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The Official Character Descriptions for ‘Inside Out’ Are Brilliant

inside out character descriptions

From Stitch Kingdom:

JOY (voice of Amy Poehler)
Joy’s goal has always been to make sure Riley stays happy. She is lighthearted, optimistic and determined to find the fun in every situation. Joy sees challenges in Riley’s life as opportunities, and the less happy moments as hiccups on the way back to something great. As long as Riley is happy, so is Joy.

FEAR (voice of Bill Hader)
Fear’s main job is to protect Riley and keep her safe. He is constantly on the lookout for potential disasters, and spends time evaluating the possible dangers, pitfalls and risk involved in Riley’s everyday activities. There are very few activities and events that Fear does not find to be dangerous and possibly fatal.

ANGER (voice of Lewis Black)
Anger feels very passionately about making sure things are fair for Riley. He has a fiery spirit and tends to explode (literally) when things don’t go as planned. He is quick to overreact and has little patience for life’s imperfections.

DISGUST (voice of Mindy Kaling)
Disgust is highly opinionated, extremely honest and prevents Riley from getting poisoned — both physically and socially. She keeps a careful eye on the people, places and things that Riley comes into contact with — whether that’s broccoli or last year’s fashion trend. Disgust always has the best of intentions and refuses to lower her standards.

SADNESS (voice of Phyllis Smith)
None of the other Emotions really understand what Sadness’s role is. Sadness would love to be more optimistic and helpful in keeping Riley happy, but she finds it so hard to be positive. Sometimes it seems like the best thing to do is just lie on the floor and have a good cry.

Unfortunately, Pixar hasn’t released the official character bios for any of the human characters, like Riley and her parents, as well as Riley’s imaginary friend Bing Bong.

But I absolutely love the ideas behind each of these characters, especially Fear, Anger, and Disgust. When you watch the trailer, it’s easy to find these emotions less “important” because they mess everything up without Joy and Sadness around. It’s sort of easy to look down on them for being themselves.

These character descriptions go a long way toward generating real depth to these emotions. Anger isn’t just angry because he’s voiced by Lewis Black. He has a real interest in making sure the world is “fair” for Riley. Fear is simply trying to protect her. In the same way, Disgust preserves Riley’s true sense of self. That’s just good writing.

inside out character descriptionsInterestingly, Sadness is the least fleshed out, which is surely intentional. Her motivations are something we’ll have to see pan out over the course of about an hour and a half. Is it June yet?

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New Featurette Shows Off First-ever Footage of Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’

It was a long time coming, but we finally have some great footage of Inside Out to gawk out at.

The footage comes courtesy of the Disney Movies Anywhere app, which means I can’t share the full thing here. But thanks to ScreenCrush, you can view some gifs of the film below.

If you want to see it for yourself, download the app and check out the latest Monsters University fact video. The featurette comes at the end.

And you’ll catch a glimpse of what my face looked like when I watched it:

pixar inside out footage

The girl you see there is the latest version of the film’s main character (and location, technically): Riley. She’s an 11-year-old girl whose family has just moved from Minnesota to San Francisco. Her adjustment to this big change marks the focal point of the film’s story.

One cool thing I love about the animation here is how much care they put into her facial expressions. You can truly tell that there is a battle between her emotions in the way she slowly lights up.

Pete Docter (Up) pretty much describes the emotions as “their version of the Seven Dwarfs.”

While the above is more traditional animation for Pixar, the shots below capture something new for the studio:

pixar inside out footage

As you can see, this footage takes place within Riley’s mind, and it’s noticeably more stylistic. Here, you can see Joy (Amy Poehler) throwing marshmallows at Anger (Lewis Black).

And here:

pixar inside out footage

You can see that the flames produced by Anger’s, well, anger is being used to roast marshmallows.

As Pete Docter and producer Jonas Rivera (also from Up) explain it, they’re using new and classic animation techniques (like “squash and stretch”) to make something we’ve never seen before.

We’ll see if that’s true next June…

 

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An Inside Look at Pixar’s New Movie, ‘Inside Out’

Information and updates surrounding Pixar’s next big movie, Inside Out, have been so scarce, people have resorted to repackaging the same news about the film in an attempt to reassure us that yes, the movie is definitely happening (but not until 2015, unfortunately).

That all changed recently at the Annecy Film Festival, where director Pete Docter (Monster’s Inc, Wall-E, Up) finally opened up about the film.

Sadly, I didn’t have the chance to attend the festival myself, but I was still able to hear various reports and descriptions of the event via the folks who did attend.

inside out annecy

Before we go further, it’s important for you to know the premise behind the movie for the sake of avoiding confusion. Simply put, Inside Out is a story that takes place within the mind of a 12-year-old girl named Riley.

We see Riley’s emotions personified within the “world” of her brain. Think Osmosis Jones, but without Bill Murray. Here is a rundown of the first five minutes of the film, described by one of the attendees for the event (via Pixartimes):

Then they showed us the first five minutes of the film – some was still animatic and some blocking, but the animation they have done is beautiful. It opens on Riley as a baby.

Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) is her first emotion. Joy seems happy on her own, but then Sadness (Phyllis Smith) appears. When Riley is being fed broccoli, Disgust (Mindy Kaling) appears. When her father threatens no dessert without eating her broccoli, Anger (Lewis Black) makes an appearance. Fear (Bill Hader) has a great introduction – she looks at a cable on the floor cautiously and then steps over – the comedic timing in that is better than I could explain.

We also see the emotions watching her first important memory appear. Memories can be called up for Riley to recall on a sort of projection in Headquarters. Then we see her growing up, and saw some of how her emotions cope with that. It’s very much a Pete Docter opening to the film.

I found myself completely empathizing with the situation, just like in Up and it caused me to get a bit teary. It’s another heartfelt opening which Docter is obviously really good at.

The story of the film is about how she experiences moving from the country to a smaller house in the city. Sadness tries to make her cry on her first day at the new school, but Joy tries to stop her. They fight and fall out of Headquarters into the depths of Riley’s consciousness (not quite sure if that’s the appropriate word?). The film explains how imagination and déjà vu work, along with other things the brain experiences. It’s not set in the brain – there’s no blood vessels or stuff like that, but the design has taken influence from how brains look.

As you can see, Inside Out is one of the boldest concepts ever taken on by Pixar, but it also looks like it could be the most personal and relatable for audiences to grab ahold of.

And as Peter Debruge put it in his article outlining the event on Variety, “Inside Out will forever change the way people think about the way people think.”

inside out pete docter

According to Pete Docter, the movie is based on a lot of his experiences watching his own daughter “grow up,” citing how preteens tend to become “moody and withdrawn” as they get older. “There is something that is lost when you grow up,” he says, and I can definitely see how people will connect with this theme.

Pete Docter also pointed out, “In truth, Riley is not our main character; she is our setting.”

The job of Riley’s emotions is to manage her experiences and turn them into memories (which look like “translucent bath-bubble balls” according to Debruge). One of the central conflicts to the story takes place between Joy and Sadness, as Joy as a hard time figuring out why Sadness even exists.

Joy and Sadness embark on a “road trip” throughout Riley’s mind, leaving Fear, Anger and Disgust to run Riley’s emotions. The road trip takes them through “Imagination Land,” which is an amusement park filled with everything Riley has ever daydreamed about.

inside out riley

Other locations in Riley’s mind include a movie studio where her nightmares are stored, a “Train of Thought” visualized by a real train and finally, the “Abstract Thought” zone.

As you can see, Inside Out is poised to be another Pixar film that challenges the way we view ourselves and the world around us, and I’m excited to watch the studio captivate audiences once again.

Of course, I can already note how the movie will fit within the Pixar universe as a whole in relation to my Pixar Theory. If you’ve read it, then you may recall how I believe imagination powers the toys of Toy Story and helps animals like Remy from Ratatouille become the greatest chef in Paris. With Inside Out, we’ll finally be able to see how it all really works.

“Inside Out” opens in theaters June 19, 2015!

Thanks for Reading! You can subscribe to this blog by email via the prompt on the sidebar. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@JonNegroni). I’ll follow you back if you say something witty and awesome.

New Details Emerge on Pixar’s “Inside Out”

As most of you know, I am a Pixar fanatic, so I take advantage of any excuse to talk about Pixar movies.

That said, we’ve learned some great insights into the story of one of Pixar’s newest projects, Inside Out, which will be premiering in 2015. 

Go on…New Details Emerge on Pixar’s “Inside Out”

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