How an animation director who came out on his own from ‘Pixar’ gained self-confidence (BreakFirst)

The American Pixar Animation Studio, famous for Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Inside Out, is a company that everyone in the animation industry envies. However, animation director Eric Oh (40, Korean name Oh Soo-hyung) left this company on his own after working for 7 years.

At the time, he was well on his way to being recognized for his skills. Among colleagues who joined the company around the same time, he took on the role of a major character the fastest, and in particular, he created ‘Hank’, the octopus character that was the most difficult to embody in ‘Finding Dory’.

Even if I stayed at Pixar like this, my life would have been quite successful. Nevertheless, the reason he chose to leave the company was to pursue his long-held dream of becoming an ‘animation director’ rather than an animator. It’s like jumping off a huge cruise ship called Pixar into the open ocean with just a tube on. Is he walking the path he dreamed of? The ＜Breakfast＞ team followed director Eric Oh’s path through an interview.

‘Pixar’ passed the hot and cold baths

‘I want to define what my own animation is.’ One day, a young man in his mid-20s studying at graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), heard exciting news. This is how Pixar hires interns.

People who fly and crawl also prepare customized portfolios to be selected as Pixar interns, but Mr. Oh was not prepared to that extent. In a hurry, I created a 2-3 minute edited collection of the works I had made so far and submitted my application. I applied, but didn’t have high expectations.

But then something ‘completely crazy’ happened to him. The result was passing. But the joy was short-lived. This is because we learned that only two people were hired for the 12-week Pixar Animation Team Internship Program. He had no choice but to give up.

“Everyone except me had already fully prepared to join Pixar. I struggled a lot during the first few weeks of my internship. It seemed like it had just been decided that I couldn’t stay at Pixar. Still, I worked hard and thought, ‘I’ll get everything I can during the 12 weeks of my internship.’”

It was toward the end of his internship period that he thought he ‘got the idea’. When I created the golden retriever character ‘Doug’ from the animation ‘Up’ by myself, I got the feeling, ‘This is exactly what the mentors were talking about.’ The results came out as good as anyone could see. However, it was already too late to change the final result, and Mr. Oh had to suffer the pain of being eliminated.

Feeling frustrated, he began traveling while contemplating his career path. But about a month and a half into his trip, something more miraculous happened to him. I received a call from Pixar saying, ‘If you haven’t been hired anywhere else yet, come to Pixar.’ Pixar paid attention to the potential he had. Considering Oh’s growth rate during his internship, I thought he would produce unexpectedly good results if he worked at Pixar.

The birth of ‘Hank’, an octopus character known for being picky.

At Pixar, Mr. Oh worked as an ‘animator’. For those of you who are unfamiliar with animators, let me briefly explain: Animators make characters make facial expressions and move. I think it can be likened to acting by an actor. For example, if an animator takes on the character of a grandfather, he or she would embody the character’s gait, facial expressions, and various movements. Just as a new actor with talent and ability can take on a leading role in an instant, animators with talent, even if their career is short, are said to be able to take on key characters or important scenes quickly.

Mr. Oh was such a case. Pixar’s prediction was correct.

The representative character that Mr. Oh embodied at Pixar is ‘Hank’, the octopus character from ‘Finding Dory’. Octopuses constantly contract and expand their bodies and have the ability to move very flexibly and organically. Moreover, Pixar is a studio known for examining reality well. In that sense, Hank was a character that animators found burdensome. We had to embody the movements of a real octopus while also adding acting elements unique to animation.

Pixar entrusted Hank to Mr. Oh. Even for an aspiring animator, Hank was a difficult task. It is said that it took about two years just to create Hank. He listens to lectures by octopus experts and studies how octopuses behave according to their emotions and how their body colors change. It is said that he even went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the United States and touched an octopus in person.

“If you watch the movie ‘Finding Dory,’ there is a dynamic scene where Hank flies around holding a pipe, hangs on it, and then crawls somewhere. I implemented the movement, which lasted about 10 seconds, using traditional manual methods, but it was really difficult. To that extent, I was able to say, ‘Hank is my child.’”

“After studying so much about octopus, I realized I couldn’t eat octopus anymore. “Octopuses are really smart creatures.”

The driving force behind overcoming fear and leaving Pixar

Did you say that you go through the crisis of quitting your job once in the 3rd, 6th, and 9th years of your career? About five years after working at the ‘dream company’ where his skills were recognized, the thought of leaving the company began to creep into his mind.

“If I had dreamed of growing into a better animator, I think I would have thought about joining Pixar. However, while I was working as an animator, I thought, ‘I should be a director, and I should direct…’ ‘ I thought. At the same time, I was too afraid to leave Pixar. It wasn’t an easy decision, so it took me two more years to actually leave Pixar.”

Coincidentally, like-minded colleagues from Pixar left the company before Mr. Oh and started a small animation studio called ‘Tonko House’, and suggested that he work as a director. So he made the decision to resign.

However, about a month before his retirement, his firm decision to quit was momentarily shaken. It was due to the news that director Brad Bird, the industry great who directed Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and The Iron Giant, was returning to Pixar.

“I was getting ready to leave, and when I heard that Coach Byrd was coming in, I thought, ‘What should I do?’ When I leave, I will work as a director, but I will have to work in a small, single room with the mindset of starting over. It was as if I was standing at a crossroads: ‘A dragon’s tail or a snake’s head.’ But then I thought, ‘If it’s not now, I can’t go out.’ “I thought it was important to start my journey as a director.”

From closet to target

In 2016, Mr. Oh finally took his first steps as an animation director and created a series called ‘Pig: The Dam Keeper Poems’. It was the result of working day and night for about a year under a tight budget. he recalled. ‘It was a very happy time, but it was also really difficult.’

“Actually, I was brave enough to leave Pixar, but I wasn’t always sure it was the right decision. I’m out of Pixar and working in my closet, but aren’t my friends having fun working with director Brad Bird? Hyeonta (reality awareness time) has arrived. “I thought, ‘But doing something like this is important to me,’ and I worked hard to complete it.”

The hit did not resolve immediately. I worked really hard on the work, but unlike Pixar or Disney, it could only be released in Japan and France. He also had to explain the work in detail. ‘Was it the right decision to leave Pixar?’

It wasn’t until 2018 that the thoughts lingering in my head turned into conviction. While receiving the ‘Crystal’ award, the highest award in the TV production category, at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France. It was the first time in the history of the film festival that a Korean artist won an award in this category.

“You won the highest award you could have ever imagined. It felt like a sign saying, ‘Eric, you really did well at Pixar, and keep taking on the challenge of telling your own story.’ From then on, I decided to erase my doubts about myself and energetically pursue the path of a storyteller.”

In this way, Mr. Oh pioneered his own path of work that was completely different from Pixar’s animation. In collaboration with Meta, we created a work called ‘Tree’ and implemented experiential storytelling through virtual reality (VR).

He expanded his perspective as a writer beyond personal experience and created a work called ‘Opera.’ In 2021, Opera was also selected as a finalist in the short animation category for the 2021 American Academy Awards for the first time in Korean animation history.

“The opera was created to show whether our humanity is really improving or whether we are just repeating the same history. It is content with no beginning or end, and no running time. “I think the Academy paid attention to the fact that it is a unique type of animation that can be viewed not only in movie theaters but also in exhibition halls.”

Actually, I had no intention of submitting the opera to the film festival from the beginning. I was preparing the work as an exhibition piece because I thought it would be more appropriate to show it in an exhibition hall due to the format of the content, but the problem was that all exhibition halls were closed due to the spread of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

“It took almost four years to create a work called an opera. However, all platforms that could showcase this work were shut down. It was very frustrating. After much deliberation, I created a movie version through editing, and began to submit it to film festivals that were still active, albeit non-face-to-face. But it started getting recognition at film festivals. “I thought I really couldn’t understand people’s business.”

He finally presented the ‘exhibition version’ of the opera through a permanent large-scale media experience exhibition on Jeju Island this year. Through the reinterpretation process, we planned to have not only the opera but also seven of his works play simultaneously in different spaces within the exhibition hall along with music. It has expanded beyond simple animation to media art.

“I decided to organize an exhibition in Korea because I thought it would be a good idea to start an exhibition in a place that contains my starting point. I decided that ruins fit well with what I wanted to express in the exhibition, so I deliberately looked for ruins as a space for the exhibition and found a suitable place on Jeju Island. “I think there are different clothes for every story.”

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