It’s been a long time coming, but Pixar has finally embraced 2D in a feature with the cartoon characters Bloofy and Pouchy from “Inside Out 2” (in theaters June 14). They’re the scene-stealing dog and fanny pack stars of Riley’s favorite preschool show, “Bloofy’s House” (a riff on “Blue’s Clues” and “Dora the Explorer,” with a shout-out to “Mickey Mouse Playhouse”), which she still secretly enjoys as a teen.
Bloofy and Pouchy are prisoners in Riley’s Vault of Secrets, where Joy (Amy Poehler) and her emotional cohorts are banished when they refuse to give up control of Headquarters to Anxiety (Maya Hawke). But, in an amusing turn of events, the cartoon characters lead an escape with the help of dynamite that Pouchy packed away.
However, the decision to animate the beagle and his sidekick in 2D only came about as a result of Pixar‘s recent forays into hand-drawn animation. “We weren’t sure how we were gonna do it,” director Kelsey Mann told Indiewire. “We always knew that it would be characters from a preschool show that Riley [Kensington Tallman] watches. And there’s different styles of those types of shows: 3D, 2D. And [‘Bloofy’s House’] would be on a limited budget, so we knew it wouldn’t be the same level as the typical animated feature here at Pixar.
“And then we were like: ‘Wait a minute, we have a lot of really great 2D animators,’” Mann continued. “‘What if we did the characters in 2D?’ They’ve put together a great pipeline for 2D animation on ‘Win or Lose’ [Pixar’s first long-form series coming this year to Disney+] and have learned a lot. And coming up with the look of how those characters fit into the 3D world was really fun.”
Rob Thompson, the lead draw-over artist who’s been at Pixar for nearly 20 years, was part of a 2D unit comprised of seven artists who got to utilize their hand-drawn skills on the goofy beagle and his handy pouch. But the challenge of capturing their simplicity was made easier by the artists’ 2D experience on “Win or Lose.” “Any time doing something different, it’s taking all the assets we have available and looking at the cost, the time we have, and asking: Can we do this?” Thompson told IndieWire.
“And, luckily, we had just done something similar on ‘Win or Lose,’ where all the animation is done in TVPaint, a 2D program, and then it’s projected on this 3D card that actually lives in the space with the other characters,” Thompson added. “So we ended up doing this same kind of mix so [Bloofy and Pouchy] would move with the camera.”
The next question was: How could they make Bloofy (Ron Funches) and Pouchy (James Austin Johnson) look 2D? That’s where looking at “Blue’s Clues” and “Dora the Explorer” was instructive for their modest animation with simple poses. “We needed something to aim for because what we usually do at Pixar is really high-quality; it doesn’t come quick or easy,” said Thompson.
“And so you end up putting all this refinement into something, and those shows don’t have the luxury of time or big budgets. So it’s like: How do you make it look like that? And I think that’s hard to do philosophically from our point of view because you get so used to doing your best work and putting them on the screen. And it’s not that it isn’t good work on Bloofy — it’s just a different aesthetic. But you have to switch your brain a little bit. It takes even more work sometimes to make something look less refined, ’cause you’re actually trying to pick up these little mistakes that are part of that world.”
In terms of performance, most of the attention was paid to Bloofy and capturing his silly sense of optimism, asking questions to a non-existent child audience, and relying on his broad appeal. “Dexter’s Laboratory” was a good touchstone. “He’s very happy and one note, but when he’s a little stumped or concerned, it’s like a hard change,” Thompson said. “So we skipped the in-between thought processes of emotion and have him go for the broadness of a pose or what the acting beat was, less subtlety, more big arm gestures, hands on hips, kind of old school, Mickey Mouse stuff.”
With Pouchy, the biggest concern was simplifying his teeth because initially they were too large and chompy. They also pushed his googly eyes when negotiating the design. But then there was the kaboom of Pouchy’s dynamite, which has an even greater explosive payoff toward the end.
“We ended up the same way as Bloofy and Pouchy, where it was on a card,” Thompson said. “And then as soon as it was grabbed, we animated that thing moving out, and then the explosion was actually handled by the effects department…CG with a shader, made to look 2D.
“I thought we were going to animate it,” added Thompson. “And I was excited because I love doing that effect stuff. But then we had [enough] on our plate. So they took it…and it totally fits.”
