- A What If statement
is ultimately connected to a world and a character. When we say world, what we really mean is the environment, or set of rules, in which our story will take place. It could be literal, like a coral reef, or figurative, like the
mind of a young girl. Character, of course, refers to the subjects or individuals we follow on the journey of the story. What if there was one
last robot left on Earth? Let's hear about some of
the worlds and characters that inspired our Pixar story artists. Star Wars has this great What If question, which is what if there
was a band of rebels that were trying to be the
guardians of the human spirit and let's say there was this
great war that was going on between this non-feeling technology trying to wipe out this
kind of subtle human feeling and it just has this great
powerful What If question that really drew me in to that world. - The great thing about
the world of Toy Story is that it's this really
beautiful metaphor for growing up. And it's so genius because it's so, from the outside it looks so simple, but from the inside it's so complicated and so beautiful. So I think that's a really good example of a world sort of leading the story and a world containing
a metaphor within it that we can all sort of
grasp and hold on to. - One of my favorite
movies is Raising Arizona by the Coen brothers. Well, the world takes a backseat to the character of this protagonist who wants to sort of steal a baby, so him and his wife
could have this family. That character is so
incredibly alive to me that he could just stand
there on the screen and it would still be really compelling. - Personally, I always think
character should come first and then the world comes after. For example, a blind
person forgetting his pants and going to work will have
a completely different story than a seeing-eyed person
forgetting his pants and going to work. Two characters will have
completely different stories but all of the objects and the setting and everything else is
completely the same. So, for me, character is king. - Everybody works a little differently. So, for me, I like to come
at it from world first and then find the character
to go into this world, or who that character is going to be. I needed to set the stage for a bunch of other
characters to go through and then that was the equation for stories to come out. - Sometimes the world comes first and sometimes the character comes first. Either way, the story's
born when both things, world and character, meet. Let's get warmed up in this next exercise, thinking about characters and worlds in the stories you love.