Big Hero 6 is a 2014 American 3D computer-animated superhero-comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 54th Disney animated feature film. The film is based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name. Directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams, the film tells the story of a young robotics prodigy named Hiro Hamada who forms a superhero team to combat a masked villain. The film features the voices of Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter, Daniel Henney, T. J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans, Jr., Génesis Rodríguez, Alan Tudyk, James Cromwell, and Maya Rudolph.
Let’s see some interesting facts about it!
1. Big Hero 6 is the first Disney animated film to feature Marvel Comics characters, whose parent company was acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 2009.
2. Walt Disney Animation Studios created new software technology to produce the film’s animated visuals.
3. Big Hero 6 premiered at the 27th Tokyo International Film Festival on October 23, 2014, and at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival on October 31, it was theatrically released in the Disney Digital 3-D and RealD 3D formats in the United States on November 7, 2014.
4. The film was met with both critical and commercial success, grossing over $657 million worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing animated film of 2014.
5. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and the Kids’ Choice Award for Favorite Animated Movie.
6. It also received nominations for the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature, the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film. Big Hero 6 was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on February 24, 2015.
7. A television series, taking place right after the film, will debut in 2017 on Disney XD.[10]
8. This is Don Hall’s second time in the director’s chair. He previously directed 2011’s Winnie the Pooh.
9. Baymax is voiced by Scott Adsit who is best known as Pete Hornberger on 30 Rock and for his work on Adult Swim, including The Heart, She Holler and Moral Orel.
10. The film’s main setting San Fransokyo is based on the cities of San Francisco and Tokyo.
11. Baymax’s movement is based on penguins.
12. The look and movement of the microbots is based on swarms of ants.
13. With 15 main characters and 701 unique characters which were all animated, Big Hero 6 has an enormous cast. As of its release, it is the biggest cast ever for a Disney animated film.
14. Sang-Jin Kim, the first Korean to become the top animator at Walt Disney Studios and character design supervisor for Big Hero 6, revealed that the lead characters, although they were later given Japanese names, were originally envisioned as Koreans.
15. Gogo is Disney’s first Korean character. Lead character designer Shiyoon Kim drew upon his experience with ‘tough’ sister stereotypes while mixing it in with the bike messenger/trick culture of San Francisco. According to Sang-Jin Kim, When creating GoGo, Kim and his team originally thought of South Korean actress Doona Bae (‘Sense8’, ‘Cloud Atlas’) and then incorporated independent and athletic traits after Korean short track skaters.
16. In its opening weekend, Big Hero 6 earned over $56 million at the box office. It did not surpassFrozen’s opening weekend, but it did beat Wreck-It Ralph.
17. It is the second film to be directed by Don Hall, after he made his debut with 2012’s ‘Winnie the Pooh’.
18. Before the script was finished, Disney brought in their actors to do a table read together.
19. Daniel Henney who voices Tadashi is a male model in addition to acting, and he appeared on the cover of Korea’s Esquire.
20. Alan Tudyk continues being Disney’s lucky charm as the voice of Alistair Krei. Previously, he voiced the Duke of Weselton in Frozen and King Candy in Wreck-It Ralph.
21. At the beginning of the film, Hiro loves building battle robots, and his brother Tadashi is working on a nursing robot, Baymax. Hiro’s battle robots are built to tear things apart while Baymax is built to help people heal.
22. Hiro and Tadashi’s aunt is voiced by former Saturday Night Live cast member Maya Rudolph.
23. The green color scheme for Baymax’s prototype suit is a reference to his comic book counterpart.
24. Two important characters from the Big Hero 6 comic, Silver Samurai and Sunfire, did not make it to the film due to 20th Century Fox’s owning both characters because of their affiliation with the X-Men, however Tadashi’s cap has the SF emblem, which is written in the same font as in the Sunfire comic.
25. The production team watched videos of fire ants as an inspiration of the movement of the Microbots.
26. Baymax’s movement is based on baby penguins and the movement of toddlers with full diapers. It’s movement was so limited that the production studio codenamed it “UNimating”
27. Hiro and his brother, Tadashi’s, work in robotics are intended to juxtapose one another – Hiro builds battle robots to tear things apart while Tadashi’s nursing robot, Baymax, is designed to heal people.
28. Prince Hans from Frozen can be spotted on a “Wanted” sign at the police station.
29. There were up to 85 different animators working on the film.
30. Fred’s room was designed to be a “nerd’s paradise.”Director Don Hall even said, “We basically took the average cubicle here at Disney and multiplied it by a thousand.” Among one of the many easter eggs in Fred’s room is the “escape pod” which Wreck-It Ralph (2012) uses in Hero’s Duty. It can be seen in one of the cylinder glass cases on the back.
31. In Fred’s library/museum, one of the small statuettes in the background book case is Elastigirl from The Incredibles (2004).
32. In the back of Fred’s room is a display case with two mannequins wearing the costumes of two lesser Marvel comics super villains. The blue mannequin on the left is of the Sub-Mariner villain “Orka”, and the chicken themed one on the right is that of the voodoo priest villain known as “Black Talon.”
33. Hiro’s cat, Mochi, was created by Kendelle. Kendelle worked as a story artist on Big Hero 6 and felt that Hiro and Tadashi’s family needed a pet. Her solution: drawing a cat in all of her storyboards. Mochi eventually moved the entire way through the pipeline and became real. According to the Big Hero 6 art book, Mochi was originally going to wear rocket pads on its paws. A cat that looks similar to Mochi wears rocket pads in the background at the science lab.
34. The “world” that the animators created for Big Hero 6 (2014) is bigger than those of Tangled (2010), Wreck-It Ralph(2012), and Frozen (2013) combined.
35. In order to create the thousands of civilians living in San Fransokyo, the production team invented a program called the “Denizen Factory”, which allowed them to build a whole series of background characters that each have a distinct design.
36. Before deciding that character Baymax was going to have an expression-less face, he was originally to going to have a face that only does five different expressions. The model of the design of Baymax’s eyes is a Japanese traditional bell which is called Suzu. Don Hall, the director says that he got an inspiration when he visited a temple in Japan.
37. Due to her accent, Honey Lemon is the only character actually pronouncing the Japanese name “Hiro” correctly.
38. Nothing stands perfectly straight in San Fransokyo. Everything is offset just a little bit to give the world a lived-in feel. You can also spot this technique in One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
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