Audience Question: Is there any chance that we'll see 2D animation in your future?

BB: I'll probably be doing live action for my next project. Lots of animation people use it as a stepping stone to live action, and they leave and never come back. Not me. I hope to do live action, 2D, 3D, whatever comes my way. And 2D's not old-fashioned. I love it (applause).

PO: Why are Hollywood's big-budget movies so bad? The scripts, the plots… you can't relate to any of them. I can relate personally to all of the explosions in big-budget movies. "Oooh! That's just like the time I blew up a building!"

Audience Question: Do you plan to do movies that are only available in digital projection?

BB: I'd be interested in that sort of thing, or doing movies in 3D, but we're waiting for the right technology to come along. We wouldn't want it to be cost-prohibitive, or to have any major limitations on what we could do with it.

Audience Question: Will there ever be an Incredibles 2 (applause)?

BB: You know, I really love those characters. The important thing to me is that the story comes first. "Is there another story worth telling with these characters?" is the question that I'd have to ask before even thinking about it. Pixar does not do sequels as part of its financial plan. If I come up with a story as good or better than the first one, I'll think about a sequel (applause).

PO: I pitched a movie called The Awesomeables (laughter). Brad just hates success, though, so he won't do my movie (laughter).

John Ratzenberger, Randy Newman and Brad Bird's voice acting were among fans' concerns at the Ratatouille panel. All Ratatouille images © Disney/Pixar.

Audience Questions: How much of the final product is from what the writer does, and how much is from the storyboard artists?

BB: I'm very hands-on as an animation director, working really closely with the artists to establish things like the camera angles, motion, etc. I let my storyboard artists take the first shot at it, but I'll sketch things out if I want to go another direction with it.

The scenes with Remy, like the kitchen scenes, are all from his point of view, at rat's eye-level. But I'll change the POV a lot, depending on the characters and the scene. Mark Andrews, a really talented Pixar artist, has a lot to do with everything that you end up seeing onscreen.

Audience Question: How many Pixar films are in production at a time?

A screening of the trailer, a clip and a behind-the-scenes slideshow were among the goodies fans were treated to at the Ratatouille presentation.

BB: The studio's gradually getting bigger, and now there are usually five or six movies in various stages of production, and they're all very different from each other. I think we've got time for one more question -- I've got a wedding to go to. The voice of Emile [Pete Sohn] is getting married this afternoon.

Audience Question: What are the best books on writing for animation that are available?

BB: It's really hard to say, because good animation writing is good writing, period. To me, The Simpsons isn't good "animation writing," it's good comedy writing. Ratatouille isn’t "animation writing," it's movie writing.

PO: Read a lot of books. Read your favorite books and screenplays, and see what they did right. You have to render a story well told. Pick up Will Eisner's books too (applause). He created the grammar of comics storytelling. He tells you what you need to keep in a story, but he also tells you what you can leave out.

BB: Don't just watch animation, either. Go to plays, watch movies, study television… it's all useful.

PO: Re-watch your favorite pieces of animation, and just pay attention to the story, or the writing, or the characters.

Audience Question: Mr. Bird, are you going to be a voice in Ratatouille?

BB: I do have a very small part. Very small. A weaselly, wimpy character. You’ll have to watch the movie to see what it is, though.

Thanks for coming out, everybody.

Bird closed the panel by sharing the premiere of the upcoming domestic trailer for Ratatouille. The audience response was enthusiastic throughout the event, and it seems likely that Pixar's streak of hit movies is in no danger of ending with this summer's offering.

Post Convention Notes
Unlike last year’s convention, which kicked off the official comic convention season, this year's WonderCon arrived on the heels of the previous weekend's New York City Comic-Con. Marvel, DC, VIZ and TOKYOPOP all reserved their big announcements for NYCCC and the upcoming Wizard World Los Angeles from March 16-18, 2007, which makes WonderCon appear to be an afterthought in the eyes of the major publishers. While the lack of "big news" seems to put off the bloggers and other online comics pundits, the lack of hype surrounding the weekend’s programming was a refreshing change of pace from similar-sized conventions. WonderCon seems content to carve out its own little corner of the convention universe, which suits its attendees just fine.

Andrew Farago is the gallery manager/curator of San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum, and is the creator of the webcomic The Chronicles of William Bazillion