Pixar’s Oscar-nominated ‘Kitbull’ is a love letter to San Francisco

Like much of Pixar’s work, the short animated film “Kitbull” is a tearjerker, using unlikely animal companionship to tell a larger story about compassion, friendship and redemption. It tells the tale of a lovable, skittish stray cat who, after a few false starts, helps a happy-go-lucky pit bull escape abusive ownership.

But the film, which is vying for a short film Oscar at this Sunday’s Academy Awards, is also a love letter to San Francisco, with much of it set in familiar neighborhoods. And, like much of the best cinema, “Kitbull” is also a testament to its creators’ lives. For director Rosana Sullivan and producer Kathryn Hendrickson, who work at Pixar, the film reflects their time in the Bay Area.

“I moved to San Francisco as a teen,” Sullivan said. Her father had accepted a job at the University of San Francisco, and the family moved to the Sunset District. Sullivan chose to study biology at USF, because she “originally wanted to be a veterinarian,” before switching to, and eventually graduating in, fine arts. During that time, she volunteered at the Arguello Pet Hospital and the San Francisco SPCA, between 15th and 16th streets. This volunteer work inspired Sullivan’s choice to animate a pit bull.

“Working in shelters during college, in order to get experience and be around veterinarians, that’s when I first started to see pit bulls,” Sullivan said. “My introduction to them didn’t involve getting inundated with negative stereotypes, it was more, ‘these are sweet, awesome dogs.’ The more I heard about pit bulls, the more I realized there was a negative reputation around them.”

Sullivan, though, saw more of herself in the animated short’s other star, the stray black kitten. “The cat has always been my access point to the story,” Sullivan said. “As a kid, I also struggled with shyness and feeling left out.”

Sullivan’s original inspiration for sketching her kitten came from the most relatable of sources: cat videos on YouTube. As she made long playlists of cute cats and their mischievous antics, Sullivan also began drawing a cartoon cat, working to capture its movements as believably as possible.

That and other work developing “Kitbull” became her side project, a way of decompressing from the workday. She chose to animate the short film in 2-D, a style Sullivan felt would best capture the kitten’s personality. It also became Pixar’s first 2-D hand-animated project. This meant Hendrickson faced the major challenge, as a producer, of managing a different animation style from Pixar’s usual work, while on “a fraction of the timeline.”

Still, the vision made sense to them. As did the setting: San Francisco’s Mission District, where both of them had lived.

“The Mission was awesome and intimidating, a melting pot where I finally was able to spread my wings,” Sullivan said.

They decided to capture the neighborhood that meant so much to both of them in an impressionist, pastel style, both because the team wanted to maintain “levity, so the story wouldn’t be so heavy, and to keep the background loose enough to maintain focus on the characters,” Sullivan said. In similar fashion to the hand animation, all of the backdrops were hand-painted.

“We walked around the Mission with a selfie stick, held low to the ground,” Sullivan said. In this way, the crew was able to capture the neighborhood from a kitten’s perspective — a patchwork of foot traffic and shadows, nooks and crannies.

This footage became reference points that Sullivan and her team pulled from, a kind of “shot language,” Sullivan said. “I did go around Valencia Street, looking for abandoned lots, taking pictures of little cardboard boxes in the weeds to imagine if a kitten would actually live in there.”

“Our sound designer even layered in some ambient noises from the BART in the background,” Hendrickson said.

“Kitbull” ends with a beautiful, sweeping vista of San Francisco, from the top of Bernal Hill. The location perfectly captures the full emotional swell of the short — the warmth of a new friendship, and the hope of a new beginning — and is where Sullivan always imagined it would wrap up.

“It’s always a place my husband and I would go up,” Sullivan said. “In a way, this film was inspired by me and my husband, and all the other close relationships I had. Bernal Hill was always the goal, and the conclusion of their relationship in the short. That’s where they rise above the fray.”

“Kitbull”: Animated short. Can be streamed on Disney Plus.

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