Disney Pixar has released our first look at Bao, the animation studio's newest short-film which will debut before The Incredibles 2 once it releases in June. Check out the, 30-second long, sneak peek below:
Entertainment Weekly revealed in their exclusive that Bao tells the story of:
An aging Chinese mom suffering from empty nest syndrome gets another chance at motherhood when one of her dumplings springs to life as a lively, giggly dumpling boy. Mom excitedly welcomes this new bundle of joy into her life, but Dumpling starts growing up fast, and Mom must come to the bittersweet revelation that nothing stays cute and small forever.
Along with the first look came a poster for the short film, which you can see below:
The seven-and-a-half-minute short is the first, in 32 years of Pixar history, to be directed by a woman. Pixar storyboard artist and first-time director Domee Shi explained the short and her inspiration behind it:
Often times it felt like my mom would treat me like a precious little dumpling, wanting to make sure I was safe, that I didn’t go out late, all that stuff. I just wanted to create this magical, modern-day fairy tale, kind of like a Chinese Gingerbread Man story.
The word ‘bao’ actually means two things in Chinese. Said one way, it means steamed bun. Said another, it means something precious. A treasure.
Shi, who served as storyboard artist on Pixar's Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur, found her Pixar colleagues eager to hop on board with her project. Its familial and motheyly themes resonated with Pixar artists, especially employees with Asian and immigrant parents, who reached out to Shi and producer Becky Neiman-Cobb and offered to help mold Bao's anthropomorphized ball of dough.
Neiman-Cobb, who worked as a production artist on the food-centric Pixar animated movie Ratatouille, said she was warned by the crew from that film about the difficulty in recreating food in animation. Here's her amusing recount:
You know Pixar and you know the special effects we can pull off here: explosions and water and splashes and fire and fireworks. One of the biggest challenges, and what brought our effects department to their knees, was Dumpling’s pork filling. That was hard. We learned there’s a very fine line between looking delicious and appetizing and looking wrong or gross. Making our food look delicious was a big triumph.
What do you think about our first look at Bao? Are you excited to watch the 7-minute short-film in full, when it screens before The Incredibles 2 in June?