Pixar animators from Sacramento reflect on their work in honor of Disney classics re-release

Henry Garcia was a first-generation college student at Sacramento State when a professor told his class, “If you’re here because you want to work at Pixar, you need to understand that’s like wanting to be an NBA player. It’s probably not going to happen.”

At the time, that’s not what Garcia was shooting for — he was studying computer science, and the graphics course was required. But a couple decades and a career switch later, he thinks his professor may have been wrong. Although it takes “a lot of hard work,” Garcia wants Sacramento youth who dream of being part of Pixar to take heart.

“It’s like Ratatouille: Anyone can cook, and a cook can come from anywhere!” Garcia said.

This summer and fall, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of The Walt Disney Company, eight classic Disney and Pixar movies are being re-released in theaters. Each one has a two-week run time before moving on to the next. So far, “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” “Toy Story,” “Frozen” and “Beauty and the Beast” have played, and “The Incredibles,” “Coco,” “The Lion King” and “Moana” will be featured in upcoming weeks.

Working for Disney or Pixar Animation feels like a pipe dream for many young artists. But in typical Disney fashion, sometimes dreams do come true — for four Sacramento natives-turned Pixarians, including Garcia, their paths began at Sacramento State or in Citrus Heights, but somehow led them to the place where “Toy Story,” “Up” and “Inside Out” were brought to life.

Taking unconventional paths to Pixar

Bryn Imagire was born and raised in Sacramento, later graduating from college in Pasadena with a degree in illustration. She did some graphic design work in Sacramento before settling in the Bay Area. But doing freelance illustration, while enjoyable, was “really lonely.”

“I realized that I missed collaboration,” Imagire said. “So I found out that Pixar was doing a movie about bugs, and I was like, ‘Oh, I could totally draw bugs!’ because I was doing a lot of work with a nature company back then.”

She applied, got the job as a digital painter, and that was that: Over the next several months, she helped create “A Bug’s Life,” — Pixar’s second feature-length film, released in the fall of 1998. Although she didn’t know at the time the acclaim that Pixar would come to have, she said that she felt the spark of potential for the studio from the beginning.

“I’ve felt really lucky during my career, because a lot of the films that I’ve worked on have become classics,” Imagire said. “But I never consciously think about it at the time.”

Next, she made the switch from bugs to Buzz as work began on “Toy Story 2.” At the same time, she got a new job title: shading art director.

“Because we have to make everything from scratch, everything we make needs to have a surface to reflect light,” Imagire explained. “The shading art director helps design all of the surfaces and colors of things that appear in our films, so that you know a spoon is metal, or a bowl is ceramic.”

She acknowledged that for people who aren’t in the animation world, “it’s a weird thing to understand” — but it’s far from the only niche job necessary to create what audiences see in the final cut of an animated movie.

Garcia didn’t have any background in art when he applied for a job at Pixar — but he did have a background in physics.

Garcia transferred to Sacramento State from Indiana University as a computer science major, before “falling in love with physics” and deciding to double major. He then attended graduate school at UC Berkeley and began the doctoral program there, working on nano devices and condensed matter physics until one day, he wasn’t sure he wanted to continue in academia anymore.

“It was like, ‘You know what, do I still want my Ph.D.?’” Garcia said. “And Pixar happened to be coming to recruit. “I sat there in the front row at this presentation, and I was just like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I want to try to do this.’ I didn’t know really anything about making movies at the time, so they weren’t really sure what to do with me. But I was like, ‘I’ll figure it out, I’ll be fine!’”

It took a little while for Garcia to find his footing, and dig out the computer science knowledge from his time in undergrad. But eventually, he found his place making animated objects act like they do in the real world.

“Clothing and hair, all of that stuff uses physics-based simulations,” Garcia said. “And it turns out I know a lot about physics.”

He’s now worked on “Inside Out” and “Coco,” among other films, and it’s all been a dream for a guy who “grew up on Disney movies.”

Movies that mark childhood last a lifetime

On a wall in Garcia’s house, a “Brave” movie poster hangs, framed. He’s done a lot of work that he’s proud of while he’s been at Pixar, but the work he did on Merida bringing the fiery redhead’s bouncy curls to life in a true-to-physics way is one of his favorites.

This was partly because of his daughter, who was born while Garcia was working on the movie, and per Pixar tradition is listed in the credits of “Brave” as a “production baby.”

“Seeing a strong female character on screen up there doing her thing, and then having my daughter’s name on that, I definitely felt that,” Garcia said.

Although Imagire doesn’t have kids of her own, she said that she associates each movie that she’s worked on for Pixar with the age of her nieces at the time of release.

“When ‘Monsters Inc.’ came out, my nieces were probably in elementary school,” Imagire said. “And by the time “Monsters University” came out, they were in college. They were so excited to see that movie, because they remembered Monsters from when they were little.”

“The Little Mermaid” was the animated film that stuck out in Bobby Podesta’s mind from his childhood in South Sacramento — he said almost everyone at Pixar has a film that they remember from when they were a kid as the one that drew them to animation.

“I literally wrote a handwritten letter on paper addressed to the Walt Disney Studios asking how to be an animator as a 14-year-old,” Podesta said. “They sent back a form letter with, like, one handwritten thing that said, ‘Get an education — look into CalArts.’ So I basically did everything I could to get in there.”

He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts — after getting his first paying gig as a cartoonist in high school for The Sacramento Bee — and then took a job working at Pixar in 1997 animating characters for “A Bug’s Life.” He’s either worked on or known the people working on every Pixar movie since then, making the original “Toy Story” the only one he can watch from a totally outside perspective.

But there’s something special about working for Pixar for so long, Podesta said. He and the other long-time Pixarians have gotten to see new generations embrace their films, and take on the timeless quality that allows Disney to rerelease the movies decades later.

“Oh my gosh, are you trying to make me cry?” Garcia said. “One of my favorite things is to go to Disneyland (and) see kids running around in the costumes of the characters that we’ve built, or waiting in line to get a picture with Merida. Like, clearly our movies are touching people in the way that they touched me when I was a kid.”

Beyond new generations watching the movies, there are also new generations coming to work at Pixar. Austin Madison grew up in Sacramento, and started working for Pixar in 2006 as an animator. His five-year-old daughter recently performed in her first school play — a production of “Finding Nemo.” Even as she becomes a fan of the Disney and Pixar classics, Madison is getting to work with some of the people who brought those movies to life; he described Podesta as his “hometown hero.”

Podesta said he was happy to have played the role of a mentor to Madison, and tries to pay forward all of the support he got from teachers and others while he was finding his path to Pixar.

“I always was very appreciative of all the time people took with me,” Podesta said. “You know, I got a letter back from the Walt Disney Studios. Right? I mean, come on — I wrote a letter, and I got something back. Someone took a moment. And that moment changed my life.”

During tough times, bad reviews, Pixar employees just keep swimming

The movie industry has faced hard times in recent years, and Pixar is no exception — during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of their feature films went straight to streaming on Disney+ instead of being released in theaters. Post-pandemic, they’re still grappling with the rise of streaming and entering into the space of shorter-form content.

But even on a smaller scale, the course of working on a movie can be a roller coaster. Madison said when he was working on “Brave,” there was a period when the morale was low, and he and his fellow animators decided they had to do something.

So they ordered kilts, hired a bagpiper and paraded through the studio. Not only did it lift the filmmakers’ spirits, but it also improved the film’s accuracy — the bagpiper stuck around to give a critique on a bagpiping scene that was in the works.

“Ever since then every Friday was, you know, Kilt Friday,” Madison said. “And scotch tastings.”

In a more serious way, Madison said the studio struggled with “Finding Dory” as well, knowing that they were trying to live up to the acclaim of “Finding Nemo.” When the film first came out, there were a lot of critiques comparing the sequel to the original, and some people didn’t think it measured up.

“But then we started to hear these stories of people who are saying, ‘Hey, my kid is neurodivergent, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen them on screen,’” Madison said, referring to Dory’s short attention span that has sometimes been likened to a metaphor for ADHD or autism. “I mean, that’s more important than having a perfect cinema score.”

Madison said he’s been happy to see the increasing diversity at the studio, and how that’s been able to connect with audiences. Garcia said the same thing, referencing a scene in “Toy Story 4” where a kid is wearing a cochlear implant. Garcia’s son wears a cochlear implant, and looks “remarkably like” the character in the scene.

“I got numerous emails from our audiologist talking about how many people had emailed her and said, ‘Oh my gosh, have you seen ‘Toy Story 4’? They put a cochlear implant in that movie!’” Garcia said. “That was just tears streaming down my face.”

Tips for those who want to follow in the Pixarians’ footsteps

From physics to color, these four play very different roles in making Pixar movies shine, but they share a common thread of Sacramento roots. And none of them have fully left the capital city behind — Podesta said his favorite meal is a “Cheezedog” sandwich and a mocha chip shake from Vic’s Ice Cream in Land Park, and Imagire loves to explore the Crocker Art Museum. Many of them visit often, but they also love their jobs, and working where they do, near Pixar’s headquarters in the Bay Area.

So for any other Sacramentans looking to go the way of Greta Gerwig and bring local talent to the filmmaking industry, what’s the Pixarians’ best advice?

Madison had practical words of wisdom: “Get a sketchbook.”

As for what to put in the sketchbook? Anything goes, Madison said. Drawings, quotes, ideas or pieces of articles you read (hint, hint). He described it sort of like a physical version of Pinterest, a place to collect bits and pieces of what might later become stories or characters — and to hone drawing and storytelling skills at the same time.

“Collect your inspirations so that you can understand what inspires you, and not be seeking to impress others or tell stories that other people want to hear,” Madison said. “It’s about what stories are already inside you that you want to tell.”

Podesta said that, although it’s simple, he would give nearly the same advice as what was given to him decades ago in the letter he received from Disney as a teenager — to get an education. He also passed along advice from a college design teacher who encouraged him when he was uncertain about the reality of making a career in art.

“Unless it’s grown or dug up from the ground, it’s designed,” Podesta said. “The clothing you’re wearing, the building you’re sitting in, the images on the screen. There’s art all around us. There’s a future in art if you want to have a future in art.”

If you go:

The movies will all play at the Cinemark theater at 6233 Garfield Ave. You can get ticket at www.fandango.com. Here is the schedule.

▪ “Coco” is playing Sept. 15–28

▪ “The Lion King” is playing Sept. 29–Oct. 12

▪ “Moana” is playing Oct. 13–26