Play with light and dark in animation of The Incredibles 2

‘The Incredibles 2’ has received rave reviews - and audiences are just as enamoured with the animated short screened before it. Caitlin Roper talks to the director behind it.

Q: Your animated short, Bao, which is currently screening before Incredibles 2, is about a woman who raises a pork dumpling as her son. In the end, the mother eats him. That was a crazy moment! What inspired it?

A: My mom would always hold me and hug me and say, I wish I could put you back in my stomach so I knew exactly where you were at all times. And I would say, Aw, Mom, that’s sweet... but creepy. That was the spark for that particular moment.

Q: When I saw it, everybody in the theatre gasped.

A: Oh, good. I love that. That swirl of conflicting emotions.

Q: From an animation standpoint, how did you perfect that scene?

A: I had an early version that was way more disturbing, where she chews on her son for a while, crying. When I would show it to people, they would be really, really upset by it. I changed it so it would be a quick crime of passion where she just swallows him in one gulp, no chewing.

Q: Aside from your mother, what was the inspiration for Bao?

A: I was inspired by classic fairy tales, like The Gingerbread Man, but also there’s a bunch of Asian folk tales that involve an old Asian widowed parent who finds a baby in a bamboo shoot or a baby in a peach or something. I wanted to kind of do a modern version of those types of stories. I’ve always loved how they play with light and dark elements. These little characters are so cute, but the world wants to eat them.

Q: There used to be lots of really great, dark kids movies, like Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Dark Crystal.

A: I don’t think we should shy away from these dark elements, because they’re a part of this world as much as light elements are, and we want to equip children with the tools that they’ll need in life.

Q: How did you get into animation?

A: In high school, I was really into this super nerdy online community called DeviantArt. I could follow artists, and I could email them. In the past, you’d have to be in California or know a guy who was friends with this other guy that worked at Disney or something. Online art communities are probably a huge reason that you’re seeing a lot more girls getting into animation and illustration.

Q: The animated food in Bao looks surprisingly appetizing. How did you achieve that effect? I’m a huge Hayao Miyazaki fan and love how he depicts the process of eating or making food.

A: There’s also a whole community of people on the internet that make tiny food items. It still looks delicious, it looks very real, but there’s something really cute about it. Some people cook actual, real miniature food. Like, a tiny little hamburger with, like, flour and water, and they’ll make a tiny little patty out of real ground beef, and they’ll cook it in their tiny little kitchen. It’s crazy.

Q: Before Bao you worked on other films at Pixar. Was anything different about your team on this movie?

A: There were a lot of really awesome female supervisors on our team. I felt comfortable talking in the room; there wasn’t any fighting for the floor, with people getting worked up and yelling and pounding the table.

My production designer, Rona Liu, and I are both Chinese, so we knew our subject, the setting of the world of Bao, very well. We were able to explain to the crew and to the people we were working with what we were looking for in a really clear way. And I think that was cool, cause it’s not often like that.

Q: Does it make you think back on other animated movies that Disney or Pixar made and wonder if there wasn’t someone like you in the room helping represent those cultures?

A: Yeah, for sure. Sanjay Super Team and Coco blazed the trail for Bao to be made at Pixar. I think it’s a sign of the shift in the industry. Pixar and a lot of other studios are finally seeing that you can’t keep drawing creativity from the same well over and over again.