Deconstructing Big Hero 6

Anna Beatrice Carlos
Apr 24, 2015
4 min read

Today I had the pleasure of attending a panel called "Deconstructing Big Hero 6" at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. As the former Co-Instructor of a class at Berkeley called "Disney & Our Daily Lives" I was excited to hear the panelists speak firsthand about the development of the film and how they took research trips to Tokyo, San Francisco, and various universities in order to combine both reality and fantasy in this amazing origin story.

The panel was hosted by Bill Kroyer who received an Academy Award nomination for his 1988 short film "Technological Threat", which started the technique of utilizing both hand-drawn and computer animation. The panelists included Producer Roy Conli, Director of Cinematography (Lighting) Adolph Lusinsky, Visual Effects Supervisor Kyle Odermatt, Head of Animation Zach Parrish, and Co-Directors Don Hall and Chris Williams.

Don Hall first thought of the concept of BH6 while wrapping up Winnie the Pooh in 2011. Disney had already bought Marvel, so he thought that it'd be interesting to create a film which is reminiscent of both studios. After finding a Marvel comic one with the catchy title of "Big Hero 6" he noticed that the writers were "nerds who were creating a love letter to Japan with references to Miyazaki." After proposing his idea to Marvel, they told him to make it his own, and not worry about the story staying true to the Marvel Universe.

While on a 13 day trip in Tokyo, the crew noticed that being in the city was like looking at the future. They decided to push the setting even further by mixing Tokyo with the iconic city of San Francisco in order to create "San Fransokyo." While showing the audience a model of San Fransokyo they zoomed into different parts of the city, which was evident of close attention to detail as you could even see the desks and other interior aspects through the building windows. They used a program called Denizen in order to create an infinite background and 701 unique characters in the crowd. In fact, some of the "extras" were actually avatars of members of the crew!

San Fransokyo is San Francisco geographically, so they had to make sure to get both the lighting and image of the fog was placed correctly in order to please audience members from the Bay, especially John Lasseter.

Hall also spent a good amount of time visiting universities so that he could learn more about robotics. While visiting Chris Atkeson's lab at Carnegie Mellon Unviersity, he was able to see the samples of soft robotics and grew fascinated by a soft robotic arm created by Siddharth Sanan. He was interested in the fact that these robots were eventually going to be used for health care purposes, and the people behind them were passionate like the filmmakers at Disney. He later found the face for Baymax while in Tokyo. After looking up at a pair of bells with a peaceful yet simplistic design, he took a picture of it and sent it to his artists.

The soft robot arm which inspired the design for Baymax.

Zach Parrish (Head of Animation) described how the animators, modelers, riggers, and other artists are given expression sheets in order to maintain consistency throughout the film. In order to overcome the challenge of creating sepearate identities for the main characters of the film, the artists were told to create bouncing balls which can only be identified by both its color and unique form of movement. They were then told to create a separate scene in which each character walked into a cafe and sat down at a table. While Hiro would sit down and immediately put his feet on the table, Tadashi would carefully scoot his chair forward and place his hat on the table.

Chris Williams described the benefits of creating an envrionment in the writer's room in which people can passionately describe their idea, then listen to their colleagues judge its quality. There are many times when they disagree over ideas, so they have to learn how to let things go, and grow too attached to certain aspects of the story since it can change at any time.

Storyboard sequence for "Drunk Baymax."

Another interesting point that was brought up is that while Pixar is about "What if?" Disney Animation tells the story of "Once Upon a Time." When Snow White first premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater, the audience was in awe of the fact that animation was so detailed that their experience was similar to watching a live-action film. While Snow White utilized the invention of the multi-plane camera, Big Hero 6 used many programs such as Hyperion, Denizen and other cutting edge technology in order to bring this superhero story to life. Just like the passionate characters in the film, the team constantly sought out new ways to make BH6 more innovative in order to exceed expectations so that the audience that would be impressed beyond a "scale from 1 to 10."

Director's Oscar for Big Hero 6

When the film was first shown at the Japanese Film Festival, the attendees were impressed by the fact many elements stayed true to the Japanese culture.

Director Don Hall signing my Big Hero 6 Art of Animation book. He also worked in the story department for Tarzan, The Princess and the Frog, and screenplay for Meet the Robinsons. Totally didn't realize that Chris Williams was just to my right until I saw this picture.

BH6 Director Chris WIlliams also directed Bolt and worked on the story for Mulan. He was also a story artist for Frozen and was the voice of Oaken (Yoohoo Summer Blowout!)