Pixar story artist Louise Smythe, BFA ’10, describes her urge to create as innate; she’s constantly conjuring up stories and ideas in her head. During her childhood in Memphis, she drew all the time and watched animated movies intently. But it was at WashU where she discovered how to channel her creative energy into a filmmaking career.
In the late ’00s, when Smythe wasn’t busy with her studies at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, she frequented fantasy bookstore Star Clipper on Delmar Boulevard, inspired by the sequential storytelling found in the store’s comics. This passion, fused with her love of drama and cinema, led to the realization that she was destined to become a storyboard artist.
But her first storyboarding attempts were less than a success. “I was really, really bad at it,” says Smythe, “but I had John Hendrix and D.B. Dowd as professors at Sam Fox, and they were so encouraging.” Dowd, a professor of design, and Hendrix, the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art, devised assignments tailor-made for Smythe to acquire storyboarding expertise. She even drew inspiration from WashU’s past, finding a stylistic antecedent in the illustrations of Al Parker (a contemporary of Norman Rockwell), who attended WashU’s School of Fine Arts from 1923–28.
After graduation, Smythe applied three times for a Pixar internship, sending the kinds of art she felt certain would impress; each time, she was rejected. The fourth time, however, was the charm. She decided to draw what she wanted and tell the stories she wanted to tell. “If they’re weird, that’s fine,” she thought. “I’m just going to see what happens.”
That’s when Smythe’s phone rang. She landed the internship, which soon morphed into a full-time role at Pixar Studios, where storyboarding is a collaborative process designed to lock in a story before animation.
“It’s usually better to think: ‘Make the movie you want to make.’ ”
Louise Smythe, BFA ’10
“They were looking for that individual outlook,” Smythe says. “I try to think about that more and more, because making movies here, sometimes I think: ‘Does this fit with the brand?’ But it’s usually better to think: ‘Make the movie you want to make.’” Smythe is doing just that, adding a bit of her own magic to Pixar’s movie-making process.
Since 2012, her talents have been applied to Toy Story 4, Cars 3 and The Good Dinosaur. She especially enjoyed contributing to 2020’s Onward, and to this day, an entire wall of her office is dedicated to the film’s fantasy-themed art. Recently, she served as lead story artist for Inside Out 2, which, at $1.69 billion, is Pixar and Disney’s highest-grossing animated film.
In her role, she helped develop the new character of Anxiety and reveled in depicting the ongoing arc of Joy, one of the original Inside Out characters. Her storyboards suggested plot elements and framing for the shots themselves. And, working with the director, writer and editor, she constantly pitched ideas and revised the story sequence.
Through it all, she hasn’t forgotten the impact of her mentors, and she is doing the same for others — whether teaching animation classes or providing an illustration tutorial online. “Thinking of people who want that knowledge — because I know I wanted it when I was at WashU — is a big motivator for me.”
