If you’re a new parent and find that there’s something
strangely familiar with Baymax, the huggable robot star of “Big Hero
6,” there’s a good reason for that.
“It took us a while to find just the right walk cycle
for Baymax,” Zach Parrish — an Animation Supervisor on “Big Hero
6″ — admitted. “But in the end, we decided to model his walk on a
baby with a loaded diaper.”
Which — I know — may sound like an odd choice. But given
that this Don Hall / Chris Williams movie was basically a boy-and-his-robot
story … Well, Walt Disney Animation Studios wanted Baymax to look & act
differently than — say — the massive-metal-man-with-a-heart-of-gold that Brad
Bird dreamed up for his 1999 animated classic, “The Iron Giant.”
Which is why — as they tried to come up with a distinctive walk, look and
sound for Baymax — the “Big Hero 6” design team drew inspiration
from a lot of untraditional sources.
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Take — for example — Baymax’s face. Don Hall found
inspiration for that minimalist shape during a research trip to Japan
when he spied a well-worn set of temple bells. And as for this robot’s
all-tucked-away tech, character designer Shiyoon Kim says that an infomercial
for a Japanese rice cooker was the jumping-off point for this particular aspect
of Baymax.
“This infomercial had the cutest looking rice cooker
I’d ever seen,” Kim recalled. “Its design was not only simple and
good-looking, it also managed to hide away all of the advanced technology which
actually powered this rice cooker. Which is exactly what we were trying to do
with Baymax’s shape language. We wanted this character to have a non-threatening
appearance but — at the same time — be believably powerful and heroic when
this film’s story called for that.”
And as for Baymax’s huggable inflatable exterior, that’s not
just some sci-fi fantasy that a Disney artist dreamed up. But — rather — a
concept that’s actively being explored right now within the robotics
departments at Harvard, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon.
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“During a research trip to Carnegie Mellon, Don and
Chris were shown this soft robotics demo. They saw this robotic arm which was
covered with inflatable vinyl and were then told about how this real world
technology would soon be used in the medical field,” Parrish continued. “And that one demonstration had a
huge impact on Baymax. Not only on how this character looked but also how he
moved.”
Because what Hall, Williams and Parrish really wanted to do
with Baymax was have this character move like a real robot. Not have him come
across as just some guy in an inflatable suit.
“So we looked at the movement styles that are specific
to real robotics. And to make sure that the animators got Baymax’s behaviors
right, they actually had to track them over the course of this movie. Take —
for example — what Baymax does when he finds an object in his way. He will first
turn, then look, then walk. And none of those actions can overlap because that’s
the way Tadashi programmed Baymax. This robot always has to go through a
certain protocol,” Zach stated. “But the upside is — because Baymax
is a learning robot — those behaviors could get shorter and shorter as ‘Big
Hero 6′ went along.”
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But to make sure that Baymax always moved like a real robot
and didn’t come across as some man in an
inflatable suit, WDAS artists had to abandon the principles that they’d used
for decades to get rich, detailed performances out of their animated
characters. And — instead — they unimated “Big Hero 6” ‘s robot
character.
“And when I say we unimated Baymax, what I mean is that
we deliberately stripped out a lot of those things that people typically
associate with top quality Disney animation. Things like facial expressions,
squash and stretch, overlap. With Baymax, it was all about reducing this
character to his essence,” Parrish said. “So when we were giving notes
to the animators who were working on
‘Big Hero 6,’ it was always ‘Take that out. Take that out. Just go with a
single eye blink.’ “
“And the weird thing was — the less we had Baymax do
— the more audiences loved him. I mean, with a character like this, a single
eye blink can mean a million different things … So the more limited his
animation became, the more engaged the audience became and the more people
began projecting their own feelings onto Baymax,” Zach continued.
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“And when you’re dealing with this kind of limited
animation, it then all becomes about the timing. So we’d be in Dailies for ‘Big
Hero 6′ and be on the Cintiq giving directions like ‘Add one more frame there’
or ‘Have Baymax just stand there for four frames before you then went on to his
next action,’ Parrish stated. “When
you’re giving your audience this little information to work when it comes to a
specific character, it then becomes all about the subtext of the scene and if
the animation that you’re doing — limited or not — is actually supporting
that subtext.”
Of course, to make sure that the limited amount of dialogue
Baymax has in “Big Hero 6” then complemented the way this character
looks and moves, the team at Walt Disney Animation Studios had to find just the
right actor to voice this huggable robot. Which is where Scott Adsit of
“30 Rock” fame comes in.
“I was out in LA doing ‘Celebrity Autobiography,’ which
is this show where comic actors like me read excerpts from celebrities’ books.
And there were some Disney casting people in the audience that night. The next
thing I know, I get a call asking me if I’d like to come in and audition,”
Adsit remembered. “So I go into the Animation building and I read this
page of dialogue that they’d prepped for Baymax. And I wind up played this
scene off on Don Hall. And they must have heard something benign and
non-threatening in my voice that they really liked. Because the next thing that
I know, I’m the voice of Baymax.”
Scott Adsit with a Baymax toy at New York Comic-Con.
Photo by Nancy Stadler
The only problem was that Scott is a very physical
performer. Which meant that — when he was in the booth recording Baymax’s
dialogue — Adsit had to consciously rein himself in.
“As I was recording my lines, I’d deliberately stand
there with my arm crossed, trying to be as still as possible. I mean, Baymax is
programmed to be a caregiver. So my job was to sound as soft and as
unthreatening as possible,” Scott continued. “Mind you, the real
challenge with Baymax is — even though this robot is not supposed to have any
emotions — he still has a dramatic arc in ‘Big Hero 6.’ So Don, Chris and I
… It was a real collaboration. We took all those responses that Baymax has
been programmed to make and then found ways to let these tiny bits of emotion,
this arc of leaning come through. Which — I’m hoping — then lets the audience
know that Baymax has got this very warm soul deep inside.”
Which — when you really think about it — kind of mirrors that deep-down warm
feeling that every baby gets when they walk around with a full diaper (Sorry. Couldn’t
resist).
This article was originally posted on the Huffington Post’s Entertainment page on Monday, November 17, 2014