Animation Addicts Podcast - Disney, Pixar, & Animated Movie Reviews & Interviews | Rotoscopers · Rotoscopers

Aaron Blaise Interview, Director & Animator of 'Snow Bear' (2025)

·52 min·20 clips

The guest sits down for a focused conversation about the film. The discussion stays on the short itself. He talks about leaving production for a week to teach a workshop. Coming back and trying to reset his mindset is, for him, one of the hardest parts of making a movie. He also talks about the underwater shot of the whale. That was one of his favorite scenes to animate. He says it was not essential, but he wanted the image anyway. He just wanted to see a polar bear underwater. He adds that polar bears are considered marine mammals. From there, the discussion moves into the emotional side of the film. He says the scenes he values most are the ones where the bear realizes the loss is inevitable. He points to the moment when the character is trying to put the bear back together and knows it will not happen. He also calls out the beat where the ear falls off. In that moment, the bear rubs its own head because there is nothing else it can do. He says he pulled that gesture directly from a Glen Keane memory. After his wife passed, he went back to work with a shaved head. He had shaved it because she had lost her hair during treatment. By the time he returned, his hair had grown back. Keane sat beside him, ran a hand through his hair, rubbed his head, and told him he had been through a lot. He says this is the first time he has told that story, and it gives the interview extra emotional weight.

As heard by us

A craft interview that turns quietly devastating when the film's grief comes into focus.

Aaron Blaise spends most of the conversation unpacking Snow Bear from the inside out, which is why it holds together so well. He talks through the practical strain of stepping away to teach a workshop for a week and then finding his way back into the film's headspace, while also…

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Why you'd press play

Hear Aaron Blaise connect Snow Bear's quietest gesture to a real memory.

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