Bao will be the Pixar short preceding Incredibles 2 in theaters. But where does that leave their short Smash & Grab? Maybe because that one was produced through their "experimental" program, it won't receive a public release.
Toby Chu has recently scored Pixar Animation Studios’ upcoming short Bao. The film is directed by Domee Shi and follows an empty-nesting Chinese mom who gets another chance at motherhood when one of her dumplings springs to life and must come to terms with the bittersweet revelation that nothing stays cute and small forever. Becky Neiman-Cobb is producing the project and Pixar’s Pete Docter (Inside Out, Up) & John Lasseter (Toy Story, Cars) are executive producing. Bao will premiere next month at the Tribeca Film Festival and is expected to be playing in theaters in front of Pixar’s The Incredibles 2 this summer.
Domee Shi began as a intern at Pixar and was soon hired as a story artist on Inside Out. She has worked on The Good Dinosaur, Incredibles 2, and Toy Story 4. In 2015, Shi pitched several ideas for short films and soon received a green light to write and direct Bao.
I like the premise of this short. It should be entertaining and it's interesting to see how multicultural Pixar's shorts have become recently.
We’re a dyad in the Force. Two that are one. "I offered you my hand once. You wanted to take it." - Kylo Ren "I did want to take your hand. Ben's hand." - Rey
Will this be the first Pixar short directed by a woman?
Sotiris wrote:But where does that leave their short Smash & Grab? Maybe because that one was produced through their "experimental" program, it won't receive a public release.
D82 wrote:Will this be the first Pixar short directed by a woman?
Yep! And according to Pixar Post, it's the longest Pixar short to date clocking at 8 minutes.
Actually, I hadn't realized before there weren't any Pixar shorts directed by women. At WDAS it isn't much better either, I looked it up and there have been only three: Stevie Wermers-Skelton (How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, the Prep & Landing shorts, The Ballad of Nessie, Olaf's Frozen Adventure), Lauren MacMullan (Get a Horse!) and Jennifer Lee (Frozen Fever).
Looney Tunes and Disney shorts used to run around seven minutes. Eight minutes shouldn't test the audience's patience that much.
"There are two wolves and they are always fighting. One is darkness and despair. The other is light and hope. Which wolf wins? Whichever one you feed." - Casey Newton, Tomorrowland
Not fond of the mother's design. The dumpling's cute though. How come most of Pixar's human characters look so unappealing yet at the same time incredibly generic? They don't seem to have that problem with their non-human characters.
Kyle wrote:Out of curiosity, how do you feel about humans in the Incredibles? To me that's the bar to shoot for.
The character designs for the humans in The Incredibles and Coco are their best work so far. I also like Queen Elinor's design in Brave but that's about it.
The short was screened at a Pixar event for bloggers where the first 30 minutes of Incredibles 2 were also shown. From the attendants' reactions on Twitter, it seems it's a sweet and emotional short.
The poster makes it look like a Studio Ghibli film. Its aesthetic is reminiscent of My Neighbors the Yamadas. I still don't like the design of the mother and I find her proportions (head-to-body ratio) unsettling.
Sotiris wrote:The poster makes it look like a Studio Ghibli film. Its aesthetic is reminiscent of My Neighbors the Yamadas. I still don't like the design of the mother and I find her proportions (head-to-body ratio) unsettling.
Domee Shi, the short's director, mentions in a new interview that she was indeed inspired by the visual style of My Neighbors the Yamadas, as well as by One Piece, and also speaks about the exaggerated proportions of the characters. The article contains a new still.
“Animation is especially critical in Bao because it’s really where these characters come to life. And before starting animation, I would start gathering examples of styles I wanted to go for, and I’d show them to my animation supervisor, Juan Carlos Navarro. I was heavily influenced by Japanese animation, like the visual styles of My Neighbors the Yamadas and One Piece, this really popular cartoon in Japan. And I love how squishy their characters looked and how pushed their expressions are. We drew our inspiration mostly from 2D animation, which was going to be a challenge in 3D because of how big the character’s heads are and how exaggerated their limbs are. So we knew early on that we had to do a lot of planning and preparation and exploration to really nail down the animation style that would suit the short.”
Just because something works in 2D animation, doesn't mean it can work in CG too (or at least not equally well). While hand-drawn can use unconventional proportions and still maintain appeal, it's much harder to achieve that in computer animation, due to the very nature of the medium. In this case, they failed to replicate the style they were going for successfully.
THIS IS THE PIXAR short of my LIFE!!! I've always loved xiaobaos. They're nostalgic to me, and I've always wanted to make this xiabao plushie with a cute face on it to use for my online teaching job. This idea for this short probably came from the word play between "bao" and the term "bao bao" which means baby or darling. Bao- I wanna see it and use the plushie when teaching my bao baos.
Sotiris wrote:Just because something works in 2D animation, doesn't mean it can work in CG too (or at least not equally well). While hand-drawn can use unconventional proportions and still maintain appeal, it's much harder to achieve that in computer animation, due to the very nature of the medium. In this case, they failed to replicate the style they were going for successfully.
Usually I don't have problems with exaggerated proportions in animation, but in this case I also find it a bit unappealing, especially when the characters are in movement. The combination of the realistic textures and movements and the unrealistic proportions doesn't work very well for me either. I like that they are experimenting with new styles, though. And hopefully you are caught up in the story and you forget about that when you’re watching it.
Candy-Bonita95 wrote:This idea for this short probably came from the word play between "bao" and the term "bao bao" which means baby or darling.
Interesting. Yes, that's probably how they came up with the idea then.