My kids were dying to see Big Hero 6 especially my 7 year old. That is why I was so excited to pick the brains of both Don Hall and Chris Williams, the directors of Big Hero 6. I have talked to these directors on my other trips, and they are amazing and an absolute delight to talk too.

Don Hall began his career at Walt Disney Animation Studios in June of 1995, coming onboard as a story apprentice on “Tarzan.” He served as a storyboard artist on “The Emperor’s New Groove,” “Chicken Little” and various development projects. For “Meet the Robinsons,” Hall was elevated to head of story. He was nominated for an Annie Award for storyboarding on “The Emperor’s New Groove”—his work on “Meet the Robinsons” netted him a second nomination. He previously served as head of story for 2009’s “The Princess and the Frog.” As head of story, he worked closely with the directors in editorial and recording sessions; his responsibilities included story crew supervision, storyboarding sequences and writing. He directed Walt Disney Animation Studios 2011 feature “Winnie the Pooh” also.

Joining the Florida animation studio as an intern in 1994, Chris Williams was a key member of the “Mulan” (1998) story team. He worked as a story artist on “Lilo & Stitch” (2002) and earned an Annie Award nomination for writing on “The Emperor’s New Groove.” He directed Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Oscar®-nominated feature “Bolt” (2008) with Byron Howard, and has since served in the story department on 2012’s “Wreck-It Ralph” and 2013’s Oscar®-winning feature “Frozen.” Chris Williams also wrote and directed Disney’s first CG short, “Glago’s Guest,” for which he won an Annie Award. He won an Emmy® as executive producer for the ABC holiday special “Prep & Landing.”

We started the interview by asking how they both got involved in this project. Don told us:

I was finishing up “Winnie the Pooh” and started thinking about my next project. John Lassiter always asks the directors to start with what we are passionate about. I started thinking about it, and as a kid, I loved Disney Animation. Obviously, that's what brought me here, but I also loved Marvel Comics (aff). It's really where I learned to draw and tell stories, and I'm not unique by the way. I mean, the entire Studio pretty much has that same story. I just happened to be the guy who brought it to the forefront.

I pitched John that idea and he got super excited and said go find something. It was that simple. It was a 5 minute conversation. I just made lists of stuff that I thought would be cool, and I came across “Big Hero 6” having never read the comic. I researched it further, and it was a Japanese Super Hero team. I thought that that was cool. Then I read the comics (aff), and I thought the tone was appropriate. It was light hearted, and the characters were fun. They had goofy names. You could tell the creators just loved Japanese Pop Culture, and that's what they were trying to infuse into the Super Hero story which we did too. We love Japanese Pop Culture as well. Most important, you could see that there could be an emotional story about this 14 year old super genius who loses his brother and this robot who becomes his surrogate big brother. I pitched it along with about 5 or 6 other ideas to John, and this is one he gravitated towards and said go.

This is how Chris got involved:

I remember so vividly the day that Don first pitched Big Hero 6 to myself and the other Directors at Disney. At that stage, you're not pitching the whole story. You're pitching just a seed of an idea. When he talked about this main character who was going to lose his Brother and was going be left with his creation, this surrogate older brother, it was so powerful. I thought man, that's great. I really did hope that John would respond to and green light it. He did, because for John, emotion is everything. You know what I mean, like it has to be funny, it has to be exciting, and you have to have thrilling action scenes. If it doesn't have that core emotion, then you've failed.

Really, I feel like the last 3 and a half years has been about realizing that potential that Don laid out in that pitch. I remember where it was in the wall; I just remember really responding to it. I was then thrilled when a year or so later, Don asked me to join him.

We then asked if they ever expect the response to big “Big Hero 6”.

Don's response totally made us all laugh.

Yeah. [LAUGHTER] We did. Remember we talked about that?

We're very fortunate because we're always the first audience. We were won over by Baymax as a character and the film subsequently. Baymax, as a Character, is something you can't predict. That is, that a Character will blow up that bit and just resonate like that with people. It's just resounding. It's pretty cool. He'll outlive all of us, and to have contributed a character like that to the Disney Legacy is pretty cool.

Chris's response was:

That legacy is something we think about a lot. We got into Animation, because we fell in love with the Disney when we were kids. I loved the Baymax Character. That was definitely my in to the film, and I'm really proud of the dynamic between Hiro and Baymax. I definitely see the lineage from Baymax all the way back to Bambi and Dumbo and Pinocchio and these kind of characters that have this purity and this sweetness to them. I always respond to those kind of characters and that they're a big part of the Disney Heritage. It is an overwhelming idea sometimes for us that we are part of this group that's helping to carry that legacy forward, but here we are. We're very proud of the movie.

I thought it was pretty cool that they brought in a clinical psychologist to help mold Hiro's Character. We asked them about it. Don's response:

It was hugely important on a couple of different levels. We always start with our personal story, especially when you're dealing with something as personal as loss. The conversations in the story room would always be personal stories. You always start there because that's your only experience. I did some reading very early on about loss and grief and watched “Ordinary People.” When we did bring in the clinical psychologist, it did two things. It gave us a new insight into teen loss. It also reinforced that we were on the right track, because a lot of things she talked about, we were already doing in the film. In a sense, it validated our approach and also gave us some new insight.

Chris's thoughts:

It is amazing in our story room how generous and open people are and how vulnerable they allow themselves to be. The story room for us is a really sacred space. We come in there, we close the door, and then people are very open and respectful. People will talk about some of the most difficult moments of their lives, and since we were telling a story about the character who's dealing with loss, we wanted to be true to that experience. That's one of the things I'm most struck by is that is we don't want to be driven. We want to talk about our own experiences and that's certainly helped us a lot with this film.

We, of course, asked about Stan Lee. You can't have a comic book movie without him in it!

Don told us:

We had a desire to do that. I have to say though, we kind of back burnered it. I mean, we pushed this about as far as you could push as far as right up to the deadline. When you say it's ripped out of our hands, I mean, it was really ripped out of our hands. We both went to go see “Guardians of the Galaxy”, and I think it was August when it came out. By this point, the Film was animated and we're finishing it up, doing some stuff, and we both had a very similar reaction when we came in on Monday morning. It was sort of panic, because it was like “Oh My God, nobody left the Theatre”.

We stayed for the entire “Guardians of the Galaxy” and everybody stayed through the credits for the Howard the Duck scene, and we weren't doing that. We didn't have one. We both came in on Monday morning a little panicked, you know, and so we just had a quick conversation, and we always thought that it would be funny to do something with Fred and his Dad. Chris went away and Storyboarded and wrote that little tag, and came up with the Underwear call back. We pulled our Producer in and said we need a little money for this. We grabbed some people and the most amazing thing about this sequence is that we kept it from the crew. We took just essential personnel. We had, I think, a team of maybe 20 people and sworn to secrecy. We all had code names. It was on its own server, so that people couldn't snoop around and find it.

We actually managed to pull that off. We actually managed to keep it a secret from the crew until the wrap party. They didn't know, and it was awesome.

Chris then told us:

We always had the Stan Lee and the Painting that we passed by. That was a given. It wasn't until very late in the game that we decided we needed to do more. It was really great and it meant that we, if ever so briefly, got to meet and work with Stan Lee.

We also asked them to tell us about San FranToyko. Don's response:

That decision kind of happened right after John picked “Big Hero 6”. I had a Meeting with the Marvel guys and communicated that to them. They were super thrilled, but they said, you know, don't worry about setting this in the Marvel Universe. They just said we just want to see what you do with it and create your own world. It was really encouraging for us so we wanted to keep the Japanese aesthetic from the comic book because essentially it's a Japanese super hero team. The Marvel Universe is the real world. I wanted to keep the Japanese aesthetic from the marvel comic but mash it up with a City that would be very recognizable like San Francisco because of the Golden Gate Bridge and cable cars.

I think we created something really cool and new and just like the Movies and mash up of Disney and Marvel, I thought this city could be a mash up of Eastern and Western kind of things. I just thought that they would play well together and create something familiar but sort of new as well.

Chris them told us:

For our Boss John Lassiter, world building is really important. Part of the experience for the audience is being told a great story, but another part is being taken to a world where you've never been. It's been a big part of Disney History as well. We love that idea of creating a world that is unique that the audience would love to go to and I think we achieved it with San FranTokyo.

Once again, I was amazed how so much thought goes into every single aspect of these movies. Talking to Chris and Don was amazing, and I learned a lot. I also appreciate Big Hero 6 that much more! I know I can't wait to see the next movie they have up their sleeves.

Have you seen Big Hero 6? Did you learn anything about the movie in this interview? Anything you would have asked them?