We're really pleased and impressed that video game producer Warren Spector went to such extremes to study the original animations from early Disney shorts to create the newest video game from Disney: Epic Mickey. We were fortunate enough to sit down with Warren--who has a Walt Disney Family Museum family membership, by the way!--and chat with him about the game, what inspired him, his love for all things Disney, and what it was like to bring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit back to life.
What is the premise of Epic Mickey?
WS: The fact that Walt lost Oswald in a contract dispute was the start of the entire story. This is a brother story--it's asking the question of how important are family and friends to you. Here's the starting point for the entire story: Older brother, rejected by his dad--or thinking that he was--resents younger brother for stealing the life that should have been his. It's a true story, you know? If Walt hadn't lost the rights to Oswald, Mickey Mouse would have never existed, Oswald would've been in Steamboat Ozzie, and he would have been the biggest cartoon star in history! And so he spent 80 years in Wasteland--forgotten, rejected, nursing his grudge against Mickey, and so Mickey's biggest job--in my mind, anyway--is redeeming his older brother by bringing Oswald back and reconnecting him. It's a story about how important family and friends are to you, and every player gets to decide that.
What is it like working with Mickey Mouse--creating him into this new character for this video game, but still keeping the integrity of that character that we've known since 1928?
WS: That was one of the big balancing acts--I guess people think I should be scared, but I've never been scared on this project… but I certainly feel a sense of responsibility. I mean, this is a character that has touched everyone; neither one of us will ever meet anybody who does not know this character, or have an opinion about him. So I knew I had to, for myself, identify the heart of the character--I had to work with Disney to make sure that we agreed on the heart of the character. You know what a Disney geek I was… (jokingly) half the stuff you see at the Disney Family Museum, I have in my office! I am a geek from way back, and so I had a pretty good handle on Mickey--at least I thought I did. I looked at Mickey from 1928, and then from 1937, 1940, and 1952, and today. I looked at him in the parks, and I looked at him--not for the differences, which are there as he's different in all of these incarnations--but I looked for the things that were the same. And what I came up with is that he's always been the smartest member of the gang, he's a friend--to a fault; he will NEVER give up--he's smart, he's loyal, he's friendly, he's persistent, but he's also mischievous. And he gets overly enthusiastic and doesn't always think before he acts. Take a look at Sorcerer's Apprentice-- he plays with things he doesn't understand, gets in trouble, and then has to get himself out of it! That's the Mickey I wanted to capture: smart, and friendly and loyal, and mischievous. And I think Disney is happy with our take on our character.
On the other hand, for Oswald, we don't have that many resources because he is a character not many people know of, so what was it like bringing him back to life, and what did you have to do to give him the character that he has in this game?
WS: Working with Oswald--I mean I'm so honored to make a Mickey Mouse game--but Oswald? He's such an incredible character. Of the 26 that Walt had made--13 of the cartoons still exist and some pencil tests, so we went and scoured those, and what you discover is that he (Walt) actually had a pretty fleshed-out character. Walt--even in the late 1920s--was telling stories with really compelling characters. You know [Oswald] is a guy who falls in love easily; if you look at the existing 13 cartoons… he falls in love with a different cat or rabbit in every one, so let's play with that. He's a force of anarchy, he really is. You know Mickey is mischievous, but Oswald really was a template for so many cartoon characters from other studios that came along after him. He's just an incredible force of anarchy and he could do cartoony things: He could separate his head from his body and use it as a bowling ball; he could split up into a dozen pieces into little versions of himself and run around and do a dozen things at once! He would pull his ears off and use them as oars or baseball bats. He could pull his tail off and use it as a feather-duster. He could pull his legs off and rub them for luck (you know, rabbits feet)! And so I just didn't have to do much. Even in the visuals, I just said "Why would I mess with this?" So we just brought him back--we brought him back as he was, and I think just doing that is going to be plenty to make him a big star again… and he IS going to be a big star after this!
How much and what kind of research did you have to do in order to make this game?
WS: We did a ton of research. I said I've been a Disney geek all my life and I taught animation classes, I wrote my master thesis on cartoons. I've done a lot of research already, and I own a lot of Disney memorabilia--enough that I'm ashamed of myself--but at this point, everyone on the team is a Disney expert. We went to the Archives, we went to the Archives at the Studio a lot, we went to the prop library, we went to the Imagineering Research Library, the Animation Research Library, the Disney Consumer Products lounge…. I even found some stuff here at the Museum, actually, that I didn't know, so there's one quote from Walt about Oswald that I've never seen from anywhere that's pretty amazing. So we did a lot of research. Everybody on the team has watched every Mickey cartoon by now. And every Oswald cartoon. We had marathon feature film watching sessions. I went and got blueprints of virtually every ride at Disneyland, we made field trips to the park to take photos of the rides before the park opens. You do not want to go on the rides with the lights on, by the way! You want to preserve the magic, okay? But it was such a special feeling to be on the inside, so we did a ton of research because EVERYTHING needed to be accurate. Early on in the game, I said if there's something from Disney's history that makes the game better, of course we're going to use it. If there's something from Disney's history that's neutral--which makes our game neither better nor worse--we're going to use it. The only things we're going to make up are things that don't already exist in the Disney universe that we NEED for the game. And so needless to say, that involves a lot of research. And the weirdness of having to tell your team, "Don't be creative! Go find stuff! Research! You don't make stuff up!" It was a very strange thing to tell a team.
Along the same lines--since they aren't being creative--do you use a lot of the old Mickey Mouse cartoons in Epic Mickey?
WS: Funny you should mention that… YES! In fact, the way you travel through Wasteland is by jumping into movie screens and we actually go to a side-view where you actually play a fairly traditional "platforming" game, you don't paint and erase. We go to a 2D side-scroller, partly to honor the Nintendo Mario games that we all love, but also it gives us an opportunity to recreate the look and feel--more the look, I guess--of the real cartoons… Anyone who has seen that film is going to recognize different elements from that cartoon. And we have dozens and dozens and dozens of these; they're very simple, they're very straightforward, and there are LOTS of them, so we pay tribute to a lot of Mickey cartoons for sure.
What artists/animators inspired you in the making of Epic Mickey?
WS: Our big story modes are told through 2D cinematic inspired by artwork by Mary Blair. I'm blown away because her desk is right outside this room. I just love Mary Blair's artwork, so the animators, when we first started seeing the storyboards, we all just looked at it in a way and just thought, "Why don't we just put storyboard concept art in and bring it back to life into the game?" And so we have this completely unique look of Mickey. We also have this unique look that's also another part of Disney's past, which is kind of the foundation of this whole game--it's about honoring the 82 years of Disney creativity, and reminding people--even people who love Disney--just how remarkable Disney was as a man, how amazing his company was, and how many ways he and the company touched us.
It's hard not to be inspired by Eyvind Earle and the Nine Old Men! We were pretty easy about borrowing, for sure. One of the more interesting things we did--I wish I could take credit for this because it's genius--but early on, the animators came to me and said, "We really want to get inside Mickey's skin and we can't do that with just sketches or just by animating him on our own," so what they did was get real Mickey cartoons… and they took specific scenes/shots out of them, and they recreated the animation from those real cartoons. … They then composited our Mickey in those recreated animations into the actual cartoons and I promise you, if I showed you that, you could not tell the difference. You couldn't tell that's a 3D model animated by guys in 2009! And it's not like we used those animations; we didn't rip off the original animations, but the animators just knew that Mickey, that getting the model looking right was really important, but how Mickey moves is who Mickey is. Those folks really nailed it. Our Mickey is… he is WONDERFUL.
How much of Walt Disney did you have to research for this project?
WS: I don't want to sound like an egomaniac, but I've read EVERY DISNEY biography… like I said, I came in with a pretty good grab [on Disney knowledge]… I've modeled my life after two people: Walt Disney and (film producer) David O. Selznick. Those are the guys that I wanted to be when I grew up because I love their audacity, and their apparent need to innovate. I love the fact that they never saw a risk they didn't want to take if it was in the pursuit of something new or of quality. This is a little strange--most people who are movie fans say they want to direct, but I've never wanted to direct. I've always wanted to be a producer, someone who worked through other people and brought the best out of their team; I've always just loved working with teams.
Tell us a little about this Intro we're watching…
WS: This is actually a recreation of Through the Mirror--a 1936 Mickey cartoon--down to the time on the clock and date on the calendar. We frame-by-framed this, we composited this and they're as close as a 3D thing can be to a 2D traditional cartoon. You don't know how many people asked me what is the significance with March 25th? My answer always is "I don't know! It's the date on the real cartoon!" So maybe one of your readers will know which animator had a birthday on that day or so…! It's literally MAR25 on the calendar in Through the Mirror. So this time, he goes to a recreation of Yen Sid's workshop. We actually tried to recreate what the workshop would be using whatever clues we could from concept art we could find. If the power of Disney's imagination--working through his alter ego, Yen Sid--is going to bring into existence a world for forgotten, rejected Disney creativity, what form is it going to take, other than his fondest dream, Disneyland?
We actually posted the full seven minutes of the introduction online, and people have already started playing the "where did that come from" game? Down to the lamp posts, the garbage cans… almost everything in the game came from something real! Model sheets, park visits, scenes from films that ended up on the cutting room floor… you name it! Just another day in Mickey's life!
What's after Epic Mickey? Do you think there's going to be a sequel?
WS: I try to go into things with an idea that it's bigger than just one game. But what comes next? Who knows… but it'll be something cool!
Disney's Epic Mickey will be released exclusively for the Wii tomorrow, November 30th.
Warren Spector and Communications Specialist Andi Wang.
All photos by Mark Gibson, Courtesy The Walt Disney Family Museum.