00:00You sure you want to do this there's no telling who's behind that door today all the ifs there are so many of them
00:06We were lucky because there's so many characters are developed
00:08I was writing the ideas of these characters
00:10And then we had an incredible art team that was drawing these characters as fast as I could think them up
00:15Are any of them scary worse?
00:19Desperate
00:23Really bend those knees ladies
00:25What I liked about the story was definitely big ifs I like their imaginations like don't hold back
00:32There's something from John's imagination or his childhood reading
00:35They're all characters who have a historic relationship to anybody brought up in the 80s or 90s
00:41There's the core ifs you are the chosen one. Oh, no, let's not give her a complex
00:46There's some recurring ones that are eccentric and funny that show up from time to time
00:50Put some pants on you're freaking everyone out when I was doing research for the film
00:54It was really interesting to read up on the child psychology aspect to imaginary friends kids invent imaginary friends
01:00Not only as a playmate or something fun
01:03But it's also usually a projection of some trauma whether it's a move whether it's a new school whether it's losing a parent
01:09They actually create these characters as coping mechanisms. How do you make an imaginary friend specific to a kid?
01:16My job is to bring all the characters to life with the direction and the inspiration we get from John and from an animator's
01:24Perspective they all very different. They all have unique quirks and performances. Oh
01:31First you see you here blue is really lovely
01:38My idea for blue came from an experience with my daughter violet who used to tell me that my favorite color was purple even though
01:45My favorite color was clearly blue and after two years I buckled and now purple is my favorite color
01:50So I thought wouldn't it be fun to put that joke in the movie where this is a clearly purple character
01:55Whose name is blue all because his kid was colorblind
02:01I don't know blue is a purple pom-pom
02:06Essentially, he's the most huggable thing in the entire world. He's just full of joy
02:11Blue needs to feel furry and touchable and huggable, but it's very big
02:14We have tools to manipulate his body or get some funny gags of his head stuck in somewhere
02:20And that's the fun bit of it because sometimes he has to be like this
02:23His head is gonna hit the ceiling and needs to be compressed like that
02:27Well done blue
02:28Now let's start over. Oh, yeah blossom. She's gorgeous devilish style adorable accent
02:35She likes to make tea. She's very calm and collected and she can dance
02:41pop twist
02:43Blossom is a homage to Fletcher cartoons
02:45It needs to live in a contemporary world
02:47But still keeping that appeal in those old cartoons
02:52The idea of blossom came to me because it was important to say that the people who create these imaginary friends were all kids at
02:58One point so blossom was invented by someone in the 50s
03:02We actually designed her to be kind of an old-school cartoon
03:06So even though you grow up that imaginary friend is still gonna be locked in that time frame
03:11Lewis is the head if he is the first imaginary friend to say I know you're all sad that your kids can't see you anymore
03:18So let's create a place where we can all live together and commiserate together all kids need their imaginary friends
03:25Especially when they grow up
03:27So he creates an imaginary friend retirement community and that retirement community lives under Coney Island
03:34Which you will find out has a very special place in Lewis's heart
03:37My
03:40Kids are all over the movie my seven-year-old daughter
03:43Violet's imaginary friend is Allie who is a pink alligator that lives under the bed
03:47I said, are you scared of Allie and Violet said why would I be scared of Allie?
03:51She's under the bed to protect me from bad guys and I went okay
03:53So Allie's in the movie all kids are scared of the dark cuz those nightlights don't do anything
04:00My daughter Hazel we were sitting around a campfire a long time ago
04:04And when you first are exploring the world of s'mores you realize very quickly that you can't leave the marshmallow in for too long
04:10Or it lights on fire and falls into the fire
04:13Hazel thought that was one of the funniest things ever
04:15So she invented an imaginary friend who was a marshmallow that the top of it is always on fire
04:23There are so many more ifs there's a unicorn magic mouse
04:29Guardian dog. All right, that's it. I got this
04:32There's a early 80s robot toy they get building me but we never got lasers to shoot out of my eyes
04:40Octocat is a cat who dresses up as an octopus and is obsessed with being underwater
04:45There's Cosmo who's this film noir detective who just overreacts to everything. I can find anyone
04:53It was really fun to dive in of why kids come up with these ifs
04:56It's like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. What are the right ingredients?
05:00So when you put all of them together, it's just like it it worked pretty good. It's been really fun playing around in that world
05:07Keith
05:10Kind of a kid creates an invisible if
