We asked, Pixarians answered! What is something you wish people knew about the process of creating an animated film?

“Storyboarding is more than just being able to draw! It requires an understanding of cinematography, acting, design, editing and more!” – Charles Choo, Story Artist

"Making a mess is a full-time job! Straight out of the computer, objects' surfaces tend to look completely even and smooth kind of like gray plastic.

The shading team adds all the dirt, rust, bumps, scratches and other surface textures that lend a lifelike and believable history to the sets, props, and characters you see on screen." - Bert Berry, Art Director

“Layout will sometimes shoot reference footage to see how a lens or camera behaves to add realism to our shots. For Luca we filmed ourselves underwater in the Pixar pool!” - David Bianchi, Director of Photography, Layout

"Animation is a job with extreme attention to detail - an animator could often work on a film for a year and produce around 1-2 minutes of animation. We put our love and passion into every single frame!” – Aviv Mano, Animator

"If there is a background character and you don't know their name, don't worry! Every unique background character has a name, and the crowds department knows them by their sight!”- Jonah Laird, Lead Technical Director, Crowds

“One of the biggest challenges for the Effects team in Soul was that the Astral Plane set was made of sand.

Early in production, we bought bags of various types of sand and toys to study the movement and behavior of the sand under various lights.” - Alexis Angelidis, Lead Technical Director, Effects

“As an animation film editor, we cut together an actor’s dialogue performance from various recorded takes from the script, and also add vocalizations building the timing and emotion of the scene. The animators then animate to this performance.” - Katie Bishop, Associate Editor

“On a day-to-day basis, a Set Modeler builds in 3D something as awesome as the buildings Helen swings off in Incredibles 2, to literally something as small as a paperclip that sits on a desk.

Set Dressers take all those models, build a world, and set up each frame to help lead the eye where it’s supposed to go.” - Christina Faraj, Technical Director, Sets

“Hank the septopus from Finding Dory took nearly 3.5 years to design and several people to model and rig!” - Nancy Tsang, Character Modeling Lead