A Disney animated Marvel film almost seemed to good to be true. But when Disney acquired Marvel Comics back in 2009, a collaboration of the two forces was inevitable. The two would announce Big Hero 6 as their first collaborative project. But the film wouldn’t be a direct adaption of the comic book of the same name, instead the title would serve as an inspiration for the film, which would have the same characters but a new story and a new setting. Directed by Don Hall (Winnie the Pooh) and Chris Williams (Bolt), Big Hero 6 features the voices of Maya Rudolph, James Cromwell, Damon Wayans Jr., T.J. Miller, Alan Tudyk, Jamie Chung, Genesis Rodriguez, Daniel Henney, with Ryan Potter as Hiro Hamada and Scott Adsit as Baymax.
We were invited to visit Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, CA a few weeks back to learn about the film and watch about 30 minutes worth of footage, both finished and unfinished. While we saw some of the latter, what we saw was very promising and had that magic Disney touch we all know and love. So out of this studio visit we have 100 things you may not know about the film. This includes all sorts of facts like trips to Carnegie Mellon to research soft robotics, new softwares developed to help enhance the visual effects of the film, how many times the story needed to be changed, how the robots in the film can have real world applications but also have that Disney magic touch.
But do you know how many animators have worked on the film? How many Microbots can be seen in once scene? What kind of object was the inspiration for Baymax’s face? How Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Head John Lassesseter helped during the writing process? How many storyboards is in one sequence, and how many of those boards are tossed if one sequence is taken out. You can find out about all of this and more after the jump.
Basics
1 – While the film shares the same name with it’s Marvel Comic series inspiration, the story and the world it is set in is entirely different. Big Hero 6 tells the story of Hiro Hamada, a technology genius who specializes in robotics. Set in the near future of the hi-tech fictional city of San Fransokyo (a hybrid of San Fransisco and Tokyo) that blends eastern and western cultures. Here’s an early example of what they wanted you to see.
As you can see the city is full of bright neon lights and has a lot of moving ads, which would represent the Tokyo aspect of San Fransokyo. There are also lanterns, Japanese characters written on some of the buildings. The San Fransisco part of the film is represented by the hills, trolleys, and the Golden Gate-esque bridge in the distance.
2 – At it’s core, Big Hero 6 is a story about a young man and his robot, who helps him recover from a devastating loss and help him become whole again. Through the eyes of this young man we see this process is filled with tears, surprises, thrills, and lots of laughter.
3 – Big Hero 6 is Disney Animation Studios’ first full fledged superhero movie. Pixar has The Incredibles, and Marvel has their library of films. While the film shares the same title with a Marvel Comics’ series, the comic book is only the inspiration, the characters, plot, city, are entirely original creations. It has that Disney stamp on it.
4- An average Disney film has up to 2 to 3 lead characters and 3 to 4 supporting characters. Big Hero 6 has 15 main characters. There is the team of 6 characters.
- Hiro
Our young hero of the film who possesses high intelligence. The devastating loss of his brother Tadashi nearly crushes him, until Baymax, Tadshi’s healthcare robot invention, helps him become whole again. - Baymax
Is a nurse bot, a personal healthcare companion, who is programed with over 10,000 medical procedures. Baymax isn’t the most nimble of characters, as his huge size doesn’t allow him to fit through tight spots or run fast. He also doesn’t have acute situational awareness or the capacity to be stealth as he needs to let out air – which causes a lot of noise depending on how much air is expelled. - Wasbi
A precision and control freak. - Honey Lemon
A sweet and bubbily chemistry genius, who just might be the happiest person on earth. - GoGo Tomago
The mechanical engineer of the group, who spends all of her free time doing anything to get her adrenaline pumping. - Fred
A comic book fan boy who really isn’t a student but a major science enthusiast and the school mascot. - Aunt Cass
The quirky and fun loving aunt who takes care of the Hiro and Tadashi.
5 – The characters’ personalities had to reflect what their suits and powers would be. So since Wasbi is a precision and control freak, the writers would give him plasma blades.
6 – There are up to 85 different animators working on this film.
Story
7 – It takes about four to five years to fully develop the script for an animated film like Big Hero 6, because the story is constantly changing. But the storyboarding allows for a quick version of the film to be laid out, this way they can see if the story can work out, and then they could make any necessary changes to the film itself.
8 – 2/3 of those four or five years are actually spent on crafting the story. Animated films at Disney resembles the TV writing process where it is very collaborative, and the story departement works together by throwing out ideas until it sticks.
9 – While Big Hero 6 does have the Marvel brand attached to it, Don Hall actually pitched the story about a genius kid and his healthcare robot.
10 – Some of most simple sounding questions are actually the biggest ones the storyboard team has to ask like: What happens in the beginning? What happens in the middle? When is this going to end? But they also ask what is this movie going to be about? That question isn’t necessarily focused on plot, but they are trying to figure out what they want to say with the themes, characters, etc. The more answers and ideas they come up with, the more storyboards they pin it to the board, then it really starts to take shape.
11 – Lasseter will come in once in a while, and provide some help since he is going into it with fresh eyes and hasn’t been locked in a room for months on end trying to figure the story out.
12 – The story trust, other directors from previous or upcoming Disney films, will help out in the storyboarding process.
13 – As a writer going from pitch to outline to script is a very exciting time, especially in the final stage of the script process where they finally get to dig in to who the characters are, how they work with each other, etc.
14 – Actors will be brought in for a table read, a sort of radioplay, where they will hear the script being played out for the first time. This helps the writers, directors, story trust, and Lasseter to figure out what is working and what isn’t working. According to the writers, this process reveals that they found out what isn’t working more than what is working, but that will give them the opportunity to go back to rewrite the script. At this point, they are already a year into the film. The collaborative efforts allows the writers and directors to discover how these characters will interact with each other on screen.
15 – The movie is divided into 20 different sequences where it is then handed out to different storyboard artists who must make sure that everything is still making sense.
16 – Once they have the movie, they start to do screenings, from inhouse studio screenings to early press screenings, these screenings are doing to gauge the audiences’ reaction to the film, and find out once more what is and what isn’t working. There are about eight screenings in total before the film is actually released. The first screenings are always the worst ones of the bunch.
17 – A sequence can be up to 1,000 drawings. If a 9 minute portion of the film doesn’t work as the writers would have hoped, up to 30,000 boards can end up in the garbage, and the team will have to work on a blank board again. Conceptual things will remain.
18 – Nothing is being animated until they figure out the story. This doesn’t mean the story has to be completed, it means they have to figure out what is working for them.
19 – For John Lasseter, story is king, and nothing is more important to get right in a film than story.
20 – Big Hero 6 was initially a struggle to begin with because of characters like Fred and his Kaiju supersuit, Microbots, and even the fictional San Fransokyo. This is the kind of story that can easily turn from one that the audience can relate to, to one that the audience doesn’t relate to at all. The connection was the most important thing about this film.
21 – Big Hero 6 is actually following a new story trend at Disney, where the theme focuses on family and relationships. While Frozen had a family tied by blood, Big Hero 6 will have a unconventional one where Hiro builds a new family with the friends he meets in the film. All of whom have some sort of personal connection to his brother, Tadashi.
22 – Lasseter stresses to the writers that that you don’t know how a movie starts until it ends. So he wants the writers to work backwards, from the end to the beginning.
Continue reading to learn about the research, visual effects, and our hero Baymax of the Big Hero 6.
Research
23 – Part of Big Hero 6‘s research entailed the team traveling to San Fransisco and Tokyo to understand the cities infrastructure, architecture, and cultural differences.
24 – Tokyo’s research trip included taking notes on the city’s skyscrapers. The team had to study the building’s density, layering, ratios. But what struck them the most is the degree of architecture, the way some tiles are fitted, even the sidewalks. Even utility poles takes on a certain esthetic.
25 – For the character’s costumes, the research trip included a study on Japan’s fashion from traditional kimonos to more contemporary kimonos. The teams also went on trips to the malls to study some of the details of other fashion that would help inspire the characters’ costumes.
26 – San Fransisco’s research trip was trying to understand the light and the atmosphere. Basically how light reflects, refracts, cast shadows, etc.
27 – The team also studied the San Fransisco’s homes, most of which had a Victorian and Queen Ann designs, which would be an inspiration for Hiro’s house.
28 – These research trips would help shape the look and feel of San Fransokyo. So there will be many iconic landmarks from San Fransisco, but also specific architecture that can only be found in Japan.
29 – Baymax was never in the original comic books, instead his character was a creation based on a research trip to Carnigie Mellon, where they learned about soft robotics.
30 – The story of a boy and his robot would always be the core of Big Hero 6‘s story. And during a research trip to Carnegie Mellon, directors Don Hall and Chris Williams were introduced to the applications of soft robotics. The development of this real world technology would be used in the medical field, which is why Baymax is a healthcare robot instead of Giantor or a gundam.
31 – The design of Japanese rice cookers also helped create the look and feel of Baymax.
32 – The writers were even involved in the research process. They met with chemists, doctors, police officers, and other experts to make sure the film is authentic as possible.
Visual Effects
33- The first thing that comes to most people’s minds when it comes to effects are water, fire, smoke, rain, snow. Environmental elements that play into both animation and live-action, and over at Disney, they work on both. Remember the Frozen snow technology? That was developed over at Disney Animation Studios after much research on everything about snow
34 – One of the most exciting things that the visual effects team works on is how they use the effects as extension of characters. Like how snow is an extension of who Elsa is. Capturing that emotion is always a huge challenge that the visual effects team has to face.
35 – The effects can also be an extension of the surrounding environment. Sometimes these environments need to be created from scratch in order to get tone right.
36 – These effects can be characters themselves. Effects can have personality, much like how the paper airplanes in Paperman had personality.
37 – The filmmaking process for an animated feature is a huge collaborative process. Since everyone working on Big Hero 6 are contained to the studio lot, it leads to happy collaboration about an idea and an extension of an idea. Everyone is a part of this filmmaking process, ideas are constantly bouncing off different departments, which will ultimately result in what you see or may not see on film.
38 – The effects must do something more than look cool, they must convey emotion – just like in Frozen – and they must tell a story. Sometimes effect shots like a lake are there to support the environment, but often for things like a lantern, effect shots are there to sell an emotional beat.
39 – Animators and effects artists are often working together to make sure each and every shot goes over smoothly.
40 – Challenges of the creative aspects of Big Hero 6, when the director wants something that looks very different, the first thing that the visual effects artists do when they are handed an idea of want kind of effect they want you to see, they go through the motion of things you have seen before. Once they have exhausted those, they get to the blank slate, and then that’s where the real work begins. It takes a lot of time for these visual effects artists to eliminate things that you have seen before.
41 – A lot of times they have these ideas, its just a matter of executing them. So for Big Hero 6, there are two major ones. The one we got to see was the MicroBots.
42 – Creating complex environments was a top priority for the visual effects team, which would be the basis for the world that is San Fransokyo. They leveraged off an idea to do a light simulation engine, a ray tracer that allows for unlimited complexity. Meaning they are not limited by memory on the machine they are rendering on anymore. So that was a breakthrough idea. Now they are using that technology on Big Hero 6. It will help simulate reality, and is an integral part that would help integrate the tone of the film.
43 – Effects create many different data sets that need different technology, so for a water surface, it is rendered the same way the top of a car would be surfaced or a pier would be surfaced, its a hard surface. That is the Hyperion technology at play. To render the bubbles used in the film, the visual effects team used a technique called “Instancing.” For that, the team is actually animating bubbles, and copying them to certain points in the scene.
44 – The amount of how complex these animated films are becoming has drastically changed. For instance, there was a team of 16 during the production of Tangled. It has since grown, with Big Hero 6 now being a team of 40. Effects designer are working with the directors and art directors to figure out the look of the effects. There is also a layout and animation lesion directly input inside the various departments to make sure they are working cohesively, and the to make sure the visual would be seen through.
45 -Research for Baymax’s look included looking at robots, soft robotics, Asamo, babies, and what the team landed on was penguins. The penguins’ unique way of moving which was very limited would be the base of inspiration for Baymax’s movements. A penguin’s blank face which actually said alot about their emotion would also be the basis of inspiration for Baymax’s emotion.
46 – Because penguins don’t move the arms/wings too much, it made even more sense to base a Baymax’s movements on a penguins’ movements, because a robot doesn’t swing their arms as much as a human does. These robots just needed the essential movements.
47 – Baymax didn’t always have his current balloon like shape. Different versions of the character actually had a tighter stomach with a more athletic build. But to maintain his balloon shape, they had to make him more inflated. So the team settled on the Baymax you see now.
48 – One of the cool things about Baymax is everything is based on the context of the movements. Just a little head tilt will reveal a great deal of curiosity. Even moving a head tilt six frames earlier might help improve the tone of the scene.
49 – Animators would have to track each of Baymax’s movements over the course of the film in order to get his behaviors right. For example, Baymax will have to turn, then look, then walk. He cannot overlap any of those things because he has to go through a certain protocol. But since he is a learning robot, those behaviors become shorter and shorter. This makes the audience more active participants in the film then they actually believe.
Continue to see more about the Microbots, the character effects, and production design of the film.
Microbots
50- Had a base idea that it would be a robot, but they needed more research to make them look cool. The team met with different robot specialists and read various research papers on robotic technology.
51 – The key was to make sure that what the Microbots did in the film, would be true to the real world. Meaning it had real applications. For them, if you just make stuff up, the audience will refuse to believe that it’s true.
52 – The robots needed to connect and operate together. Think of the Microbots as ants. Ants have a cooperative nature, so the visual effects team used that idea as the basis of how the Microbots would operate. The effects team wanted to capture that little eerie feeling of ants working together for their Microbots.
53 – As you will see in the film, these Microbots will have the ability to create structures, and these structures will need to have integrity. So the team studied architecture, design, and form. The team wanted to make the audience felt as though the Microbots are operating off a certain code that makes them want to form structures of a certain type.
54 – To make sure that these robots would be able to cooperate they way they wanted to, the team decided on electromagnetism. They would make sure to use that idea into the design of the Microbots.
55 – The Microbots have a simplistic design, but each side of it allows it to rotate around, and connect to other Microbots to construct.
56 – The Microbots maneuvering is a pretty interesting sight to see. For instance, if they were laid out in a row, and they wanted to move, the first row of Microbots would be pasted to the back row, and so on and so forth. These Microbots are actually helping each other.
57 – In an average shot, there can be up to 20 million Microbots. This large number allows themselves to almost reconfigure anything.
58 – So from a storytelling point, if the Microbots wanted to show their aggressive nature, they might form a claw to throw the car. But in order to keep the Mircobots’ grounded nature, the visual effects team had the Microbots always forming devices to be able to accomplish their task. So instead of forming a hand or claw, they formed a catapult to throw a car.
59 – Since the Microbots are stolen property, there are two different styles we see. When we see Hiro use it, its almost free flowing, but when Yokai uses it, there is a circuit board feel to it.
60 – With the Microbots having a stohastic nature to it, it is constantly sampling. So if they aren’t doing the right thing, they will readjust. So for the catapult, the microbos would sometimes sacrifice their own integrity to get the job done. The Stohacto nature was intentional, the visual effects artist made sure they added a smooth movement and a stutter moment. This would speak to the nature of how the Microbots would move, they would configure, reconfigure, and evaluate. But it would always reflect the idea of what they were trying to figure out or device they were trying to build.
61 – Test shots were used to prove that they had what the directors would be interested in.
62 – How do the Microbots come to be? Well they are storyboarded first, they they are sent to the layout department, where everything is roughblocked, then it is sent over to character animation where it the idea of what the microbots would be is expanded upon, then effects takes over, where they fully visualize the microbots, where they are finalized by lighting and other departments.
Giving The Heroes The Effects
63- As aformentioned, the effects are an extension of the character, and since our protagonists have superhero personas, they need to have certain effects that reflect their superhero nature. So Hiro works together with his friends to figure out what their interests are, and how he could utilize that and turn it into a super power.
64 – Hiro and Baymax have the power of flight, so the effects department took what they see from the real world and integrate that into the character’s super suits. So the department would look at various smoke trails left behind by jets, and how certain engine exhausts worked. Turbines give off certain heat patterns that are caused by the fuel hitting the heat wave, which reignites and causes diamond shaped patterns to appear.
65 – But the research would help them define the size and shapes of their characters. So the smoke trails would help us tell where Hiro and Baymax are coming from and where they are going. So the team would also dedicate their time figuring out the flight path, and how they could design the proper smoke trail for Hiro and Baymax.
67 – Gogo can best be described as a character who loves speed. The team looked at inspirations like lights on car wheels and fire dancers. To get what they wanted visually, the team played around with long exposure photography, which is why you see that visual light trail.
68 – Fred is a guy in a suit, or a Kaiju enthusiast. He likes to shoot fire, which Hiro had to create in a way that would be cool and interesting. Fred’s fire power would be one of the first tests using the Hyperion technology. It shows the light simulation the best, and is one of most visually sophisticated effects, this includes the fire, lighting, and smoke effects.
69 – Wasbi loves lasers and plasma beams, so Hiro worked on creating electromagnetic blades. Once again, long exposure photography was used in this. In order to create some of Wasbi’s effects, the team had to work closely with animation.
70 – Honey Lemon loves color, brightness, and happiness. So she has different colored chemical bombs where she can grab from her purse. The team looked at some of the coolest chemical reactions. Sometimes effects artists are constrained by trying to create an effect that is grounded in reality, and they would need a simulator to do that. But for Honey Lemon, they were free to do what they wanted. Because they were able to have that freedom and integrate simulated effects, they were able to make Honey Lemon’s effects look like a lot of fun but also be somewhat grounded as well.
Production and Character Design
71 – The production design team even had to work on the smallest details of the city, so when John Lassesster asked the team to create a new world, he also instructed them to take note of the surroundings and the scope of reality. So they needed to be familiar with all the intricacies of the designs in San Fransisco and Tokyo so they can achieve the look and feel of each respective city. Against the backdrop, the production team wanted to make sure that the characters were a great foil to the complexity and richness.
72 – Finding Baymax’s face may sound surprising at first. While Baymax has no mouth, he will be able to express emotion using head tilts and eye blinks. To find the right kind of eyes that will be able to get the right emotion, the team decided to use the bells, found on Hall’s trip to Tokyo, that had an interesting shape. The bells had these two circles that were connected by one line, and the designers sound something spiritual and unique about it.
73 – At Disney, the teams are constantly inspiring each other, so the design of Baymax constantly changed. Baymax’s character designs did include a mouth at first, but Lassesster loved the idea of not having a mouth. The team also decided that Baymax would feel more robotic without a mouth.
74 – Hiro needed to be very appealing and very relatable, so some of the visual effects artists looked back to the thing they did during their own childhood like pull their backpacks up to their necks. Other relatable things include hoodies and baggy clothes.
75 – The visual effects team also looked what they did during their everyday lives when they were kids. Those kinds of personal touches. Would help shape each of our hero’s mannerism.
76 – Once a character has been realized, the visual effects artists must successfully transfer 2D designs into a 3D CGI world. So the effects team would need to draw up as many facial expressions as possible at many different angles to get the the right perspective of the character. 3/4 views, side views, front views. But the biggest concern for the visual effects artists was not to lose the simple style of the model sheets. Every expression had to be true to the character.
77 – These model sheets would serve as a guideline for the animators, so they could understand what the characters would look like when they are happy without going off model/concept. It is also used to keep things in perspective and keep the characters as appealing as possible.
78 – Color is very important to the characters attitude and personality, so making each of them unique would help define each of the characters. For example, Fred is unpredictable and goofy, and is really into Japanese pop culture, which is why his costume isn’t as coordinated as his other characters. Whereas Honey Lemon is happy and has a warm color pallet. She is represented by more yellow and pastel colors. Gogo’s tough and extreme colors, so her costume has a leather texture to it. Wasbi’s costume was inspired by a Japanese samuari, but since his attitude changed during the course of the years, they visual effects artists had to change that too.
79 – For the superhero suits, they believed that the more simplified the costumes are the more iconic it is. So for Fred’s is inspired by a Kaiju, which has very bright colors. For Honey Lemon, the team wanted to make sure that her skills were represented properly. So she has a happy color pallet which was complimented with those feminine skills, which is why she has the kind of costume of high heels a purse with a bunny charm on it. Gogo’s yellow would portray speed.
80 – Baymax’s costume would be based on famous mechas and robots, and they would use colors that has never been seen before. For Hiro, the purple costume would be used as complimentary colors to Baymax’s suit to reinforce the thought that the two were a team.
Onward to animation and other miscellaneous things about Big Hero 6...
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.
Spoilers
94 – Hiro’s early high school graduation leads him to lead a somewhat aimless life full of illegal back alley bot fighting – don’t worry it’s not as bad as it sounds, think Real Steel on a much smaller scale. So his brother, Tadashi, helps him get his life back on track by enrolling him in San Fransoyko Institute Of Technology (SFT). While Hiro dismisses the idea of taking classes in a “nerd school,” he warms up to the idea after he meets Tadashi’s friends.
95 – In hopes of getting enrolled, Hiro has to show off his latest invention to impress the school board at the SFT showcase. Nervous beyond compare, Tadashi calms him down, and tells him that he’s got this. So after a mic feedback mishap, Hiro breezes through his presentation by showing off an unassuming MircoBot. Microbots are tiny chain-like robots when linked together could create anything the user, who controls it with a nerualtransmitter, wishes. The applications for the technology are limitless, and what would normally take a number of people months or years complete, and be done by just one person. Mircobots’ programming allows for construction and transportation. Attendees, including Aunt Cass and Tadashi’s friends, are overly impressed with Hiro’s latest invention.
96 – So thanks in part to his brother’s guidance, Hiro is accepted into the school. But that’s when trouble starts to brew when there is a fire at the school, and his brother goes straight into the fire to try to see if he could help, but he never makes it out. Unable to cope with the loss, Hiro secludes himself into the bedroom shared with his brother. Hiro then meet’s Baymax, an invention of his brother’s. Baymax is an inflatable healthcare robot who activates itself at any sign of distress. Since Baymax is also a learning robot, he doesn’t have a filter, but he means well. For example, after he scans Hiro, Baymax tells him that he is going through puberty, and that can expect to grow hair in the face, armpits, and before he can tell him where else, Hiro abruptly cuts him off. Hiro is unable to deactivate Baymax until he says he is satisfied with his care.
97 – It was thought that Hiro’s Microbot invention was destroyed in the fire, but when one comes back to his house, Baymax discovers that it is trying to find it’s master. This would lead the two on a quest across San Fransokyo to find where this Microbot wants to go. Both Hiro and Baymax end up at an abandoned warehouse where we learn that a villain Yokai has been mass producing Hiro’s invention, and is now using it for nefarious purposes. The two try to stay hidden long enough to find out what Yokai’s next plan is, but as soon discovered, and nearly killed.
98 – Unable to convince the police that a crime has been committed, Hiro and Baymax retreat home. Defeated, Hiro almost gives up, but Baymax’s programming consoles him to improve his health. As a result gives Hiro the drive he needs to find out why Yokai is using his invention. Which also gives him the inspiration to give Baymax a heroic upgrade. And just as we’ve seen in Iron Man, Hiro goes through a course of trial and error when creating Baymax’s super suit. We see him forge armor, to which Baymax is hesitant to wear because “it may undermine” his “nonthreatening” design, to which Hiro retorts, “That’s kinda the idea, buddy.” After this process is complete, Hiro downloads karate skills into Baymax’s programming. The relationship between the two almost mirrors the relationship that John Connor and the Terminator share in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
99 – Hiro then creates super suits for his friends, some of which are ready to answer the call, while others are hesitant, but all of them are there for their friend.
100 – Unsatisfied with his Baymax’s first super suit, Hiro then upgrade’s Baymax’s armor, which can be used in conjunction with his own. Baymax is still confused as to how this coincides with his healthcare programming, Baymax learns that Hiro is actually healing “on the inside.” During a test flight, Hiro has a couple of near death experiences, but upon scanning Baymax tells him that the treatment is working. And after their success, Baymax starts to show that he understands expressions and idioms that any other robot would take seriously.
Directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams, and produced by Roy Conli, Big Hero 6 features the voice talents of Maya Rudolph, James Cromwell, Damon Wayans Jr., T.J. Miller, Alan Tudyk, Jamie Chung, Genesis Rodriguez, Daniel Henney, with Ryan Potter as Hiro Hamada and Scott Adsit as Baymax. It opens in theaters and 3D on November 7.