Visual Perspectives
Telling the Stories of
Life BY LAURET TE RYAN
Storytelling connects people. It relates us to our world and helps us understand our lives. The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words—but in the art of animation, it might take thousands of images to paint the story an artist wants to communicate. Paul Briggs is one such storyteller. 102 | O C T OBE R 2018
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ART BY PAU L BR IGGS
As a director at Walt Disney Animation Studios, Briggs has credited work on fifteen animated feature films and five short films, including Big Hero 6, Frozen, Winnie the Pooh, Tangled, The Princess and the Frog, Bolt, Fraidy Cat, and Gnomeo and Juliet, to name a few. He was the cohead of story on the film Big Hero 6 (2014), and its depth of emotion and storytelling along with its stunning artwork shows just how powerful and rich an art form animation can be. “Big Hero 6, while it’s a very fun, action-packed superhero film, deals with some very heavy themes of loss and grieving,” Briggs says. “I remember I took my family to a screening at the studio and after the screening, while walking to our car, my sixyear-old turned to me and said ‘Tadashi . . . died?’ I paused because I knew he was thinking about the death he had just witnessed in the film. So, I said, ‘Yes, Tadashi
