Advice on characters

I think if you're if you're looking for what kind of story you want to tell actually what I used to do when I was in school before I would start making a films I would just ask myself if I could take a vacation anywhere where would I want to go you know I'd like to go to a medieval castle Oh that'd be a cool place to tell a story so you don't even have to necessarily start them a theme or a conflict just jump into a setting and then start thinking of the characters and what do they want and maybe maybe this is a castle that it's been too boring so they got to hire a dragon to come attack them in so we're going to do a talent scout for a dragon and then you just go from there so you know when in doubt just let your mind go on a vacation you through storytelling and especially in animation you can go anywhere that your mind can take you sometimes it's fun to just think about what you would like to see what would you like to watch what does something that and you for you personally you would say oh I'd love to watch a movie like that and make it and even if it's not perfect it's it's great to just have things out in the world that are personal to you and it's good to look at other films for ideas and inspiration and structure and how they you know work things out problems that they may have but always try to stay true to your gut and go with something that is important to you California Institute of the Arts the school that started by Walt Disney specifically for animators and I've studied character animation and one of the things you learn at Cal arts is that you have your professors which are great they're professionals in the field the people you're really learning from where your fellow students the people that you are spending every day with and you're telling jokes to and you're learning if you're not funny or if you're you're pitching your story and you're realizing oh you know what I'm not making JG laugh maybe I should it can make this story a little funnier and even to this day when we when we pitched Cu to each other sometimes we forget that we're we're going to be showing them to billions of people in the world and we're just trying to make the director and our story crew laugh because at the end of the day we're just people telling stories to each other what happens when I tell this story to another person is that all these other things show up without me asking for them even while I'm telling them the story starts to come alive the characters start to come along and then also the person you told the story to will tell you what they thought of it notes they're free they actually are helping you make your story in your character better so that's why I encourage everybody if you're crafting a story and you want it to get better keep telling your story over and over again you'd be surprised how good those characters in those stories become over a short period of time and you don't have to sit alone in a room with it thinking that's good or bad or whatever somebody can tell you so another important thing that I'm coming to learn the more I'm working in the industry is it's you know it's filled with really amazing artists and you're kind of always struggling to figure out how to stand out and I think the best way to do that is to worry less about what you think people want from you and just do express yourself as best as possible at all the responses I got from the internship all the responses I got on my portfolio just me going back and thinking about what made me laugh or what everything is that my siblings did that made me laugh really hard and just try to express that into my boards and people would be like how did you come up with that and you know I didn't come up with it it's just like you know this is me and what I'm exposed to and you know and people really reacted to that and wanted more of it and you know thought it was entertaining or fresh and new so I think that's the biggest advice I could give is just you know figure out what influences you in your life and try to display that in your art so I think a big thing to remember if you're trying to get a job somewhere like Pixar is to be yourself I know it sounds cliche but it really is important there's a lot of failure of course there's a lot of times when you're wrong there's a lot of times when you think that you something is working and it's not that actually is the most important thing that could happen to you as a storyteller is when things are not working when things are kind of only slightly working you always want to get better the only way you're going to get better is if you keep trying