How Pixar Made Hockey Games Look So Real
Tracey Roberts ’89 coached Pixar animators on the finer points of hockey for Inside Out 2
Hockey player Tracey Roberts ’89 knows exactly how emotions drive play on the ice. Joy, anger, sadness, and fear can take over depending on how the game unfolds.
That’s exactly why her colleagues at Pixar asked for her help animating Inside Out 2, the biggest box-office hit of the summer. The follow-up to 2015’s Academy Award-winning Inside Out takes us back inside the mind of 13-year-old hockey player Riley Anderson as she starts high school.
Roberts is a character technical director, which she likens to digital sculpting. “I get a design of a character or creature from the art team, and then sculpt it into the computer before rigging it, or adding bones and controls for the animator so they can bring it to life,” she said. “I’ve been working in animation and visual effects for my entire career.”
When director Kelsey Mann and producer Mark Nielson learned she coached and played hockey, they called her in to help. Roberts, who grew up in Boston, played on the Colby women’s ice hockey team and remains active in the sport today.
“I coach hockey and run a girl’s development program [in Oakland]. Kelsey wanted to know about different plays and how different players skate at that level. I brought in my equipment so the animators could look at it. At that point, there were no other hockey players on the film, so they came to me for questions and to see if things like the scoreboard or the Zamboni looked right,” said Roberts, who has received a lot of attention for her role, including feature stories in the Boston Globe and Portland Press Herald.
“It’s a testament to the talent on the animation team that some people who have never skated before could animate scenes that look so realistic. That said, there were other hockey players animating and working on the film, some of whom are incredibly talented,” she said.
The animators wanted the hockey scenes to feel real, using camera angles that mimic live-action sports. “We really wanted something that was relatable,” said Roberts. “When you watch the film, it looks so realistic. Kelsey said all along that it wasn’t a hockey movie, it’s about a girl who loves hockey, and that matters to the story.”
Helping bring hockey onscreen made working on Inside Out 2 one of her favorites in a longstanding animation career that includes credits like Charlotte’s Web (2006), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and Marvel’s What If… (2021).
She always loved art—double majoring in art and economics at Colby—but wasn’t sure what that looked like in the real world. “I didn’t know that animation was what I wanted to do until after I graduated. I always thought, ‘Well, if I work as hard as I can, then I’ll find what I love,’’’ she said. “Because I had taken sculpture classes at Colby, I got hired at a stop-motion studio for my first job.”
When digital animation took over from traditional and stop-motion styles in the mid-1990s, Roberts taught herself the basics of computer programming. “At the time, I was at Tippett Studios, which did both computer graphics for visual effects and stop-motion, so that was a perfect place for me to be able to learn,” she said. “I thought of it as another language and another tool as an artist.”
Double majoring at Colby gave Roberts a chance to use her left brain and right brain on a daily basis, which prepared her well for digital animation’s combination of art and mathematics. “There’s a certain amount of discipline that you learn. I mean, animation is not for the weak-hearted. It’s an intense industry that’s really hard to break into,” she said. “Being able to paint and study different subjects and play hockey gave me perseverance and discipline.”
She sees Colby’s liberal arts approach in everything she does with character design. “With animation and film, there are so many things that get brought into it. History, philosophy, math. … Coming from a liberal arts school, I had a taste of everything,” she said.
With Inside Out 2, she was able to use her hockey skills as well.
Now, Roberts is a part of some of the most exciting digital films in Hollywood today, including Pixar’s upcoming Hoppers (slated for release in 2025). “Inside Out 2 was an absolute blast to work on. I loved bringing animation and hockey together,” she said.
