New York Comic Con: Day 2 Live Blog

1000 ET: Who is ready for the second day of New York Comic Con?

1058 ET: Chris Williams, Don Hall, Roy Conli, and Paul Briggs of Big Hero 6 are participating in a Ask Me Anything on Reddit.

1103 ET: orangejulius asked:

There’s a part of movie making that I absolutely do not understand – how do you pitch projects so large to Disney/ Marvel Entertainment? What kind of work up do you have to do?

[–]TeamBigHero6Big Hero 6 Team[S] 1 point

Don: Hmm. We pitched projects to John Lassiter, he wants us to come up with at least 3 ideas, and they have to be something the directors are passionate about. For Big Hero 6, I think there were 5 projects and Big Hero 6 was the one that made it through the process. The first thing you do is a top line pitch, just about the world, the characters, and just a real broad sense of the story, basically John wants to know where the emotion is in the story. But really it’s not fleshed out at all, it’s really high concept stuff.

Then we start working on it, we do research actually. We don’t delve into story yet, we do research on the world, get really immersed in that. And then once we’ve done enough research do we start fleshing out the story.

The visual component is throughout, but early on, we don’t have a lot of people, we try to keep the crews very small. Visual development happens a bit later, once you’ve got more of your story figured out.

Big Hero 6 was 3.5 years from conception to completion.

ROY: Which is very short for an animated film. Usually it’s in the 5 year range.

CHRIS: Would you say very short?

ROY: I’d say significantly shorter.

And stop contradicting me! HAHA!

PAUL: What are we talking about again?

1106 ET: What did you guys enjoy the most in creating Big Hero 6? and why the number 6?

[–]TeamBigHero6Big Hero 6 Team[S] 1 point

DON: It’s based on a Marvel comic book and the team has 6 members.

CHRIS: Oh… the best about creating it? Well we certainly had fun last night, now that it’s almost done, screening with an audience…

PAUL: Meeting John Romita Jr.! You get to meet your comic book heroes!

ROY: I just loved the story process. I loved sitting in the story room, and laughing.

DON: Well, it’s hard to say one thing, because I thoroughly enjoyed each phase of that movie – from the development phase when it was me and 1-2 people, to when we had a full production crew and our days were booked from 9 until 10 at night. Each phase of the process I found really enjoyable, culminating last night to watching with an audience for the first time. It was really magical.

CHRIS: They were great last night, really incredible.

1109 ET: Nymo asked:

Greetings from San Francisco!

Just a few questions: 1) How many ‘research trips’ to SF and/or Tokyo did it take to make the film? 2) What part of the original comic attracted you guys to want to use it?

I’m sure I’ll figure out some other questions later.

Thanks for doing the AMA and cannot wait to see the film! Keep up the great work guys!

[–]TeamBigHero6Big Hero 6 Team[S] 2 points

1)

DON: HAha wow!

CHRIS: We did do some actual research.

ROY: No air quotes!

DON: we did 2 trips to Tokyo, and boy… absolutely magical. Totally awesome.

CHRIS: How many times did you go to San Francisco?

DON: I’d say 5 or 6…

ROY: I used to live in San Francisco.

DON: San Francisco, I just love the iconography, that it’s a very recognizable place, and I just love the vibe of the city. And Tokyo is really a different world, and obviously the people are so polite, it’s so clean and futuristic, you felt like you were stepping into the future.

2)

DON: This is gonna sound crazy, but it was the title that drew me to it! I found out it was a Japanese Superhero team, and read the comics. I really liked the tone, it was a lighter tone to the comic, and the characters were fun and appealing.

ROY: When we picked it, Marvel allowed us complete freedom in structuring the story. Which was fantastic.

DON: And then the characters – and for the robot, you know, we knew we had to put a robot onscreen we’d never seen before, so I did a research trip to Carnegie-Mellon and I found a researcher doing research in soft robotics. And that gave us a very unique robot to put onscreen. And his healthcare persona came from that research trip- because a lot of soft robotics is going to be used in the healthcare industry, making health care robots.

ALL GUYS: THANKS! We hope you like it!

1115 ET: captainShibe asked:

Hey guys, thanks for doing the AMA. What was the biggest challenge of bringing this obscure and unknown comic to the big screen,

[–]TeamBigHero6Big Hero 6 Team[S] 2 points

ROY: It was really about the balance, right? That’s always the biggest challenge.

DON: Trying to weave a superhero origin story into the emotional story of a kid who loses his brother, and how the brother’s robot heals this kid.

CHRIS: Well, I mean, a lot of these things are origin… It really was about the fact that we did have a movie that had a lot of disparate elements. We knew it was going to be an amalgam of a lot of different things, a cross between east and west, Disney and Marvel, and we had more than one genre we were taking on, a Superhero origin story, and generally animated movies you want a fairly simple plot and fewer characters, and in this case we had a more dense plot and more characters, and that was always going to be a challenge, but we knew that when we cracked it it would be something special you’d never seen before. So the density of the story.

PAUL: one big challenge was making Hero likable. Because for a long time, he was a 14 year old jerk. I have to give credit to our writers, Rob Baird and Dan Gerson, they really found Hero’s voice and made him really likable, because it’s tough to do that with a 14 year old kid who’s off track.

ROY: Fortunately, our process allows us to take a great amount of time to really distill the story, and we went thorough multiple passes and screening of the film before we even started production to make sure the story was well-balanced and emotionally engaging.

1131 ET: RedTerabyte asked

Hello! Baymax is amazing. So cute, and so lovable. I’d like to ask, what inspired Baymax’s design and characteristics?

[–]TeamBigHero6Big Hero 6 Team[S] 1 point

DON: Well, I did a research trip to Carnegie Mellon 3.5 years ago, met a researcher doing research in soft robotics, and I saw this fairly crude, vinyl arm that was inflatable, and knew right then and there that that would be our Baymax, because it would be the perfect huggable robot, because that’s what we were looking for, was something appealing and huggable.

CHRIS: and something that we talk about is the fact that design should not be arbitrary, it should have a purpose, and we knew he would be a healthcare robot, so he would be caring for patients in healthcare settings, so we wanted a design that would not be intimidating.

PAUL: what’s cool about Baymax is the simplicity and the design – even in the storyboards. The power in a simple blink – you project so much of what you’re feeling into Baymax, it’s a great connection you feel with him.

DON: He’s got some Miyazaki qualities, if you want to get specific – just the two eyes and a line between them was inspired by some bells I saw at a temple in Tokyo.

130 ET: While we wait for more news, you can watch “The Empire Strikes Back Uncut” a fan created shot-for-shot remake of the classic film

207 ET: Marvel has announced a Guardians of the Galaxy TV series is coming to Disney XD. More to come on this.

239 ET: As NYCC goes on, ABC shared a new sneak peek of the next episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Laser grids, why is it always laser grids?

325 ET: It appears that at tonight’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. panel, they will be screening an unaired episode.

426 ET: Marvel has premiered test footage of the Guardians of the Galaxy series which is coming to Disney XD

429 ET: On Ultimate Spider-Man they are doing their own version of the Spider-Verse storyline which is happening in the comics. When meeting Spider-Man 2099 everything is CGI (because the future is CGI)

438 ET: Here is the press release announcing the Guardians of the Galaxy animated series coming to Disney XD.

443 ET: Folks at the Once Upon a Time panel are getting to see the episode “Rocky Road” two days before it airs on ABC.

516 ET: EW.com had this to say about ABC’s upcoming Agent Carter:

Do you think there’s any chance Chris Evans could appear on Agent Carter? — Mel
Since the show takes place after Captain America got lost in the ice, it’s unlikely. Instead, the ABC drama is stocking up on male counterparts to make Agent Carter’s life a little more difficult. I’ve learned exclusively that Kyle Bornheimer has landed a recurring role as Agent Ray Krzeminski, who will clash with Peggy.

554 ET: Here is the poster for the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy animated series

656 ET: At the end of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. panel they showed a bit from Agent Carter. The scene showed Howard Stark introducing Carter to his butler Jarvis. Then they showed a fight scene where Agent Carter throws a guy out of a window.