INTRODUCTION

Pete Docter

When I first pitched this idea to people—“It’s a movie about the emotions inside a kid’s mind!”—I seemed to get one of two reactions. They would either give me a wide-eyed smile, or stare at me blankly and tilt their head like Lil’ Nipper the RCA dog. Eventually I came to realize that both of these responses were actually the same. People were saying, “Yeah, good luck making that.”

The idea was rather abstract, but in my enthusiasm I didn’t realize just how difficult it would be to make it concrete. Most our films had somewhere to start: bugs, fish, robots . . . even our monsters were based on some combination of animals. But what do emotions look like? Or abstract thought? Or the subconscious? Here we had nothing to measure against, nothing concrete to tell us when we’d got it right.

Of course, the answer to what the mind looks like came from the mind—specifically, the minds of our amazing artists. The designs emerged slowly, vaporous at first, gaining form and solidity. Some would lock in quickly, while others were more difficult to capture. It was a mysterious, fascinating process—and a little scary when we’d look at the rapidly shrinking schedule. But over time, the characters and world moved from foggy notions into actual things we could build, paint, and light in the computer.

This process felt so unique and exciting that we wanted to share the experience with you. So we organized the artwork in this book much the same way it felt to us making it. First you’ll see a vast array of concepts; far-out stuff from a wide array of artists. Out of hundreds of drawings and paintings we found a few that felt right, which we refined and made more specific; those are in the center of the book. Towards the end you’ll see work done as the movie was being made: design refinements, animation thumbnail drawings, and lighting studies. I’ve included a few captions here and there to give you more information about the context of a drawing. But other than that, we decided to let the artwork speak for itself.

Looking back, I think those of us who worked on the film all relate to Joy’s journey through the unknown expanses of the Mind. It feels like we all went on that same trek. We hope this book allows you to experience a little of what it was like to make it.