January 2nd, 2020 
Jackson Murphy 
Pixar is back in the Best Animated Short Film Oscar race. Kitbull is one of the 10 finalists for the prize. The top 5, official nominees in the category will be announced on Jan. 13th. Writer/director Rosana Sullivan and producer Kathryn Hendrickson discuss the year-long attention the hand-drawn “Kitbull” has been receiving.
Rosana Sullivan: It feels very surreal. I feel like we won the lottery. We were tempering our expectations beforehand just because of the sheer amount of quality shorts from around the world – the record number of shorts in contention this year, including other SparkShorts. I’m very humbled and honored.
Kathryn Hendrickson: I think for us – the first thing we were working towards was just making the short and making the short as good as we possibly could make it. Now just to see the reception it’s received around the world and to be included on this list is really surreal.
JM: Rosie, you’ve been a story artist at Pixar for several years – on “Monsters University” and “Incredibles 2”. And you were Annie nominated for your storyboarding on “The Good Dinosaur”. This SparkShorts program at Pixar has been getting a lot of attention. When did it come into your view?
RS: I first found out about it when I heard that Brian Larsen was working on a short called “Smash and Grab”. I didn’t even know what the SparkShorts was – I don’t even think it was called SparkShorts yet. I just knew that the studio was trying to get a program off the ground that would start to highlight diverse voices in the studio and voices that wouldn’t normally get into these leadership or directing roles as quickly through the normal pipeline at Pixar. Brian Larsen was the first, and then Kristen Lester when she made “Purl” was the second person who was approached to direct a SparkShort. I’m very close to Kristen as well. It was really exciting to know that the studio was actually serious about making a more indie shorts program.
JM: “Kitbull” is the story of a stray kitten and a pitbull, and their relationship goes in some surprising directions. Are you animal lovers? Is that sort of how the inspiration of this came to be?
KH: Definitely.
RS: I’d say so. I’ve seen a few cat videos out there.
KH: I think you need to confess to the origins of this, Rosie.
RS: I have a whole YouTube playlist of hundreds of cat videos. (laughs) I was that person that was going to cuteoverload .com back in the day in the early 2000s almost every day for my fix. I’ve just loved animals since I was born but I was also originally on a path to become a veterinarian when I was in college. It’s been a part of my life that I’ve really cared about.
JM: One of the things that really stands out when people watch this short is the fact that it’s hand-drawn. It’s so different from most things that Pixar has done before. Was that an instant decision for you, Rosie?
RS: Yeah. That was always from the very beginning my choice – the primary reason being nostalgia. I grew-up loving the craft of 2D animation. If it was hand-drawn, I would watch it no matter what or where or how much budget it had, as a kid. I still feel that way for sure. I’m always naturally drawn to hand-drawn. But also, originally I thought I would probably be doing the bulk of the animation before it became a SparkShort. It was more of a side project that we were doing on our own free time with no budget. I kind of assumed that I would have to do a lot of the shots myself. But fortunately I didn’t have to do all of it because it’s a SparkShort!
JM: So Kat, because this was Rosie’s vision to make it hand-drawn, was this something that you and everybody else at Pixar immediately said “Okay” to, or was there some conflict about this?
KH: What I love about the SparkShorts program is that the studio is very supportive in using those shorts to explore new technology and new styles and new storytellers. This kind of fell perfectly into that category of something that – of course the studio hadn’t really done 2D before, but they were willing to let us take a risk and figure out how to achieve a 2D animated short, leveraging the 3D pipeline that we have. And luckily we were able to build a stellar leadership team on the short who all had that same excited, problem-solving approach. It all kind of fell into alignment quickly.
JM: The early portion of the short is the kitten and the pitbull trying to get along with each other. It’s that classic dynamic. But then you realize that they’re a couple of misfits that really need each other. Was it intentionally designed for the kitten to be small with big eyes and the pitbull to be large with small eyes?
RS: (laughs) The kitten was more or less based off of myself in small ways: I’m kind of neurotic, hermit-like myself. When I think of cats, I think of the essence of them [being] their eyes. I wanted to capture that expressiveness with the kitten because I wasn’t gonna use the rest of its face for obvious emotion. So I had to rely a lot more on the eyes to convey emotion and the body language, of course. And with the pitbull: a defining characteristic is their smaller, wide-apart eyes. I find them very distinct. So I wanted to capture that as well. Part of the dynamic that I wanted to play with in the beginning is not being able to really connect with the pitbull at first because we are so much in the kitten’s point of view. We’re with the kitten for much of the beginning that you’re not supposed to see what the pitbull’s feeling until they actually get closer to each other.
JM: You bring this dramatic element of animal abuse into the equation, and you do it with such subtle power. It’s very moving and surprisingly deep. What was your overall approach in bringing this element in without going overboard with it?
RS: A huge part of that, I felt, was just really relying on my crew and the leadership in my crew to kind of be my taste filters and also my story brain trusts that Kat and I hand-picked together – to give me feedback and their impressions of what’s working. They knew where I was trying to go, and I was trying to go for – obviously a shorter film than what I originally had. But a lot of the help actually came from our editor, Katie Schaefer Bishop. I had to really rely on her to help me tell this story without saying too much. She was really good at taking what was unnecessary out of the short and trimming it down to a produceable level. But also with her storytelling tastes, she was able to basically tell me, “You don’t need this. You can actually convey a lot more by not showing some elements.” When I was sitting there in the editing room with Kat and Katie and fretting, “Oh my God, are people gonna get this?”, they were very supportive of that.
JM: “Kitbull” debuted on YouTube in February and has around 38 million views. As you’ve been seeing the numbers grow over the past year, how has it been for you seeing that and hearing the reception from people who have been watching it?
KH: It’s been absolutely surreal. And one of Rosie and my favorite things to do is to also go online and look at the amazing fan art that’s been drawn for the short. It’s our own little guilty pleasure. It just shows the power of the story and how people from all over the world have been able to connect to it.
JM: That’s great. Kat, through what Rosie and the other filmmakers have been able to do with the SparkShorts program at Pixar, where do you see this program specifically going in the next 5 years? I know Disney+ is coming in and showing these shorts as well.
KH: I think this program is going to discover amazing voices within the studio. It’s often the younger talent who wouldn’t be getting the chance to direct a feature in the next 5-10 years, but will get a chance to direct a short. and they have the life experience that’s very relevant and can reach a young audience, which is great for Disney+. And I think Disney is going to continue to leverage that and seek out future talent that they want to continue to invest in. And the folks who are directing SparkShorts are likely going to be your feature directors down the road.
JM: The Oscar nominations are right around the corner: January 13th. Rosie, what would it mean for “Kitbull” to be an Animated Short nominee – and to get to go to the Academy Awards?
RS: Gosh, it would be… I would be pinching myself constantly. But it would also mean all those blood, sweat and tears that everyone on this crew – and every one of our families who supported us, and our friends who supported us – that it was actually worth it. Obviously it was worth it even before – but that it’s being acknowledged and recognized. It would mean a lot.
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