My Journey from Sheridan College to Pixar’s Inside Out 2

Growing up, I wanted to be a stuntperson. But that all changed the summer before Grade 12, when I was vacationing at a cottage on Lake Huron with my grandparents. I saw a mother out by the water who was sketching her newborn. I was amazed by her skill—it was a beautiful, delicate pencil drawing. I had enjoyed drawing growing up and I asked her where she learned her technique. She told me about Sheridan College, and said they also had an animation program, where you learn how to draw characters and bring them to life. “Have you heard of it?” she asked me.

I hadn’t. I was a kid from Calgary who grew up playing shinny at the local rinks and watching movies like The Secret of Nimh, Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was before the internet, and I had no idea you could go to school and learn something like animation. But something clicked: could I combine my two loves, film and drawing, and turn them into a career? My grandfather, who was a university professor, was thrilled that I was suddenly interested in post-secondary education—even if it was art school. When we got home from the cottage, he drove me straight to Sheridan’s Oakville campus. It was August and the school was a ghost town. I looked around at the artwork hanging in the empty halls: beautiful figure drawings in what I thought was brown chalk—I didn’t know what Conté crayons were at the time—and background drawings in blue pencil. I had two thoughts. One: I need to get some blue pencils. And two: I’m going to be a Disney animator. 

I ran into my first roadblock when, despite spending my entire Grade 12 year building a portfolio, I received a rejection letter from Sheridan. Determined, I moved to Ontario—and in with my grandparents—after graduation. Having an Ontario address allowed me to get into an alternate program, called art fundamentals, at Sheridan. The next year, I got into the animation program but I continued to struggle. I couldn’t get my artwork to look right and I didn’t get good grades on my assignments. Between second and third year, some of my classmates got jobs in the field, but I didn’t get hired anywhere. I knuckled down and spent my summer in the basement practising. Over time, my work improved. By the end of the three-year program, I had advanced enough to land a job with Fox Animation, based in Phoenix, Arizona.

I was at Fox for about four years, mostly in the “rough inbetween” department, doing the drawings that are between the key drawings done by the animator, that help create the appearance of movement. It’s entry-level apprentice work. After four or five years in the field, working on movies like Anastasia, Titan A.E., ParaNorman and a remake of an old ’80s video game called Dragon’s Lair, I realized I wanted to do more than animate characters: I wanted to tell stories. I pumped my mentor, Don Bluth, who had directed films like An American Tail and The Land Before Time, with a million questions. I practised at home and put a portfolio together to send to studios. 

I got my job with Pixar in 2011. I had applied—unsuccessfully—five times by that point. I started in the Toons Story Department, making shorts based on characters from Toy Story and Cars. Most of them were never made. But my work got me on the story team for Cars 3, my first feature at the studio. 

Most recently, I was the story supervisor on Inside Out 2. I work with the director and writers crafting the movie’s arc and understanding each character’s narrative. I also supervise the story team: we start off by breaking the movie up into 28 or so sequences, and my team develops those sequences. Editors then cut pieces together and add temporary dialogue, music and sound effects. We put that all together in storyboard format, and screen it for the upper leadership at Pixar, which we call the “brain trust.” They give us their notes, we tear the whole thing apart and start the process over again. Eight or nine times later, we have a movie. 

We were under a lot of pressure to get Inside Out 2 right. The first movie created a language for kids and adults to talk about their feelings. In the new movie, Riley is a young teenager experiencing new emotions, like anxiety and envy. The story team met regularly with psychologists and psychiatrists to make sure we were on track. We also had the “Riley trust,” a group of teenage girls from across the country who screened versions of the movie. We met with them over Zoom and they’d give us feedback. Those meetings were invaluable.

In this field—and in life in general—you’re going to experience disappointment. Not everyone’s going to like your work, but you need to shut out the noise and keep animating—or whatever it is you want to do. Keep grinding away and working as hard as you can and that will lead to success. If I can get here, anyone can.

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