As the set art director of Pixar’s Soul, Pixnoy Paul Abadilla is one of the key talents credited for making the film one of the best of 2020.

(Editor’s note: “Pixnoy,” is a term for Filipinos working at Pixar.)

Directed by Pete Docter, Soul tells the story of Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx), who dies on the day he gets his biggest break. Trying to prevent his soul from going to the Great Beyond, Joe discovers there’s a Great Before, where unborn souls stay until they are sent to earth.

Paul, together with production designer Steve Pilcher, came up with imaginative renderings of the Great Beyond, the Great Before, and New York, where Joe is from.

“Being the set art director for Soul and Pixar means being the connective tissue between the art department and the sets department who model or digitize a lot of our designs and create the worlds that you see in our films,” Paul answered when I asked him in our Zoom call what having that job in an animated film means.

“So, part of my job is establishing the look and visual language of the film through our sets and helping coordinate and communicating that to our technical artists so that they can consistently build that into the computer. And then our sets, overall, when we see it in the final frame, look their best.”

Asked about his inspirations, the San Jose State University alum began, “I have to step back a little bit and just say, the film. It was really about this core idea of how do we spend time living? With that idea, we were able to use that as a guide on how do we celebrate time in the human world and in the soul world?”

“We have two worlds that we’re dealing with here. So in the human world, we wanted to celebrate the textures, details, tactility of things. So that’s one level.”

“On another level, this is also a movie that centers around jazz. And really, it’s a movie about Joe and his experience as a jazz musician. So, we wanted to honor that through the design and think about, how do we visualize the ideas and theories of jazz into our set design?”

“When it came to the jazz club, part of our inspirations were jazz album covers and the art that came out of the mid-century jazz album covers and how Cubist aesthetics played into that. So we leaned towards those ideas and translated that into our set designs for the film.”

As for helping come up with the Great Beyond and the Great Before, Paul said, “The hardest thing about it is that we’ve never been there. So it’s not like we can take a field trip, take pictures, draw sketches and inform us all, oh, this is how it should look like.”

“So the hard part was not knowing what it is. And then it occurred to us, let’s start with what we know. And so what we know is the human world. We started there and then we flipped that on its head.”

“How do we contrast that to make sure that the soul world is visually interesting and as grand and visually amazing, by contrast. So we looked at the tactility, the physicality of the human world.”

“And so, for soul world, we went the opposite route. We went for something very vaporous, ethereal, and translucent. That helped us really give us some parameters to work with.”

Soul, whose voice cast includes Tina Fey and Daveed Diggs, is also a salute to New York – in all its visual cacophony.

“Way before my start on the film, the development team took field trips to New York City and visited the Queens neighborhood where Joe is from,” Paul explained.

“Also, they visited spaces like barbershops and lots of jazz clubs around New York City to really get the local flavor and understand the rich history of these places and what that means to the African-American community. They talked to the people themselves as to what makes these places feel and look the way that they do.”

Pressed to specify which world was the most difficult to create, Paul replied, “Oh, man. I think from a broad perspective, the most challenging was figuring out the soul world. On one level, it was a search to really find the designs that we needed.”

“But the challenge is, how do we produce it? How do we make it? Are we technically capable and to have this built, lit, and rendered in time, too?”

“A lot of those technical challenges, I wasn’t too much a part of, but a lot of the backend stuff like designing, was one, and also just being with a team to process, okay, if we approached it in this design, are we able to produce it with this given timeframe?”

“That was a challenging thing but I think the most rewarding thing is that everybody’s so awesome at Pixar. I’m so blessed to be working with a lot of really talented and dedicated people.”

“Much credit to the technical departments for really figuring out, how do we pull this thing off? Because it’s creating something we’ve never seen before. That is a challenge already, but being able to do it in time is amazing. Hats off to them.”

While Paul has several Pixar credits, including Monsters University, Brave, Incredibles 2, Cars 3, and Finding Dory, Soul marks his first time to work with Pete Docter.

“I’ve collaborated with Pete very briefly on Inside Out,” Paul pointed out. “I spent a few weeks there. So I would consider this as my first experience being involved on a feature with him, in a full capacity. Pete, Kemp Powers, our co-director, and Dana Murray, our producer, were really great from the beginning.”

“They really set a healthy tone for the whole crew and invited everybody to bring their own life experiences and truths into helping create this movie because it’s really about life and how do we make the most out of what we have right now, here, living on earth?”

“And so, with that said, by inviting everybody to approach the film in that way, it resulted in something very meaningful to us and hopefully to the rest of the world.”

The Manila native, who left for California with his family as a young boy, said several Pixnoys worked on Soul.

“The ones that come to top of my head right now – include Nelson Bohol. He was a huge part in helping me design a lot of the human world sets. He’s very experienced and he does amazing work on Soul. I’m very thankful and blessed to have him on my team. I also know that Gini Santos was also one of our animators.”

“Trevor Jimenez was one of the key story folks in the film. Nino Ellington (rendering technical director), one of our systems folks. He was really important in our backend of things, and on system support. There’s a handful of us that were a part of this movie.”

I also noticed Ricky Nierva, listed as a development artist/story artist on IMDb.

I teased that Nelson Bohol couldn’t sneak in a bahay kubo (as he did in Finding Nemo) since Soul is a completely different setting.

Paul quipped with a smile, “Without giving anything away, I definitely think that Filipino audiences will find a couple of moments in the film where they’d be like, oh, hey, I know about it.”

Which of Soul’s big themes – pursuing your passion, making the most of our time here on earth, the issue of mortality, what happens before and after people’s lives on earth – resonated with Paul the most?

“For me, as an artist, one of the things I live for is enjoying that moment of creating,” answered Paul, who briefly attended Jose Abad Santos Memorial School in Manila.

“So, when I’m done with that task, I’m always searching for like, all right, what’s next? And also, the movie talks about where we get our personalities and interests.”

“I feel like I have too many hobbies already and that makes me wonder like, oh, yeah, this totally makes sense. So for me, the subject of like, when will I feel satisfied with what I’m doing? And that really resonated for me.”

“As I’ve worked on this film, I definitely related more and more to Joe’s experience. So, from the get-go, I was attached to the subject matter right away. And especially for him as a musician and me as an artist, there’s a lot of parallels there, too.”

“This idea of making it, or getting the dream gig. In that respect, too, I can definitely relate to that.”

Paul asked how my coffee table book project of my photos of talents I interviewed over the years, Through a Writer’s Lens, was coming along since he and several other Pixnoys are featured. He has glad to know that it was finally out (details on www.facebook.com/throughawriterslens).

I asked him to elaborate on the wonderful quote he gave me to go with my photo of him in the book, about returning and sharing his knowledge in the Philippines.

“That’s something that I still believe in to this day because I definitely believe in the power of visibility. As a younger artist thinking of having these dreams of like, oh, I want to be an artist, but I don’t know exactly what path to take.”

“But when I finally discovered, oh, hey, I definitely love animation and I want to become an artist. Bridging those two things and seeing this path of a career in animation definitely got me excited as a young person. But during that process, I didn’t really see a lot of people that looked like me.”

“We had some celebrities and figures in the media, here in America, that I was able to identify with. And so that helped, definitely boosted my confidence and inspired me to work on my craft.”

“So being here now, being a Filipino, working at a studio at Pixar and having this opportunity, one of my goals is just to really give more visibility to the younger generation that, hey, someone that looks like you can work and with dedication, you can attain this career, if you choose to. Or even just have the ability to help create stories that you can share with the world.”

Looking ahead, Paul said he worked on Luca, the Pixar film to be shown in June next year. Set in the Italian Riviera, Luca is about the friendship that develops between a human being and a sea monster disguised as a human.

“I can’t really say much at this point,” Paul said with his boyish grin. “But immediately after Soul, I hopped on to help with that.” – Rappler.com