By Growing up working in a toy store, Matthew Luhn likely never thought he’d be one of the animators for a wildly popular TV show and several box-office blockbusters.
But those are among the opportunities that have come his way.
A long-time animator for Pixar and Disney, Luhn is one of three keynote speakers at the fourth annual Technology and Entrepreneurship Summit at Northern State University on Wednesday, Sept. 30. The daylong event also features two sets of breakout sessions.
Luhn’s talk, “To Innovation and Beyond,” is at 1 p.m. He’ll also join Sean Covel in an 11 a.m. breakout session — What if? The Question Behind Every Innovation.
Covel directed “Napoleon Dynamite” and wrote the “Porter the Hoarder” children’s book series. He’s spoken in Aberdeen before at FAIL Fest.
The other featured speakers at the summit are:
- Jeremy Satterfield at 9 a.m.: He’s Microsoft TechSpark community engagement manager for southern Virginia. Through TechSpark, officials work with local community organizations to develop digital skills, support nonprofits and create jobs.
- Peter Calthorpe at 2 p.m. He founded Calthorpe Associates in 1983. The company is devoted to sustainable urban design and planning. He developed the concept of transit-oriented development in the early 1990s. That’s the development of residential, business and leisure areas near transit stations.
Early in his career, Matthew Luhn was an animator for “The Simpsons.” He’s since worked on numerous feature-length shows for Disney and Pixar. He is one of the keynote speakers at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Summit on Sept. 30. Courtesy photo.
Luhn’s interest in animation encouraged by his parents
Luhn grew up working in a regional chain of toy stores in the San Francisco area called Jeffrey’s Toys, which was owned by his family. While his passion was animation, he said he learned valuable lessons working at the stores. One was how to communicate with customers, making sure they purchased something and wanted to return.
He was, in essence, selling the story of his family’s stores.
Luhn said his interest in animation came from his dad.
“I’m surrounded by toys, and my dad loved animation. It made sense that I got into animation,” he said. “Because my parents were very supportive and I was persistent … I landed my first job working for ‘The Simpsons.'”
Luhn said he joined the animation team during the show’s third season.
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“When I was animating it, I realized what made it great was the good writing and the great stories,” he said.
That led him to learn all he could about the principles of storytelling and creating a story that helps people find significance in all the mysteries of life.
Then, he said, he got a call inviting him to join the team at Pixar Animation Studios that was developing “Toy Story,” the popular animated movie that hit theaters in 1995. The story is told from the perspective of the toys who adjust to the addition of a new toy. They come to life when the kids and adults aren’t watching.
One of the people developing the film knew Luhn loved toys and previously worked in a toy store, so he was offered a job as a member of the animation group. In one of the scenes Luhn animated, an army of toy soldiers is tasked with spying on a birthday party to relay the contents of the presents as they’re unwrapped.
Those toy soldiers were the little green army men without any flexible joints and feet secured to a flat base. To visualize how to animate the soldiers, Luhn said he nailed his shoes to a plank of wood and filmed his movements. He plans to play that video during the summit as he shares the principles of storytelling.
After “Toy Story,” Luhn worked as a story developer on several other blockbuster animations for Pixar and Disney through the next 20 years. They include two “Toy Story” films, “Monsters Inc.,” “Ratatouille,” “Cars,” “Finding Nemo” and “Up.”
“I definitely look back and go, ‘I was at the right place at the right time,’ and I was ambitious and persistent,” he said.
Adjusting to new technology
Luhn also took the opportunity to work on a non-traditional style of animation using a computer.
“A lot would have seen it as a turnoff,” he said, referring to other animators. “I had to learn everything drawing on a paper. I was still intrigued with this new technology.”
Now, he said, artificial intelligence is being used in the animation process.
“Whether I like it or not, I figure I should at least give it a try and determine the pros and cons,” Luhn said.
“I’m going to talk about how to be able to try out new technology before you decide it’s bad or it’s the answer to all our problems,” he said.
No matter the animation process, Luhn said what makes the film is the story.
The process of developing an animated film takes about five years with the animation portion lasting about six months, he said. Much of the work leading up to animation is perfecting the story, a process he said can’t be rushed.
Luhn said story development includes lots of meetings at which people pitch different ideas to move the story along. Often, the clearest and most concise pitch wins out, he said.
‘Toy Story 2’ brings more creative freedom
While some of his first animation opportunities will always stick with him, Luhn said “Toy Story 2” stands out.
“On ‘Toy Story 2,’ that’s the one where I was given more creative freedom to create characters and situations that I thought would be cool — it was amazing to see if these ideas made the director laugh and would end up part of the movie,” he said.
As he worked through different plot points, Luhn said sometimes inspiration struck while he was driving. That happened as he tried to figure out how the toys were going to cross a busy freeway undetected.
Luhn
Orange traffic cones in a construction zone sparked a solution.
“And I thought, ‘If I were a toy and we got under the cones, people would stop,'” he said.
Sometimes films don’t make it through the animation process. One film he helped work on for two years was about a rare blue-footed newt who had to find the last blue-footed newt living in the jungle.
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That story sounds similar to “Rio,” in which a rare blue macaw raised in captivity attempts to pair with one raised in the wild. But, Luhn said, the newt version was developed long before “Rio.”
More than once during his career, Luhn said he took a leap to try something different. After 20 years of animating and developing stories, he said he was approached about writing and directing his own 10-minute project.
The result was “Sprite Fright,” which has 10 million views on YouTube and has been optioned for a movie. That led to other opportunities to be a story consultant or help rewrite scripts, Luhn said. He is also the author of picture books for kids and art books, most of which can be found on Amazon. He said they should soon be available on his website, matthewluhnstory.com.
Other breakout sessions during the summit include:
- Playing with Dynamite: How to Cut Through Chaos and Deliver Under Pressure, led by Covel.
- Bringing Innovation to Life, led by Dr. Nathan Skelley of Sioux Falls.
- Real Stories of Starting a Business: You Don’t Need All the Answers, led by Aberdeen entrepreneurs Tiffany Hoeft, Robin Jensen and Madi Jones.
- Turning an Idea Into a National Brand, led by Mollie Ficocello, co-founder of 3 Farm Daughters.
- CybHER: Building South Dakota’s Next Generation of Cyber Leaders, led by Ashley Podhradsky, vice president for rural and economic development at Dakota State University in Madison.
Calthorpe
Admission is $50 or $40 for Zoom registration. Students and staff at South Dakota colleges and universities get in for free, as do high school teachers and students. Advance online registration is available at shorturl.at/d3Ap7.
The summit is hosted by the Northern Innovation and Startup Center.
Calthorpe will also speak at a Thursday, Oct. 1 event in Aberdeen hosted by the Cramer Center for Design and Innovation, which is on the Northern campus.
That event includes a small group conversation with Calthorpe in the Beulah Williams Library Round Room at 8:45 a.m. There’s also a 10:30 p.m. presentation by Tye Farrow about design and its impact on mental and physical health. He’s a senior partner with Farrow Partners, a construction firm that focuses on the design of heath-promoting environments.
