Pixar Success
An Animation Mentor graduate and two mentors at Animation Mentor discuss their experiences working on the third Toy Story film
By Barbara Robertson
In 1995, Pixar Animation Studio's Toy Story, released by Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista division was the first CG feature to have worldwide distribution. It became the top grossing film and the surprise hit of the year. Fast forward to 2010. Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios release Toy Story 3, directed by Lee Unkrich, co-director of Toy Story 2 and editor of Toy Story. The story of how Woody, Buzz and the rest of Andy's toys cope with Andy leaving for college became the world's No. 1 animated film in box office history. Now, Disney/Pixar is releasing the much anticipated Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack edition of the film (see DVD Bonus Features sidebar).
We talked with three of the animators who worked on Toy Story 3, Aaron Hartline, Victor Navone and Matt Strangio, to discover how they came to Pixar to work on the top grossing animated film of all time. Hartline and Navone are mentors at Animation Mentor; Strangio is an Animation Mentor graduate. Here are their stories.
Aaron Hartline
In 1995, Aaron Hartline was living in the outskirts of Chicago. He was working at a video game company at the time.
"I stumbled into animation," he says. "In high school, a couple weeks before graduation, a guy sitting across from me in art class said he was going to Columbia College [Chicago] to learn animation. I thought cartoons were for kids. Until I saw my drawings come to life." So, he attended Columbia College, too. By the time he graduated, he was married and had a daughter, and when a local video game company offered a job, he accepted it. And then one day, on a lunch break, he went to the movies.
"I saw Toy Story, and I was blown away," he says. "I didn't know you could take computer animation to that degree." From that moment on, his life's goal was to work at Pixar. Inch by inch, year by year, he moved closer and closer toward becoming a Pixar animator.
He began his new career by taking a job as a concept artist and modeler for the Chicago-based animation studio Big Idea. "I did everything but animation," he says. He sent his work to Pixar, but received a rejection in return. However, Blue Sky Studios was interested and hired him as a rigger for Ice Age.
"I'd rig characters in the daytime," he says, "and then at night, from 5 pm to 2 am, I'd animate the faces and send them to the animation supervisors in the morning." After doing that for a year, he became an entry level animator, moved up to become lead animator on the Ice Age character Scrat, and finally became a supervising animator.
"And then I got that phone call from Pixar I'd been dreaming of," Hartline says. "And, I got to work on Toy Story 3." That was two-and-a-half years ago.
For Toy Story 3, Hartline was one of three animators who created the performance for Mr. Tortilla Head. "We had tortillas at our desk and played around with those," he says. "We also watched the first films to understand the mannerisms of Mr. Potato Head, and mixed a bit of that into the new character. But, we had to think that this was a completely new body for Mr. Potato Head, and that everything wouldn't be quite working."
Hartline also worked on the scene in which Barbie meets Ken. "Mr. Tortilla Head was all about motion, about things bending and falling apart and everything has to move," he says. "But with Barbie and Ken, there was hardly any movement because the director wanted to keep the bodies stiff. It was fun to go from extreme motion to taking away motion."
Now he's working on Cars 2, and to keep his drawing skills honed, posts a drawing a day on www.thedailypostit.com. He is also in his second year of teaching at Animation Mentor. "I really enjoy helping people get to the vision they want," he says. "And to be surrounded by students so in love with animation gets my batteries charged."
Victor Navone
Victor Navone, another Pixar animator on Toy Story 3, is also a veteran mentor at Animation Mentor. "When I saw the school Bobby [Beck] and Carlos [Baena] were developing, it seemed like such a great idea that I asked if I could be involved," he says.
Navone joined Pixar in 2000, right after Toy Story 2 was released. The leap to the top came almost accidentally. After graduating from the University of California in Irvine with a fine arts degree, he became a concept artist for an adventure game company. In 1998, after seeing Pixar's A Bug's Life, he bought Hash's Animation Master software and began teaching himself animation.
"Next thing I knew, one of my test animations turned into a viral video," he says. That was "Alien Song," an animated sequence set to Gloria Gaynor's song "I Will Survive." "Pixar called and asked if I wanted to come in for an interview," he says. "Suddenly I had people who wanted me to animate professionally. I don't think this could happen today because there is so much more competition."
Once hired, the self-taught animator began learning on the job. "For about the first five years, I was terrified that people would catch on that I didn't know what I was doing," he laughs. "But, I had good ideas and basic skills, and I am surrounded by some of the best people in the business. It was a great support system. They helped me refine my skills and perception of what animation could be."
For Toy Story 3, Navone worked primarily on human characters – Andy, his mom, and Bonnie, and he also worked on a few shots with Buzz and Woody, including the sequence in which "Spanish" Buzz first meets Jessie and drops to his knees to profess his love. "I was a little intimidated about animating Buzz and Woody," he says. "These characters have such a history and have been so well done in the past. So I started on the humans and once I built up my confidence I asked to try Buzz and Woody."
In addition to his recent work on Toy Story 3, Navone has been on the crew for Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, and Wall-E. He also co-directed some Cars toons for television. And he's had the opportunity to do storyboarding.
"My whole life, I wanted to be an artist," he says. "I was drawing dinosaurs when I was three years old. When I was four, my parents took me to see Jaws, and I must have filled 100 pages with shark drawings. Then Star Wars. I drew Star Wars until…well, I haven't really stopped yet."
Now, he's working on an unnamed production as a directing animator. "I still really enjoy being an animator," he says. "I like to try everything else, but I come back to animation."
And, teaching. "There's something about helping people take their work to the next level that's really satisfying," says Navone.
Matt Strangio
Matt Strangio, who was mentored by Navone at Animation Mentor, graduated in 2006 and joined Pixar in 2008 after working for a brief time at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Tippett Studio. Strangio had dreamed about creating visual effects ever since he saw Star Wars as a child. But at UCLA, he studied graphic design. Until he took a class in animation. "I was hooked," he says.
After graduation, he developed flash animation for websites companies in Los Angeles and, as he says, dabbled in animation for around seven years. "I was trying to get into animation, but I hadn't done any animation," he says. When his web work turned into freelance work, and the freelance work gave him down time, he would rig and animate characters in Maya, working from books he had bought.
Then, he signed up for Animation Mentor, and in Class Four, an acting class he felt completely unprepared for, he received help from Victor Navone. "I learned so much from him about little acting tips," he says. "Things to do with the eyes that I had no experience with or even had conceived of before."
At the time, Strangio was working at Electronic Arts, and from there, he went to ILM. "That was what I had dreamed about as a kid," he says. When he finished Transformers there, he moved to Tippett for Spiderwick and Golden Compass, back to ILM for a two-month gig, and then went home to Los Angeles. And that move led to working on Toy Story 3.
"I continued working on my reel in LA," he says, "on a personal piece. And that's the one that got me into Pixar. One thing I like about Animation Mentor is that you meet a lot of people in the business. I talked to Victor [Navone] every once in a while, and when he saw the test I'd been working on, he said, ‘Hold on.' Pixar was hiring at the time and he put in a good word for me."
Both animators, the former student and teacher, worked on Toy Story 3, but not on the same sequence. Strangio helped animate the Western action in the opening sequence. "I love the physical stuff because to me it's not so intuitive," he says. "I have to work hard at it, and if I do a good job, it feels good. But I'm up for anything. Whatever the project needs. I love it here."
To Infinity and Beyond
All three animators found jobs at Pixar after doing personal work above and beyond anything asked of them by an employer. Hartline, a rigger, worked until the wee hours to convince people at Blue Sky that he was an animator. Navone created a personal animation that went viral. After graduating from Animation Mentor and working at ILM, Strangio spent eight months creating a personal film that opened the doors at Pixar.
"My advice for up and coming animators is to never give up," says Hartline.
One of the sequences Hartline worked on in Toy Story 3 was of young Andy playing with his toys. "It took me back to the first Toy Story, my inspiration," he says. "I thought, ‘Oh my lord, I can't believe I'm doing this.' When Toy Story came out, my daughter was a baby, and as long as she could remember, her dad wanted to work at Pixar. Now, she's 16. It's one thing to tell your kids they can do whatever they want. It's another thing to show them."
Toy Story 3 DVD Bonus Features
- Day & Night – An imaginative short film from director Teddy Newton
- Toys! – A close look at the classic toys, the Sunnyside Daycare toys, and Bonnie's toys
- Buzz Lightyear Mission Logs: The Science of Adventure – Produced in conjunction with NASA focuses on research in zero gravity and Buzz's return to Earth.
- Paths to Pixar – Editors at Pixar share career anecdotes
- The Gang's All Here – Checking out the voice talent
- A Toy's Eye View - A sneak peek at the Toy Story-themed playland at the Hong Kong Disneyland
- Studio Stories – Anecdotes about life at Pixar include an animator finding a hidden room, a majestic and expansive Pixar cereal bar, and animators shaving their heads at the start of the film.
Blu-Ray Combo Pack
Everything on the DVD plus:- Toy Story Trivia Dash - Sprint to the finish with Woody, Buzz, Jessie and Rex while answering questions about all three Toy Story movies
- Cine-Explore – Director Lee Unkrich and Producer Darla K. Anderson share their thoughts
- Beyond the Toybox – Commentary from story supervisor Jason Katz, supervising TD Guido Quaroni, production designer Bob Pauley, and supervising animators Bobby Podesta and Michael Venturini.
- Beginnings – Screenwriter Michael Arndt analyzes successful opening scenes in three Pixar films.
- Bonnie's Playtime - A roundtable discussion with story artists and director Lee Unkrich
- Roundin' Up a Western Opening – Developing the opening sequence
- Life of a Shot – More about the western opening sequence from artists and technicians
- Goodbye Andy – Exploring character design, acting and animation in the "goodbye Andy" sequence
- Accidental Toymakers – Meet the toy company.
- Day & Night – The making of.
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