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SALT LAKE CITY — Towards the end of a movie’s production, Pete Oswald likes to sit in the back of a theater and watch the crowd.
“By that time I’ve seen the movie hundreds of times because we work on it every day, but the best thing to do is to sit in the back of the theater and to listen to people’s reactions,” he said. “There’s nothing like a live audience and getting to share that with them because every time, every experience is different and everybody is going to connect with somebody different.”
Oswald, who grew up in Bountiful, spent the past four years working on “The Angry Birds Movie” as the film’s production designer. It was his first time in the role, which involves being one of the first people to come onto the production after the script is written. He was responsible for giving the film a visual language by helping define the characters and environment.
“I’ve definitely learned so much as a production designer,” he said. “There’s a small army of artists who work on these films, if you’ve ever seen the credits at the end of these animated films. There are a lot of people and it is my job to keep the look of the film consistent going through each department all of the way to the final look of the movie.”
Oswald’s resume includes work on numerous other movies, including “Madagascar 2,” “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2,” “Hotel Transylvania” and “Paranorman.” However, his beginnings as an artist were much more humble.
From an early age, Oswald had the opportunity to flex his creative muscles by drawing and painting. His mother is an art teacher in Bountiful who would teach art lessons from their basement, so every summer he would learn how to draw and paint from her.
When it was time for Oswald to start looking at colleges, an art teacher at Judge Memorial Catholic High School suggested he look into animation programs because his art looked like it had a lot of action and movement to them. Oswald said that growing up far from Hollywood, he didn’t even realize animation could be a job until his teacher talked to him.
Set on a new path, Oswald ended up studying animation and minoring in graphic design at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Through connections at the school, Oswald was hired out of college by Cartoon Network.
The artist said it was a great experience to create a movie from a brand as well-known as Angry Birds, since people as young as 4 and old as 80 are familiar with the game.
“We were challenged with making a movie that looked fresh, but still recognizable — that still had the iconic look to them, but now these characters walk and talk,” he said. “They’re not just the bouncing balls you see in the app itself.”
Now that production for the movie has wrapped up, Oswald said he is taking a break to enjoy time with his two sons, who are 2 and 4 years old, at his California home. He also has two children's books coming out in 2017.
One book is called “Mingo the Flamingo,” which tells the story of a flamingo who reverse migrates and crash-lands in Siberia. The other, called “The Bad Seed” follows the story of a sunflower seed who decides to change his life and become a good seed after almost being eaten by a fan at a baseball game.
“Doing children’s books is a good outlet and there is a lot of crossover between working in animation and illustrating children’s books,” he said. “A lot of the time there’s very similar kind of storytelling and characters and everything. I love doing both.”
Oswald said that hopefully there will be an Angry Birds sequel in the future, but he’s still waiting to hear what will happen. "The Angry Birds Movie" comes out on DVD on Aug. 16.
