Kristen Lester

Writer/Director, Purl Pixar SparkShorts Program

When Kristen Lester was about eight years old, she was so in love with The Little Mermaid that she made her dad take her to see it nine times! The writer-director of Pixar’s acclaimed debut SparkShorts film Purl says the movie hit her like a ton of bricks. “I was big into drawing, so from then on, I was either going to be a mermaid or be an animator!” she explains.

After getting her first job cleaning up animation for cereal commercials, the Victoria, B.C. native soon found herself work on movies such as Epic and TV shows such as Sym-Bionic Titan, Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return and Special Agent Oso. Among her many animation idols, Lester names Mary Blair, Marc Davis, Glen Keane, Mamoru Hosoda, Isao Takahata, Hayao Miyazaki, Nora Twomey and Tomm Moore. She also mentions that she fell in love with animation because it combines three of her greatest loves: drawing, storytelling and filmmaking.

Lester was chosen to make her new short Purl by the exec producer of the SparkShorts program at Pixar, Lindsey Collins. She says the short,

which centers on a pink ball of yarn trying to fit in at a male-dominated start-up, was inspired by her own experience as a woman in animation. “I was often the only woman in the room early on in my career,” she recalls,“and so I wanted to make a short that reflected that experience.”

It took Lester and her team of eight core people about six months to make the short. “Being a first time director, our short schedule and our limited budget were some of our challenges, but I was lucky to have such a supportive team that helped me deal with them,” she notes. “Looking back now, I love how fuzzy Purl ended up! Her fuzz was grown from the same technology that Pixar used on Brave, which I thought was just awesome. Any time Purl is backlit in a shot I have a tiny smile inside.”

Now that the short has finally been released online, Lester says she’s ready to take some time off before she goes back to her job as head of story on an upcoming Pixar movie. “I was directing the short and being head of story, so I’m looking forward to finding a beach somewhere and taking a long nap when my time on the next thing is up. After that, I want to continue making films! I’m excited to tell more stories.”