Jude Brownhill on Pixar’s ‘Elio’ and the Art of Animation Supervision
2025 is a monumental year for Pixar as they release a brand new original animated feature Elio, and celebrate the 30th anniversary of their first original Toy Story. Pixar’s Elio is a cosmic coming of age story that follows an 11-year-old boy who unexpectedly becomes Earth’s ambassador to the galaxy.
Behind the scenes of an animated feature film usually involves a team of animators and supervisors who can help keep the boat afloat and be able to co-ordinate the team, from junior animators all the way to the directors. We sat down with animation supervisor Jude Brownbill to discuss her storied career at Pixar, working on the newly released Elio and how she has navigated her journey from an animator to directing and supervising roles within Pixar.
Jude grew up in the UK where she studied 3D computer animation before moving to the US to work on some of Pixar’s most successful films including Soul, Inside Out, Cars 2 & 3, Turning Red, Incredibles 2, The Good Dinosaur and Brave.
Elio, image courtesy of Disney Pixar
How was it like to return as an animation supervisor for a Pixar film after previously working on the same role for Soul?
Jude Brownbill: It was great to return to be a supervisor in animation the second time. It was a different team of people and a different co-supervisor. That always provides different opportunities to get to know other people, work with them and learn new things, and to just have another go at being a supervisor. Often when you finish one project, you think ‘Oh, I’ll do that differently’ or ‘that went really well, I’d love to see that be repeated in other films’. So to get the chance to do it again and to sort of correct the things that we wanted to do differently, and to build on the things that were successes, I think that was actually quite a nice secondary benefit to doing it again.
Was there anything specific you learned from your first go at the role that you carried over?
Good question. I think what’s quite successful about working on Soul, and it was something that I learned as a directing animator on Cars 3, working with my supervisor at the time, Bobby Podesta, is this idea that asking the animator what kind of work do you want to do and trying as a supervisor to always give somebody something that they want to work on. Oftentimes we have this broad selection of shots, different characters, different types of scenes, whether they’re very cartoony or emotional, high paced, or sort of like slow moving emotional scenes. So you kind of want to spread the work out amongst the team, but you also sometimes can make big assumptions about what people want to do. Everyone’s going to work on that sequence. Everyone’s going to want to work on that character where everyone’s going to want to work on that moment in the film.
It’s very surprising when you reach out to people and you say, hey, you’re about to become free to do more work or you’re just coming on the show. Tell us what you want to work on, what types of things, what you’re personally working on. If you want to get better at subtle acting or you feel like your physicality could do with some extra attention. So finding these things out from people at the very beginning and then offering them options, tell us what you want to work on is quite broad, but if there were times when we would say, all right, we’ve got this sequence and we’ve got these five chunks of shots, which one would you like to work on?
Oftentimes it was the complete opposite that we thought they would want to do. So that kind of leaves you going, oh, maybe I don’t really know what people want. I think that was a really important lesson of asking people what they want. Then when they have the opportunity to choose what they’re going to spend the next 6 to 10 weeks working on, is actually very powerful because they’ve been involved in the decision making and then they get to work on the thing they chose. As opposed to you’re just giving somebody the thing that you think they’ll want. Then they’ve been given something and this is what I’m working on now. So that was kind of what I learned in Cars 3, put that into practice again on Soul and built upon that with LA again, of just reaching out, asking people, trying really hard to give them something that they want to work on because that kind of helps with people’s efficiency and it helps with people’s enjoyment and it helps boost morale.
These are all really important things and it’s much better to be working on something. You already have a vision for then trying to find your way through a piece of work, erronic shots, whether you didn’t you just don’t really understand because it wasn’t your choice or you were just given it.
Any particular challenges that became easier this time around with Elio?
Personally, I think dealing with change, I think that’s amazing. A very important thing to be able to cope with is it’s not going to go according to plan. Because when you begin as an animation supervisor or in any position in leadership, they’ll give you, this is the plan of action. This many weeks, this is a release date, this many animators, is it going to come on these dates? It’s just that it’s a plan, a rough idea, how things are going to go. But this is storytelling, it’s filmmaking, it’s animation and things take longer or they change or you have another idea that could be better or any number of things could could change or deviate from that original plan. So you’re almost looking at this plan and putting it in the bin because it’s going to change. So panicking too soon and panicking every time is actually quite detrimental to your personal health.
Also, it kind of is a waste of time because everyone is 100% behind the film in getting it done and making it great. So there isn’t really nothing too big that we can’t figure out together. It’s embracing the change and seeing where it goes and not worrying about what that has done to the well crafted original plan because there’s going to be a million plans in between, and you will get there in the end and your film will be released. So I think that was a lesson that was further solidified on earlier.
You worked on several Pixar movies as an animator, directing animator and as a supervisor recently. How do these roles differ and which do you personally enjoy doing most?
Oh, that’s a good question. So an animator is the member of the team who is responsible for the acting choices and the movement of the characters on the screen. So we will take the voice acting that’s been recorded. We’ll take the storyboard pass that’s been done to show the action required in the shots. We’ll take the layout, the characters and the direction from the director and what they want from this particular moment. We will go off and do our own research into who the character is or how that character might move. We’ll spend like 6 to 10 weeks on our run of shots, which could be anything from like 3 shots to 10 shots, depending on how complicated they are. We’ll go away and then craft the performance of the character. So a lot of being an animator is working either in 2D to Spark ideas, thumbnails, video reference, and then sitting down at your computer, blocking in ideas for the performance, talking with your fellow animators, talking with the fellow leadership team to see, is this a good choice? Could this be better going to dailies every day or showing your work every so often to the director and getting feedback? Then addressing those notes, speaking to your superiors, your directing animators, to holding in on the right performance and the appeal. Then your end goal is to get a final on your run-up shots and then polish them and get them through to the damstream departments. So it’s very much, you’re in a big team of animators and you’re an individual contributor putting your animation skills to work on your run of shots.
A directing animator is part of the animation leadership team. They are kind of in between the supervisors who are working on a more macro level above them. There might be two or three per film depending on how many animators there are. They’re sort of the in-between of the supervisors and the animator. They’re there to make sure the animators have everything that they need. They should have the most knowledge of the animation rigs, the characters, the appeal, what control does what, how to make, that mouth shape look nice. This new tool and how it works, this character, or who their personality is and how they might move. So that if an animator has any questions about the rigs or the characters or the story, they can go straight to the directing animator and get their questions answered. They’ll also be helping the animators to get the shots up to sort of polished animation, like gold level that we like. So they sort of run this room, we call the polish room, which is just about making sure everything is reading clearly. There’s no intersections and you’ve got the really peeling shapes. So they’re there for the animators.
Then the supervising animators work with the directing animators, but also every other supe in every other department and with the directors, producers, the effects supervisor, production manager, associate producer. So kind of that macro level of what’s happening when we need that character to be done before we start animation here. We need to make sure that we’re passing you this and you’ve got all the right things for simulation. If this lighting isn’t quite hitting this character right, then can we fix it? How’s the story looking? Is the changes happening in story where we need to make a new character or we need to figure out a new process. It’s kind of like that higher up level where you’re looking at the film as the whole and trying to sort of communicate to your directing animators and the animators and keep them fed, keep the sequences coming in and keep them fed with work. So our job is towards the end or bulk of production, we’re kind of making sure that animators have the work and looking at what’s coming in and looking at who’s available and who wants to work on what and trying to give people the work that they need to work on.
We go to dailies with the directors, directing animators and the animators. We’re there along with the directors to give notes as a team. Anyone can give a note if you have a better idea or if something’s not reading correctly or if you see a hook-up issue or something, any kind of note can come from an animator or directing animator, supervisor. Then the directors are the first people to speak. So they’ll give the notes, but that’s kind of the daily’s room, which is where we spend most mornings watching people’s progression in their work every day.
Elio in the Communiverse, image courtesy of Disney Pixar
How did your team get that introduction of the universe ride with its vibrant colours and the unique design that you go for?
I mean, all of the artwork that is generated in the art department and from a production designer Harley Jessup, that’s where we’ll dive in straight away when we get on a show and look at all of the artwork. It’s all digitally captured and there are art rooms and working rooms where we can go and see those images of the Communiverse and the different discs that combine the Communiverse and the life forms that inhabit it. So it comes from art and is inspired by art.
Then when the sets team gets involved to build it every day we were having this meeting where anyone who was on the crew was invited, either in person or if you wanted to keep working at your desk, you could log on to the Zoom meeting. You could see anything that needed director feedback. So one day it could be the disc of the Communiverse and how they’re moving and should they move quicker? Or should this one be swapped with that one? How do we build up Glordon’s den and the webs or this animation test of Melmac. So it was a really fun space where everybody on the crew, no matter what department you were in, was able to see what anybody else was doing. A lot of our introduction to Communiverse and how it moved and how it was being brought to life with the crowds, characters and all of that kind of stuff was happening in that daily meeting we had.
As an animator, do you relish in creating more expansive environments like space in Elio or You Seminar in Soul, or do you prefer something closer to the ground in Cars and Turning Red?
I think as long as it makes sense in the story, it tends to not really affect us in a sense of, which we prefer. The You Seminar and the Communiverse, they’re beautiful and huge environments where you know action is taking place. So it depends on the work you’re doing. I think if you’re doing a small, quiet, touching, vulnerable moment about connection, even if that’s taking place in the Communiverse. We did some sequences like that. The discs of the Communiverse are still moving, but you’re concentrating solely on what these characters are doing, what they’re feeling and what they’re saying or not saying. So we’re still concentrating on the performance, the acting and communicating of all those emotions in that moment.
Needless to say, it is a lot of fun when there is a huge expanse to explore and in tandem with the directors and layout cinematography, being able to say, how can we explore this giant world? On Elio, there is a specific sequence where Elio and Glordon are having a friendship montage. They are venturing through the Communiverse, discovering places together, and that sequence was all about, let’s show off this amazing set that we have and this amazing environment in this world we’ve created. Let’s show it to the viewer and to Elio and Glordon. Let’s have them react to the things that they’re seeing. The bathroom, the canteen where they get their food, they’re going into all of the sets that were made and just having fun being goofy and being friends.
So that was actually quite, especially in a space movie, where you can turn your gravity off and fly up and spin around and jump on these little discs that are in the Communiverse that you can ride on. Suddenly it becomes a very expansive and exciting world where you can play with the scale and the dynamic camera moves, and really show off the beautiful sets and the designs that were done for the film. So it really is dependent on the story and the emotion. Either works, I think we’re always trying to get to the truth of the moment.
Did you draw on any influences for the film that you could quickly share?
Some influences I had were my two nephews. They were sort of the right age for Elio. So I would watch them, see what they were doing, how they were reacting, video them, try and take pieces of them and oftentimes in dailies, what would Elio do, I’d be thinking?
How much do you think about the rule of cool or wanting the audience to feel strong emotions when you’re animating a scene?
I think predominantly in the roots of animation and the 12 principles, you want really clear posing, you want to exaggerate your poses, you want it to be dynamic. Oftentimes we do work in two constrained a box. So often the notes that are given are; push it, make it bigger, make it broader, make it more in your face. It’s not necessarily to make it cooler, but it’s just to make it read better and to make it more interesting to watch. As long as it’s right for the moment emotionally instead of having a live action person acting, we’re doing animation. So we want to push things, exaggerate and stylise things to make it worth watching. We push things, but not too far and it looks too unrealistic or not genuine.
This interview is edited for consistency and clarity.
Elio and Glordon, image courtesy of Disney Pixar
Elio is out now in cinemas