Thousands of millennials fill the campuses of ASU, each holding onto at least one Disney Pixar film that they loved as a child. As the anticipation for sequels and even trilogies approaches, the studio is gearing up to premiere "The Good Dinosaur."
In order for a good animated film to be made, there first needs to be talented animators. Rob Thompson, directing animator of the movie, joined Sun Devils on campus last week to share his teams' latest work, a work that has taken up the last four years of his life.
Thompson shared with The State Press that the biggest fear is the expectation of quality when starting work at Pixar.
"At any feature studio, the bar is so high for the level of storytelling, the level of polish, level of animation and ideas," Thompson said. "You get used to the fear and it just drives you. I think if we are not afraid then we get comfortable and this leads to not pushing yourself."
Thompson landed an internship with Pixar after college and has never worked with anyone else. He said he enjoys his role as directing animator, but would still like to move up in Pixar.
"I think it would be fun to be a supervising animator," he said. "People just kept asking me to do things and that's how I got here now. I don't know, it'd be fun to direct. It's fun being a part of the process, so it would be fun to direct something someday."
Thompson said he has drawn since a young age which he continued later in life as an artist during college; it was there he found his true passion in an illustration class.
"I wound up at the computer lab and there was a group doing animation," he said. " I thought it looked really cool. As an artist, I never really enjoyed finishing anything. That was always the hardest part. Just doing the drawings and figuring it out and then at some point it became really tedious for me to finish things. I thought 'Wow, with animation I never have to finish a drawing — there are these drawings that are always moving.'"
The idea of traveling around the country to share the film with students comes from the relationship with Pixar and universities.
"I love getting the feedback where people just laugh out loud at what you're showing them," Thompson said. "There's a couple clips we have that every school I've gone to, they've laughed. They're not laughing because it's funny, but it's just a crazy idea. I'm really glad people have the reaction they do."
ASU students take a photo with directing animator, Rob Thompson. @statepress pic.twitter.com/bXpoKgKz3K
— Ryan Santistevan (@ryanerica18) November 5, 2015
He talked about the process of developing Pixar plots, specifically how "The Good Dinosaur" came to be.
"At Pixar, we ask a lot of 'what if's,'" Thompson said. "What if your toys came to life when you left the room? What if there were actual monsters living in your closet? For 'The Good Dinosaur' we asked the biggest 'what if's' of all time — what if the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs didn't hit Earth?"
Through the presentation, he described the story between a boy and his dog. The plot plays out through the life of a young Apatosaurus named Arlo. His father dies in an accident causing Arlo to be orphaned. One day, Arlo walks along the river and falls. He struggles until he eventually hits his head on a rock and floats far from home. In his journey to get back, he meets and eventually befriends a human cave boy named Spot.
Both tears and laughs will occur while watching this film.
Kevin Sandler, associate professor of film and media studies, is the person who made it possible for ASU to be on the radar for Rob Thompson to visit the University.
"It's not often that you have a studio willing to pay for their filmmakers to go to various schools and share what they have," Sandler said. "So I think it's a great opportunity that students have that is rare these days. Pixar makes movies right. They take their movies seriously. They're moving, entertaining, everything."
Students from around campus filled the Education Lecture Hall, each seemingly intrigued by the animations presented before them. Exploratory business freshman Alexandra Carrillo loves art, so she said she was excited to be there.
"When I found out there was a Pixar artist, I was like 'Yes!'" she said. "The process of how they think about the idea first and put it into a movie intrigues me. (The Good Dinosaur) is a movie I'm anticipating and hopefully it's good, but it's not going to get the same reaction as if it was a part three to 'Toy Story or 'The Incredibles.' You have to appreciate it for what it is though because the art looks awesome."
Thompson said he is excited for the reaction across the states when the film is released on Thanksgiving.
"I just can't wait for people to see the movie we've worked so hard on," he said. "It's different from any film we've ever made. It's really unique. Our director Peter Sohn pushed the studio to let him make a film that was a crazy western with not a lot of dialogue. That's the kind of stuff animators love to work on. We worked really hard on it and we really love how it turned out."
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Reach the reporter at rsantist@asu.edu or follow @ryanerica18 on Twitter.
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