From ‘Toy Story 2' to 'Finding Nemo,' Pixar storyteller Matthew Luhn leads animated life

Pixar fans may remember the fast-paced scene in “Toy Story 2,” when the characters raced through the aisles of Al's Toy Barn trying to find Woody and stumbled on Tour Guide Barbie, while Buzz Lightyear came face-to-face with hundreds of his namesake replicas on the shelves.

“It was the very first part of a story that I drew and wrote dialogue for and then went, ‘Wow, it's actually in the film?'?” remembered longtime Pixar storyteller Matthew Luhn, who will lead a drawing workshop Jan. 11 at the Schulz Museum.

The scene was a flashback to his youth, when he worked in his family's Jeffrey's Toys stores in the Bay Area and was frequently paid in action figures and dolls. His first paycheck was a Smurf. But the scene also marked Luhn's big leap from animator to storyboard artist. For the first time, he had dreamed up much of the dialogue and action in a Pixar scene.

“Maybe they were like, ‘Hey Matthew, he grew up in a toy store, so let's just give it him.' But I basically just wrote that up and drew it. At the time, I thought, ‘I guess they'll just get a professional writer to come in and fix it.' But they didn't.”

After dropping out of the prestigious CalArts animation program to become the youngest animator to work on “The Simpsons” at age 19, Luhn began animating the original “Toy Story” in the early '90s but was laid off when Disney initially got cold feet about the movie.

After a short stint working on “Casper” at Industrial Light & Magic, the Hayward High grad began picking up freelance animation work for cereal and toy commercials.

To pay the bills, he reached his lowest career point, taking temp jobs around the Bay Area, doing administrative work, making health insurance calls to tell patients their doctor's visits had been approved and picking up stray shoes at Nordstrom Rack.

When “Toy Story” was greenlit again, he passed on an offer to return as animator because his heart was set on “taking that next step as storyboard artist - that's why I got into animation in the first place.”

So when he was tapped to work on the story team for “Toy Story 2,” Luhn jumped at the opportunity.

As a storyboard artist, his job was to visually bring the story to life, to make it leap from page to screen. He was often the first to create character expressions and imagine cinematography angles and how the characters would interact with each other.

Over two decades with Pixar, Luhn would go on to create vaudevillian sight gags for “Monsters, Inc.” as furry beasts flexed their claws and inserted fake teeth while preparing to jump through “scare doors” and into children's bedrooms. He learned to find emotion and pull on heartstrings in the tender tale of “Up.” And he devised clever ways for rodents to cook in “Ratatouille” and created the gambling sequence in “Toy Story 3.”

But one of his most memorable narrative feats solved a major plot point in “Finding Nemo.”

“We'd been working on that film a long time and one of the things we kept putting off was when Nemo is in the dentist's office, in that aquarium tank, how would the fish actually escape from a tank?

“I was the guy who came up with the idea that they'd clog up the filter and get put into plastic baggies, roll across the counter and out across the street and into the ocean.”

Even though he didn't get any writing credits - a Pixar policy that differs from traditional Hollywood studios, he was happy to see a passage in “The Art of Finding Nemo” book that mentions how “We were stuck on this point and Matthew Luhn came up with that idea.”

Now at 48, the Oakland resident spends most of his time as a keynote speaker and consultant. The last Pixar films he was credited on were “Monsters University” in 2013 and the TV special “Toy Story That Time Forgot” in 2014.

Luhn works with corporations like Adidas, Google and BMW, looking to weave the art of narrative into branding and the launch of new products. He also consults with film directors who are stuck on a script or video game companies looking to build more of a story into their latest offering.

No matter how cutting-edge products and technology become, the art of storytelling still goes back to simple principles of narrative and metaphor laid down by Aristotle in his “Poetics,” Luhn says.

“There's a famous quote from him, which is something in the way of, ‘Whoever has the ability to use metaphor, those people will be the leaders of our world.'”

It's a narrative chain he's followed from the stories of the Old Testament and Egyptian mythology to Shakespeare to Jane Austen and on to Spielberg.

Pulling from his life experiences, Luhn will share cartooning tips at Schulz Museum next weekend, specifically teaching “how to use shapes, expressions and proportions to create lovable, memorable characters.” It's been a passion of his for years. While at Pixar he wrote a series teaching the concepts of cartooning for kids. He also hopes to pass on “the love of creativity and art.

“This is something for everybody; that makes everybody's life better,” he said. “Also, I want them to know, whoever ends up coming - kids or kids at heart – that this is something you can do for a job one day. You can actually get paid to do what you love.”