Dug Days, a new series of shorts from Pixar coming straight to the Disney+ on Sept. 1, brings the lovable dog Dug back following his fan-favorite role in Up. Expanding on one of Pixar's biggest critical achievements, Dug Days picks up after the events of Up and follows Dug, and his new master, Carl Fredrickson, as they adjust to a quiet suburban life. But, Dug keeps finding ways to imbue some well-intentioned chaos into their day-to-day lives and home, and still needs to adjust to the life of being a pet to a loving, if slightly gruff, human.
During a press junket attended by CBR and other outlets, Dug Days director/star Bob Peterson and producer Kim Collins delved into the origins of Dug, what it was like creating Pixar shorts remotely this past year, and why dogs have a special place in film and television.
Peterson has been the voice of Dug since he first appeared in the Academy Award-winning film Up, and revealed that the origins of the character were actually from before that property. "It goes back to a movie that [Up director] Pete Doctor and I were developing before Up," Peterson shared. "More of a science fiction story and a dog ate something that it shouldn't have and all of a sudden started talking. And it was just so fun to hear what a dog had to say, that when that project got shelved and we moved on to Up, we wondered, 'Well, how can we bring that back?' Ellie wanted to go on this adventure as a kid. And we thought, 'Boy, what would she want to see?' That talking dog would be certainly part of a kid's dream experience."
As with most of the rest of the world, the filmmakers at Pixar were forced to adapt to the challenges of 2020 amid the global pandemic -- adjusting their working conditions to facilitate remote animation. But it was a challenge the team on Dug Days were capable of handling, according to Collins. "One of the amazing things about Pixar is how collaborative we are," Collins shared. "We always work together. So there's a lot of reviews where everyone's together or different sort of meetings and to have to switch that dynamic to all these little screens was a big adjustment... I think that was the biggest challenge, just shifting to work from home and trying to figure out how to retain that dynamic while being home."
"It was a lot of worry at the beginning," Peterson said. "Just technically getting people equipment in their homes so that they could do it. That meant updating people's ethernet and that sort of thing, along with the challenge of kids and dogs running around, and we embraced that. If a kid came in the room and mom or dad or whoever was giving a presentation, kids sat up in the lap and looked in. It was wonderful. We enjoyed it. It's actually kind of nice to see parents and family members and dogs and cats going in front of the screen because you get a sense of a connection in home life."
The shorts, in many ways, embrace a lengthy legacy of classic western animation -- cartoons about a man and his dog. Disney Studios have a deep-seated bond with those kinds of stories, going back to the classic shorts focused on Mickey Mouse and his dog Pluto. "Pluto is my all-time favorite," Peterson revealed. "Just hilarious. He's just a dog, and then you have Lady and the Tramp, dogs that you can hear their emotions. And it seems like Doug sort of fits in the middle, where he is just a dog, but you can also hear what he's saying."
"There's no accident that dogs make their way into our entertainment because they're just so connected to us," he continued. "They're our family members. I feel honored to be the voice of a dog. I've had so many great moments, dogs sitting next to me, just leaning on me and watching TV... So we're thrilled that we can put a dog on screen." One of the unique elements of the Dug shorts is that they harken back to a sillier tone in animation -- particularly with Dug's nemesis, the local squirrel, who is rendered realistically but conveys a sense of classic-Disney style character acting.
Reflecting on marrying the Pixar sensibilities with those exaggerated beats, Peterson revealed, "That's the combination we're trying to go for. It's generally a caricature and shape. So we tried to caricature the squirrel, but then feature generally realistic textures like fur. It all grows out of how Doug behaves, and he generally behaves as a dog would. For some of the squirrels, we wanted to keep it somewhat squirrel-like, but since it did move so fast., we had a license to pop things in its mouth. I think we took a little bit of license to make it a little more Chip and Dale, just because it has those fast movements, but we tried to go along with the animation ethic that we had for Doug, which is a bit of heightened reality, but close to what a real animal would do."
Considering the five shorts previewed for the press, Collins admitted her favorite. "I love them all," she said. "They're all very different in tone... The flowers episode, about the fireworks, quickly became my favorite as it went through production because people brought so many amazing ideas to it. We call it 'plussing' at Pixar. They just kept plussing what Bob had originally written and conceived."
Looking at the show as a whole, Peterson said, "I think that the main themes are of a relationship with your pets and how much they mean to you, how much you mean to them."