Disney's FEAST: Conversation with Patrick Osborne

[JeffSaylor]

Director Behind The Short Film Attached To Big Hero 6...

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By David Yeh
Photography by David Yeh


Paired with the release of Disney’s Big Hero 6, Feast is a short film about the life of a dog named Winston, the touching story told through the food he eats. The director behind Feast is animator Patrick Osborne, who took the film from conception to completion. Osborne joined Walt Disney Animation Studios as an animator on the 2008 feature film Bolt and went on to work on the Prep & Landing movies and Disney’s 2010 hit Tangled. He served as head of animation for the Oscar-winning short Paperman and acted as co-head of animation for Big Hero 6 prior to assuming full-time directing duties for Feast.

We caught up with Patrick, the Cincinnati, Ohio native who now resides in Los Angeles, to talk about the short film and life in general.


FIGURES.COM: Patrick, congratulations on your Annie Award win!

PATRICK OSBOURNE: Thank you! I was really surprised... it was cool!

So are you just riding the waves at this point right?

Yeah, it’s been fun. I get to do some publicity, get to travel a little bit. And it’s cool because Big Hero 6 has been coming out in waves in different countries so there’s like a weekend when Great Britain got to see it and then you start to see tweets from there...

With the DVD and Blu Ray coming out, the shorts are usually part of the bonus features but there’s usually a lot that goes into these. Usually there’s a lot of cool behind the scenes stuff made for these shorts but are they going to be released eventually? I would love to see MORE behind-the-scenes on all the short features.

I don’t know if we’ve ever done that before, but yeah we do this kind of thing for every short. It would be cool to have something like that. I think we have close to enough for a volume now, there’s also Nessie and Lorenzo... which were great.

Those were! For Feast, there was a three-idea pitch process. You pitched two other concepts along with Feast. Can you tell me about the other two pitches?

They’re secret, man, because I might make them some day! [laughs] They can still happen, you never know.

So they weren’t denied...

Nothing is really ever denied. I guess in my case they picked one and it was pretty clear which one it would be if it happened because we only really talked about this
one. This was my second favorite idea when I started, but it became my favorite.

A lot of your inspiration for Feast came from you shooting your dinner every day for a year. Is there anything new you’re shooting every day this year?

I’m still doing that, but different versions. It’s not just dinners but just regular life. There’s a lot of people doing that and I just think it’s cool to shoot one second a day. Other than that, I try to keep track of inspiration and I’ll write it down. I forget about it for a while and then try to make it a point to go in and categorizing things and looking through old ideas that could be something.

You used to have a lot of dogs before...

Wiener dogs. None right now though because my place is too small. And animators work really long hours.

Not really fair for the dogs.

Yeah, it’s not very nice.

Unless there was a Disney Animation Dog Center...

That’d be cool. Some animation companies allow their dogs there, which is cool. Disney is a movie studio, so pets need handlers.

Do you remember the very first Disney animated film you saw in the theater?

The first movie in the theater I remember was Little Mermaid. I remember that parking lot somehow. And Jurassic Park was a huge thing for me when that came out. My dad brought home an “Art Of” book for Jurassic Park with storyboards and I thought “Wow, people do that! That’s a thing!” They were really breaking ground and it seemed like a fun thing to do. So through high school I was kind of aiming at that.

That book was incredible. On the subject of theme parks, were you around a Disney Park growing up?

No, I mean, we went to Disney World as a kid but I lived in Ohio so it was a long drive. I think we went once.

Do you go to Disneyland often now that you’re so close?

Not really! Even though it’s free! [laughs] We go a couple of times a year to Disneyland now. My wife and I both work at Disney so we can bring in a ton of people.

I know a lot of animators who surround themselves with toys. Do you have any or collect?

I’m more of an art collector of a lot of things I can’t afford yet. I have some things by Glen Keane (Disney animator) and other concept artists I work with. I like to
buy original stuff and have that around to inspire. I’m not a big toy guy because my dad was a toy designer and I got like toyed out.

You were on a Care Bears packaging weren’t you?

Yeah, I’m on a Tenderheart Bear Tummy Puzzler, it was a puzzle for two year olds. I also remember testing toys. And I always knew that drawing for a living was possible because of what my dad did. He was a big drawing-on-paper kind of guy.

And Feast is really great! I love that you’re keeping the more artist look to it.

I think it’s really important to stand out nowadays. If you’re constantly making things on the edge of technology, it’ll look great but in a few years it’ll look dated. If you make things from a particular point of view and a person’s taste, I think it has a lot more staying power.

One can look at Dreamworks and how their movies all kind of have the same look and yet they’re kind of shutting down.

It’s sad because I love animation existing as much as possible. And I have a lot of friends that work there. I don’t want studios to shut down ever. It’s pretty sad but great that we’re able to hire some really great animators now possibly. I think the industry is doing more work than ever. If you look at all the animated features nominated, they all look very different from each other. It’s just a complicated business.

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Feast can be found with Big Hero 6 on Blu-Ray and DVD February 24.

By David Yeh
Photography by David Yeh

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