A New Benchmark in LGBTQ Visibility
Steven Clay Hunter’s well-received short Out features Pixar’s first openly gay lead character.
Last May, writer/director Steven Clay Hunter’s SparkShorts film Out received a lot of attention when it debuted on Disney+. The charming short centers on a young gay man who decides to come out to his parents after his mind is magically swapped with his dog’s. Out was a benchmark for both Disney and Pixar for featuring a gay lead character, and fans responded enthusiastically to the project. As one viewer noted on Twitter, “Out has been played more than five times at home, creating a great conversation with my four-year-old son, and it ended up with him saying, ‘Everyone can love anyone and I love it.’”
Hunter is a veteran of Pixar movies (his credits include Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, WALL·E and Brave), and also worked as an animator on SparkShorts’ Smash and Grab and Purl. He says he learned a lot about story working with directors Brian Larsen and Kristen Lester. “One of the things they taught me was that when beginning to write a story, ask yourself what theme it is you’re most interested in,” explains the director. “What is it you want to talk about most as a human being? And when it was my chance to pitch an idea, I sat down and all I kept coming up with were coming-out stories. It just felt like something I needed to talk about and sort out emotionally and mentally through animation.”
The nine-minute short took Hunter and producer Max Sachar about two years to make.
“We had a whole bunch of folks help us out throughout the making of the film, but the core team was quite small. We had maybe 18 people max and that core team worked on it over the course of anywhere from six weeks to a year.”
Taking a Page from Mary Blair
Hunter revisited his childhood to find inspiration for the short’s charming visual style as he wanted to tell a story for his inner seven-year old. “When it came time to think about what kind of look I wanted, I thought about the
Little Golden Books we used to read as kids and that led me to Mary Blair’s painting style,” he notes. “Especially her Alice in Wonderland paintings, which are absolutely gorgeous!”
“I love the freedom that the SparkShorts program gives us as artists,” says Hunter. Of course, there were some challenges along the way. For one, he didn’t know whether they were going to achieve the painted look they were aiming for. They hadn’t created this specific watercolor-like visual with the pipeline at Pixar and there was no guarantee they could pull it off in the time frame they had. “But our core team led by DP of lighting Andrew Pienaar managed to figure out how to make it work,” he adds. “I really wanted to have a hand-painted feel to the depth of field, but we really didn’t think we’d be able to do it. Then one Monday, our look development supervisor Colin Thompson came in with a big grin on his face and said, ‘I think I figured it out.’ And he did and it looks gorgeous!”
Hunter, who is 51 and came out as a gay man when he was 27, says he and his producer have been completely overwhelmed by the love and support the short has received. This has included “everything from older LGBTQ folks who love it and wish they’d seen a film like this when they were younger to notes from parents, gay and straight, who tell us about the amazing discussions about love that they have with their kids after watching Out,” he says. “But mostly I love the fanart!”
“We made Out thinking, wouldn’t this be a nice gift to the world — a story about a family together?” Hunter adds. “Today it feels like this kind of story is what the world needs, now more than ever. Hopefully, it’s just the beginning, there’s a lot more LGBTQ stories to tell!” ◆
Out and the other six SparkShorts are available for streaming on Disney+. For more info,
‘We made Out thinking, wouldn’t this be a nice gift to the world — a story about a family together?Today it feels like this kind of story is what the world needs, now more than ever.’
— Director Steven Clay Hunter