Pixar’s Pete Docter Shows How To Make Traditional Flip Books In Facebook Video

Head of Pixar Animation Studios, Pete Docter, has taken to the studios’ Facebook page as part of an event for students wherein he teaches viewers how to make a traditional flip book based on the principles of animation.

What’s Happening:

  • Pete Docter, the current head of Pixar Animation Studios who has previously Directed the films Monsters Inc, Up, Inside Out, and the upcoming feature, Soul, has taken to Pixar’s official Facebook page to educate students on how to make a traditional flip book.
  • Filmed in his quiet closet and using a decade-plus old example that was a Christmas gift handed out from his family, he opens the video showcasing the simplicity of the flip book.
  • Realizing most of us don’t have access to binding methods used in traditional publishing, he suggests using a simple pad of Post-it notes, or taking a binder clip and a stack of paper or note cards to craft our own base for the flip book.
  • What follows after is a rough course not only in making the flip book, but also in rough traditional hand-drawn animation, as he sketches out a figure literally leaping around the page.
  • This video was made as part of an event for students with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  • Docter is the Director of Pixar’s upcoming film, Soul, which has been pushed back to a release date in November of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Soul imagines that every person on earth comes installed with a soul that was formed and perfected in a cosmic realm.
  • Jamie Foxx leads an all-star voice cast as middle school teacher, Joe Gardner. Tina Fey joins as a new soul nicknamed “22,” who loathes humans so much she’s avoided Earth altogether. Questlove, Daveed Diggs, and Phylicia Rashad also lend their voices to the cast.
  • Like Coco before it, Soul is largely driven by music. Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Baptiste are all working on the film, creating original jazz pieces with Ross and Reznor composing a score that works in both realms.