Kevin O’Brien

Storyboard Artist, PIXAR

Kevin has spent the past 30 years working in preproduction design and storyboarding for animated films, television, and live action.

22 of those years were spent at Pixar, where he contributed to iconic films such as The Incredibles (2004) — for which he won an Annie Award — and WALL-E (2008).

Prior to that, Kevin worked on seasons 2-12 of The Simpsons as a storyboard artist. His most recent project, Turning Red (2022), broke Disney+’s global viewership opening record within three days of its premiere.

What compelled you to pursue a career in animation?

I got into animation because it seemed like an art form that offered infinite possibilities. In Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, a classic sci-fi novel read by me in the 1970s, it said: “It was in the art of the cartoon film, with its limitless possibilities, that New Athens had its most successful experiments. The hundred years since Disney had still left much undone in this most flexible of all mediums.”

However, as a high school senior researching careers, I found the animation industry was at a terrible low point. Nothing like today. So, I went to art school to try my hand at commercial illustration. After graduation, I worked mutiple jobs (some art related, some not), but found myself drawn towards ‘small house’ animation studios. I dabbled in animated commercial work before landing a job on Season 2 of The Simpsons. That’s where my real education began.

What did you learn from working on The Simpsons?

The Simpsons was a master class in staging comedy and, in general, the use of camera and composition to tell a story. We had the best writers and voice actors providing the best raw material to work from. A working day on the Simpsons was like playing chess under deadline stress for 8-12 hours a day. As with chess, I’d visualize every possible move a character or story element could make, and all the possible reactive moves to that. Needless to say, I can’t enjoy playing chess anymore. It’s too much like work.

On the early days of The Simpsons, many of us were approximately the same age, old enough to remember when the content from the 1930s to the 1950s was still filling broadcast schedules on TV. We grew up watching Abbott and Costello, Lucille Ball, The Three Stooges, etc. All the great American comedians of that era learned their craft in Vaudeville, which has become the root language of American comedy, in my opinion. We all “spoke” this same language, and it became the visual comedy language of The Simpsons. I think I’ve now brought that same language to Pixar, and I’m actually surprised that it’s a bit of a forgotten language at this point. I’m amazed I can say, ‘Oh, it’s like Lou Costello in the old Niagara Falls routine’ and not everyone understands what I mean.

What’s it like being a story artist at Pixar?

A concept artist may visualize the world of a film, but a storyboard artist takes the first steps towards the “filming” of the story. We’re like blueprint artists designing a building. Our drawings are meant to be a fast, cheap, and easy way to suggest an animated film before the expensive rendering of a project. We usually get a script or a verbal “hand off” of a scene, and then go to our desks to rough out a solution. The experience can be very regimented (“just follow the script”) or a tremendous opportunity to be a screenwriter writing with pictures. I prefer the latter, but there’s a wide range of work modes on almost every project.

  • “I got into animation because it seemed like an art form that offered infinite possibilities.”

What’s been your most rewarding project at Pixar?

The Incredibles was definitely the most rewarding film I’ve worked on at Pixar. Most of us from the Story crew had worked on Brad Bird’s Iron Giant, and felt betrayed by its lack of studio support in 1999. The Clash have a song lyric that goes “Anger can be power, if you know that you can use it.” The Incredibles was the best use of anger I’ve ever experienced. We weren’t walking around with our fists clenched and gritted teeth, but we felt we had something to prove after Iron Giant. Thankfully, Pixar fully supported us and we were able to make something great.

In my mind, that period from 1997 to 2004 is entirely connected. One long road. We were trying to show we could make a successful animated film that owed more to Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark than a Broadway musical… and we did. Believe it or not, it was a novel, if not controversial, idea at the time.

What are your hopes for the future of animation?

My hope for the future of animation is that we see more unique stories. Stories that are not structured on the same old predictable tropes. I don’t care about the subject matter, I just want to be challenged by the architecture of the story. I think of Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite as a model for what I’d like to see. If you’d told me that there was a film out there about social inequality and wealth disparity in modern South Korea, I probably would have said, “Yeah…I’ll pass.” But I was told I had to see the film because it was such a great story. Period. I did and I loved it. It had a twist I did not see coming.

Animated films need to break traditions and build new story scaffoldings. The films can be about “Ricky and the Magic Whatever and How He Learns to Have Faith in Himself”, but just don’t bore me with the story. Show me something new.

More about Kevin!

  • Favorite Pixar Movie

    The Incredibles — my favorite character is Bob Parr!

  • Favorite Storyboard

    It’s the scene in The Incredibles when Bob is sneaking around The Base. He jumps off the mountain top and is captured by Sticky Balls.

    The scene was created “on the wall” in collaboration with Brad Bird and Mark Andrews. Boards came first, and then story followed the boards.

  • Dream Dinner Party

    My dream dinner party guests are (1) Robert Heinlein, (2) David Bowie, and (3) Winston Churchill.