Bringing Characters to Life

Scholastic Art: What is your job?

Patty Kihm: I am a directing animator at Pixar Animation Studios. I’m currently working on Toy Story 4. I’m working under two supervising animators and, along with two other directing animators, overseeing a crew of 96 animators!

SA: What are your responsibilities?

PK: On a film this big, different people animate the same characters in different scenes. But each character’s expressions and movements must be consistent and unique to that character throughout the film. One of my responsibilities is making sure the animators are staying “on model”—or within the parameters for a character’s movements and expressions.

SA: How is a character created?

PK: The idea for a character comes from the movie’s writer or director. The art department creates many options for how the character might look. The director and art department discuss those ideas and revise them until one idea is selected. Then the sculpting department makes a clay sculpture of the character. The clay model is refined, and then we make a 3-D scan of it. The scans are fed into a special software program, where controls are added to the character. Then the character comes to the animation department.

SA: How do you make a character move?

PK: The controls I just mentioned allow us to digitally move each of the character’s body parts. Animators add our own take on how that character might move depending on his or her personality, what’s happening in the scene, and how the character feels.

SA: What is surprising about your job?

PK: Research is a big part of my job. For example, I animated Dug in the movie Up. But first I needed to do a lot of research—online and in the real world—to learn how a dog moves. Investing time and energy in research before starting the animation process helps me get it right.

SA: What skills do you need?

PK: Animators are great observers. We watch how people react to situations, and we file those observations away in our minds. Later, we can draw on them for inspiration when we need to create unique reactions for characters so they have their own personalities, yet still “read” as happy, surprised, or sad—or whatever the emotion is supposed to be.

SA: What did you study in school?

PK: I started out studying graphic design in college. But then I saw an animated film for the first time, and I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I transferred to an art school in San Francisco and took as many art classes as I could. Then Pixar offered a short film class that I took and loved. Somehow I got a job at Pixar working on A Bug’s Life right out of that class. I was a crowd animator, which means I animated some of the little ants in the crowd scenes.

SA: What do you love about your job?

PK: This is a collaborative environment. We show each other our work and share ideas. The people I work with are smart and funny—I laugh every day!