The Art of Inside Out
Arriving between the film’s triumphant international premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and its nationwide release this month, the latest Art of … Disney-Pixar tome takes readers deeper into the creative minds who helped bring director Pete Docter’s inventive concept to animated life. Audiences can get pre-acquainted with young, conflicted Riley and her guiding emotions — Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness — before taking in the groundbreaking film in theaters.
The 176-page volume provides an exclusive look behind the scenes with concept art, including sketches, collages, color scripts and more, illustrating the creative journey, as well as an introduction from Docter and a foreword penned by actress Amy Poehler, who voices Joy in the film. If our feature article in this issue whets your appetite, be sure to pick up this book for more inspiring artistry.
trust that, somehow, through all of this churn, this film would find its own legs and start walking on its own.”
Docter agrees: “They are all more difficult than you expect. I think you have to have a sort of clueless optimism when you go in, kind of like having a baby. If you remember the pain of it, you probably wouldn’t do it again,” he says. “But this one was especially difficult, maybe because we’re still so close to it right now, but I feel like, comparing it to say, Monsters, Inc. or Up, this one felt like more work.”
One of the biggest departures for Pixar was the story required giving form to very abstract ideas that have no visual benchmark in the real world. What does joy look like? What does the interior of a young girl’s mind look like?
“On Cars — Monsters even — we could refer to real-life things and say, well, let’s model it on a bear or a let’s look at this city and we’re going to monsterfy it and put fangs in instead of roses or whatever,” says Docter. “For the emotions, we wanted them to look like feelings feel to us, so they shouldn’t just be made out of wood or flesh and blood, so how are they going to look? And that’s a challenge. ... We thought about it probably way more than