Mike Gordon’s animated discussion about working for Pixar

Mike Gordon has animated a wide variety of characters for Pixar, from monsters to toys to fish. here he tells us the story of how it all began.

Andrew Gordon at -ING Creatives Festival. Mladjan Sladakovic / -ING

Animator Andrew Gordon began working at Pixar in the late 1990s. His first work for the studio was on A Bug's Life in 1998, and he has since worked on some of the most successful animated features in cinema history – including Toy Story 2 and 3, The Incredibles and Cars – and was a directing animator for Monsters University.

When he visited Dubai recently to talk about his career with fans, local industry figures and professional and aspiring animators at the -ING Creatives conference, he admitted his start in the field was far from glamorous.

"My parents showed up one day when I was a kid with a Tandy computer and a game called King's Quest," he says. "I really wanted to figure out how they did that game, so I just started trying to copy it, and that led me to an Amiga, which was a really good graphics computer back then. I'd just spend hours in my parents' basement trying to work stuff out."

At that time, computer animation was a very new field, limited by the available technology. In addition, his family’s finances did not stretch to sending him on one of the few courses that were teaching the emerging technology. Instead, he worked several jobs around his native New Jersey and New York, spending as much of his free time as possible teaching himself computer-animation skills. Then he had a revelation.

“I realised I was doing it all backwards,” he says. “So I went to Vancouver Animation School just to do drawn animation.”

A representative of Warner Brothers spotted a simple animation of a flour sack Gordon had produced in class, and was so impressed that he offered him a job.

“Even my teachers were like ‘how?’” says Gordon. “But he [the representative] said: ‘I don’t care that it’s only a flour sack exercise, you’re the only guy here that did a story with that little flour sack. We can teach you all the other stuff. We just want people with ideas’.”

Gordon’s introduction to the industry brought him back down-to-earth with a bump. Rather than rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood elite, he found himself working for Warner in a cramped office on the 11th floor of a shopping mall.

After an unsuccessful application for Pixar – who described his work as “too cartoony” – he was ready to give up and return home to New Jersey when fate intervened.

"Someone from Pixar saw a little bug animation I'd done online and called me up," he says. "They were starting work on A Bug's Life, so I eventually got in based on a little side project I'd been doing in my spare time."

Toy Story 2 followed, an experience that Gordon treasures.

“I sat with these guys next to me who were literally the best in the business,” he says. “It was kind of like I was sponging off them, bugging them to come look at my shots.”

Fate intervened again when he became lead animator for Monsters, Inc. character Mike Wazowski, voiced by Billy Crystal.

“I got it because I was the only guy from Jersey,” he says with a laugh. “So they just said: ‘Yeah, get Gordon to do it’. It’s like animating my cousin or my uncle.”

Gordon has animated a wide variety of characters for Pixar, from monsters to toys to fish – but notes there is one important constant.

“Story is always king at Pixar,” he says. “Tolstoy once said that all great literature is one of two stories – a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. If man goes on journey, they’re changing. If stranger comes to town, they’re changing the world around them.”

In his work, the former type of story is most common.

“Pixar’s films are often characters that are handcuffed together, going on a journey together and how it affects them,” he says. “The question is always ‘what if’? What if fish had feelings? What if monsters had feelings? What if feelings had feelings?”

His next project is The Incredibles 2, for which he will also be supervising the film's promotional material, including VR projects – an area in which he hopes to work a lot more.

“I’m always looking for the next thing, and right now I’m concentrating on VR,” he says. “I’m looking for how to tell stories in virtual reality. That’s what I want to figure out.

“And also I want to direct. You have to stay interested – I’ve been at Pixar for more than 20 years now and I’d go crazy if I was still just animating, which I love, all day every day – you’ve got to change it up.”