Inner Demons etc.

We considered musical instruments as a way of expressing emotion. Sadness would obviously have a harp or violin but I imagined Anger dwarfed by a giant percussive/organ instrument - like a one man band!

If I remember correctly this was an assignment to see if we could give the memory balls some of the attributes of the characters; big, HEAVY sad memories; skittish little fear memories, disgusting memories etc.

The Mind's Eye -a kind of mobile CCTV - 'always watching. . .'

Below: Doodles of Blue Sky Thinking, a Train of Thought and a Brainstorm.

I found Joy rather hard to draw, especially that elven hairstyle that was brushed down and up. She was more humanoid than the basic shapes of the other Emotions (even Disgust was a triangle in an early incarnation). The others artists like Domee naturally had great appeal in their drawings of Joy but I struggled. In an effort to capture her spirit better I once had one of our Gesture models assume poses that were relevant to the story and drew her (or him, I can't remember) as Joy.