100 Fascinating Things You Need To Know About ‘Big Hero 6;’ Plus New Images

Animation

81 – A character’s control rig can range anywhere from 100 to 200 controls.  Animators will touch all of them to understand the full range of movements for each of the characters.

82 – These character models have to be sculpted from scratch.  So one pose must be multiplied by 24 to fit one frame per second, which then must be multiplied enough times to fit a 90 minute movie.

83 – The six heroes’ street form (non superhero form) has a particular art direction, their own model sheet, styles of emotion, and their own rig.  But their super forms has their own specific layering, and it is the animators’ job to maintain that consistency all the time.

84 – Disney had to develop new software in order to cope with some of the demands of the film.  Benson would allow the animators to blend in between body types.  So they could get infinite numbers of body types, skin tones, hair styles, clothing styles.  There are up to 700 different kinds of background characters that can be seen in the film. These characters had to do a variety of things like walk, talk, drive text, etc. There is an estimated 632,124 different animation cycles for different characters, which will be added to fill the background.

85 – For the animators, Baymax was a lesson in boiling things down to their essence.  They would need to keep things simple in their design in terms of the animation style. This would allow the audience to engage and interact with Baymax in ways they wouldn’t with the other characters in the film.

86 – To communicate ideas that might improve the shot, animators would receive certain scenes and draw over them pointing out where things can be improved.  This can range from the logistics of movement to facial expressions to certain situations. The idea of this kind of drawing is just all about communicating in a quick and easy way.  In the end it is all about plusing, adding and refining ideas.

87 – Animators will sometimes have to relinquish some really cool characters or effects to the betterment of the the film.  So something like the aforementioned Rocket Cat sounded cool at first, but had to be ditched because it didn’t fit into the final cut of the film.  But animators are always willing to let it go, because if it doesn’t service the story, it doesn’t need to be in there. Sometimes a whole sequence can be tossed.

Misc

88 – The film has some Japanese animation inspiration which ranges from hardcore animes like Akira to emotionally heartfelt one’s like Miyazaki’s Totoro.

89 – Big Hero 6 was a huge dream for some of the writers who consider themselves huge comic book fans.  Many referenced Chris Claremont’s X-Men series as their go to read when they were kids.

90 – Among the biggest problems of this film was giving each of the characters a proper introduction. So a lot of first acts ended up in the garbage.

91 – Among some of the ideas that were left on the floor was Rocket Cat.  Rocket Cat was actually Hiro’s pet cat named Mochi, who had rocketboots strapped to his paws. The  domestic marketing team actually fell in love with this.  Even some of the marketing teams in Japan wanted to see more of Rocket Cat.

92 – There are 7 action sequences in this film, which is 4 more than the 2 -3 that is generally since in a typical Disney Animation film.

93 – To understand how these characters were going to be defined, animators were given a test where they had to animated how characters walked into a cafe.  So Hiro is a bit more sloppier, kicks the chair.  Whereas Baymax is a little bit more delicate, Honey is more energetic, Gogo has dead stare and comes with a Clint Eastwood-esque entrance.  All these motions would help contrast each of these characters.

Next, massive spoilers about the film, so if you want to go into the film with a fresh eyes, don’t continue on to the next page…