One of the Pixar worlds that visitors will get to see this year is that of Inside Out – the beautiful coming-of-age movie set for the most part inside the mind of a girl, following the goings-on of different parts of her personality. For our scene, we wanted to provide the ‘memory sorter’ area of the Inside Out control room where the memory spheres are lined up, processed and moved along into long-term storage.

For this, we decided to paint a backdrop showing the spheres, their tracks and the processing pinwheels that are seen in the movie.

To build this, we started by looking at the movie to get a reference.

Then, I created a tracing image on the computer and projected it (in our backyard at night) onto a large sheet of cardboard.

From there, the first layer of paint is the darker area of the track in which the memory spheres travel.

Next, I began to layer in the memory spheres (trying to paint the ones in the middle of the cardboard (hardest to reach) first.

Then, I brought it to our Community Painting Day to get help painting the details. I used sticky notes to label which areas were to be which colors.

Brian (shown below) and other friends tackled the multitude of details that needed to be painted.

We did it! For Halloween, we will put this up in the Inside Out area, add a rocket wagon, and Presto! (see that other Pixar reference?) we are ready to go. Hopefully it will bring people Joy.