SAN DIEGO — Thirteen-year-old Mei Lee is an overachieving teenager hiding a supersized secret. When Mei gets anxious, aggravated or angry, she turns into a giant red panda. And yes, panda-monium does ensue.
But for UC San Diego graduate Lyon Liew, Mei's giant red panda problem was nothing less than a massive opportunity.
Mei is the star of "Turning Red," a new Pixar Studios animated film debuting tomorrow on the Disney+ streaming platform. Liew is the film's lead technical director for simulation, which means he and his team were responsible for making clothes, hair, props and giant red panda fur move with realistic grace.
Talking about that challenge turned the 41-year-old Liew into one very animated guy.
"One of the things with simulation is, if we do our jobs right no one will truly notice. But if we do it wrong, everybody notices," the Bay Area-based Liew said from a hotel room in Anaheim, where he was taking a break from a family trip to Disneyland to chat about a movie made by the Disney-owned Pixar.
"It was so great to work on such a big, furry character. Not just because of the fur, but because of the way Mei moves around. If you look at the film, her friends are always hugging her. Any time that stuff happens, there is a lot of work involved to make sure the fur looks good. It was really fun to work on that character."
Now in his fifth year at Pixar, which followed stints with the Singapore branches of George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic and Lucasfilm Animation, Liew seems to be specializing in career fun. Before he was racking up credits in such high-profile films as "Luca," "Incredibles 2," "Ready Player One" and "Coco," however, Liew was a UC San Diego student specializing in taking computers super seriously.
Born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore, Liew came to the United States in 2000 to attend UC San Diego. The plan was to get his bachelor's in computer science and then go on to a career in computer security. The computer job would be his paycheck, and his first love — photography — would be his passion.
He got the degree, but he did not stick with the plan.
"At UCSD, I took my first class in computer graphics, and I loved it. That's what got me started. That is the class that set me on my path," Liew said of the class he took with Mike Bailey, who is now a professor at Oregon State University.
"I remember our first assignment was to create a CG (computer graphics) model of a sword just using coding. I look at it now, and it looks like something a 2-year-old could do. But I was so proud of it. In that class, it was amazing to see something that I learned that was practical combined with something I loved that was visual. To be able to merge that was mind-blowing for me. I just loved it."
And there were more adventures in technology to come.
Before graduating, Liew got an internship with the San Diego Supercomputer Center, a hub of research and innovation located on the UCSD campus. At the suggestion of his boss and mentor, Steve Cutchin (now at Boise State University), Liew went on to the Vancouver Film School, where he got his diploma in 3D animation and visual special effects.
Within a few months of his 2005 graduation, he was working as a technical director at Lucasfilm. Seventeen years and many credits later, Liew is now part of Pixar's "Turning Red" revolution.
The film was directed by Oscar-winning Canadian Chinese animator Domee Shi, who is the first woman to get a solo directing credit on a Pixar film. The script, which Shi co-wrote with Korean American playwright and TV writer Julia Cho, gives us a heroine who is smart and confident while also being totally obsessed with a super-cute boy band called 4*Town.
Mei (voiced by newcomer Rosalie Chiang) is also the dutiful only daughter of the stressed-out Ming Lee (voiced by Sandra Oh), the kind of helicopter parent who who reminds us that "mother" rhymes with "smother."
With its honest references to bodily functions, teen-girl hormones and the pressures of being an overachieving Asian kid, "Turning Red" is very female-centric and Asian forward. It's a pioneering film that is also sweet, funny and wise. And while Liew hopes that audiences appreciate the film's eye-popping animation (not to mention the way the panda's fur poofs and ripples), he is even more excited about what this bold groundbreaking film has to say about the universal importance of growing into the person you really want to be.
"What I really hope people see is Mei's eventual love for herself. At the start of the film, you see Mei being torn in so many ways. She has her family and her friends and school, but she has never made time for herself. It's really important to understand yourself, to think about what you need and make sure you give yourself some space and some love.
"Once you believe in yourself and once you find yourself, everything will fall into place."
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"Turning Red" premiered Friday on Disney+.
