Meeting Ronnie del Carmen from Pixar Animation Studio.

Last weekend, I had one of my most valuable and surreal experience of my life to get to meet someone who are ‘responsible’ of all these. I had to meet Ronnie del Carmen, one of the key player of Pixar Animation Studio since the year 2000. He was part of the production of Finding Nemo as the story supervisor, involved in the story work of the Oscar Winning “Ratatouille”. The biggest highlight from my point of view was when he then was the Head of Story of the Academy Award winning film, “UP” and he was also the co-director of my personal life-changing film, “Inside Out”.

I was lucky enough to get to know an influential figure, Saidah Rustam, the writer of the book Rosalie and Other Love Songs few days earlier in a talk hosted by my dear friend of mine, the owner of Liberallatte, Dr Helmi. Saidah invited me to join in a lovely private function at her house for dinner with Ronnie and other few close acquaintances. Ronnie was in Malaysia for a week for an event in the KL Convention Center and he decided to spend his last night there with a bunch of great industry figures and im very honored to be part of the group.

I grew up as a hardcore fan of Disney and Pixar movies that had me actually memorized most of the scripts through countless rerun and habit of having a white noise playing while doing all my works. There was just something about all these Pixar movies that made me feel home wherever Im watching them.

One of the best thing about them are the facts that these films are research film, that were translated into viewing pleasure through beautiful animation and representation that made it ‘light’ but packed with incredible knowledge that sips through slowly into your veins and mind. Each time I watch these films, there will always be new things discovered. Playing on themes and values, it has been so much motivating and also became the source of inspirations for all my creative works where I felt they were what shaped me to become who am I today.

We had such an amazing dinner of a whole selection of well-chosen Malaysian local delicacies. The whole table of foods are all special dishes, with the famous Asam Pedas Pari, Beef Rendang, Prawn Sambal Petai and many more with of course Sambal Belachan and our traditional veggies. They had also came strong with the desserts when they served some eclairs, tarts and meringues. But the show stealer that night was the amazing Durian Cake.

We all had a long conversation on all sort of things where mostly revealed around arts and cultures, exchanging all our experiences and works as most of us were in the creative industries. Some musicians, some visual artists, there’s also someone from broadcasting and café artistry.

My highlight of the night was when I brought few of my own sketchbook to show Ronnie my artworks and share our passions on sketchbooks. He also brought with him his sketchbook. Little that I know we share the same habit of bringing sketch tools everywhere we go, with a pocket sketchbook to record our thoughts. He share his passion on filling in his sketchbooks with beautiful sketches and notes that have becoming his thinking machinery, where he said he love to start his sketchbook with a title page with decorative hand-drawn title. All sort of ideas and interesting thoughts for his future works and I cant lie I was really excited seeing all those. I told him how I love his works on ‘Inside Out’ where it have been one of the biggest push for me to start my PHD, my first love into psychology was developed through that film.

When showing him my sketchbook, I thought I can casually ask him if he can sketch something in my sketchbook and without hesitated, he said why not? No words can describe that feeling at that time. He brought out his watercolour from his bag and put it on table, and I just realized hes using the same one as mine, I guess ive been doing it right all this while :P

He then start drawing and everyone else’s attention was on us as we both were sketching and intrigues everyone else that night and said how lucky for me to have an academy award nominee to sketch in my sketchbook.

He was drawing Mr Fredrickson from the film ‘Up’ where the scenes in that film have moved hearts and shed a lot of tears in the world with the loving character. I still can’t believe my eyes. When he finished his I realized something odd in the drawing.

Ive got goosebumps and it touched my heart to see the smiling face of Mr. Fred in that sketch. Ronnie mentioned that throughout that film he was already sad and frowned, so he love to give the smile on his face whenever he’s drawing him now. I cried inside. :’D

Group photo of the night at 3 am in the morning. Lol.

It was a great night. :)

---