4 things you don’t know about Monsters, Inc.
You've grown up watching animated comedies as a kid. Many remain fresh in your mind even today as they develop such a strong emotional connection with you. Monster Inc., is one such animated comedy movie that is probably one of your favourites till date. It was created by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures and released in in November 2001.
The plot of the film is very engaging, hilarious, and revolves around two monsters: The large and hairy James P. Sullivan or ‘Sulley,’ and his one-eyed partner and best friend, Mike Wazowski. Both of them work at the energy-producing factory ‘Monsters, Inc.’, which generates power by frightening children. When a little girl named ‘Boo’ sneaks into their monsters-only metropolis called the ‘Monstropolis’, Sulley and Mike get worried and get to work to quickly get Boo back to her world. The movie traces their adventures as they try to return Boo. Here are some amazing facts about the movie that you probably don’t know.
Sulley’s fur was the result of intense hard work
Sulley is a big hairy boss and is the main character of Monsters, Inc. He is a huge mammal with two horns on his head, a long tail, and a shaggy coat of aqua-coloured fur with purple patches. However, Sulley’s fur was the result of laborious work. Actually, animating furry creatures is very tricky. It was difficult for the creators to come up with a way to design the 2.3 million shadowed fur strands on Sulley's body. Yes, 2.3 million! To prevent the character from looking weird, the animators had to use 3500 Sun Microsystems processors for the final rendering of Sulley's fur and clothing. This is in sharp contrast to 1400 processors used for Toy Story 2 and 200 for Toy Story!
A Pixar staff member voiced the character Roz
Roz, a supporting character in the movie, resembles a slug and works for the Monsters, Inc. factory. She heads the Child Detection Agency at the factory. Roz was voiced by Bob Peterson who has contributed to numerous Pixar films as a story artist and screenwriter!
Ideated during a lunch meeting
Pixar underwent a complete transformation in the summer of 1994, turning it into the renowned animation studio we see today. The studio was on the verge of completing Toy Story, when Pixar employees decided to have lunch together to discuss what Pixar should work on next. During the lunch discussion at the Hidden City Cafe nearby the studio, the team came up with the concept for four movies: A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and WALL-E.
The names on the ‘scare board’ belong to Pixar staff members
The scare board is an unmissable feature of the film. It displays the scores of the company’s top scarers. All the names apart from Sulley and a few other employees of the Monsters Inc., factory belong to Pixar staff. The company is known for such inside jokes and cute self-references in their films!