While talking about the new Pixar film she played a key role in making, Bryn Imagire remembered her Sacramento childhood.
Imagire has worked for Pixar since 1996 and served as production designer for “Hoppers,” which dominated the box office after opening on March 6. The movie, which stars Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan and Jon Hamm, is about a girl who mentally experiences life as a robotic beaver and interacts with real beavers.
Imagire, 62, said her work as production designer for the film included a research trip early in production to Yellowstone National Park with a group that included the film’s head of story, a producer and director Daniel Chong. On the trip, a local guide took them to a beaver lodge that was abandoned and they could crawl inside.
Imagire, who grew up in Greenhaven and graduated from Kennedy High School in 1981, recalled attending an art class inside of Sacramento Zoo as a girl.
“We used all these different materials, but drew animals,” Imagire said. “And it’s so funny, now that I am talking to you about it, it’s sort of come full circle with ‘Hoppers.’”
What Imagire’s work on ‘Hoppers’ entailed
Major Hollywood names draw attention whenever a new Pixar film comes out, whether it is Tom Hanks voicing Woody for the “Toy Story” franchise or Brad Bird directing “The Incredibles.”
But capable veterans like Imagire do the heavy lifting to help realize the vision. Pixar designer Fran Kalal, who worked with Imagire on designing animated costumes for “The Incredibles 2,” told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2018 that she was “able to to be recognized and taken seriously because someone like Bryn was there this whole time kicking butt.”
“Hoppers” marks Imagire’s highest-profile Pixar credit to date. It put her in close partnership with Chong, who previously worked on “Inside Out” and “Cars 2,” among other Pixar films. “My job was to work with Daniel, and really kind of visualize his idea of the film and take it to screen,” Imagire said.
She said she worked with Chong to view the design of the film’s lighting, sets and characters “all the way through from the beginning of design to the end of the movie, the final film frames.”
The work could be painstaking. Imagire said she built many models of trees to help create the film’s natural look. Then there was the research trip to Yellowstone, where the guide showed Pixar staffers the beaver lodge.
“It was really surprising how homey and comfortable it felt, even though beavers weren’t living there at the time,” Imagire said. “It was really interesting to see the inside construction and the mud mixed with the branches and this really soft kind of like leafy, leafy floor.”
Bryn Imagire, production designer for the new Pixar film “Hoppers,” at the company’s studios in Emeryville. Stephanie Martinez-Arndt Pixar
She also made a research trip to Colorado, since part of Imagire’s job as production designer was to plan the film’s location and environments.
“We started out using the Pacific Northwest, but there was something about that palette, I think it was too limited for me,” Imagire said. “It was just, you know, gray sky, really dark green of the trees and brown.”
Imagire favored Colorado, both for its wider range of colors and “because they have tons of aspen trees and so aspens are a beaver’s favorite food.”
Imagire’s Sacramento roots
The oldest of three sisters, Imagire was born in Sacramento in 1963 to Japanese-American parents Arthur and Gloria Imagire.
Arthur Imagire was an engineer for what was then known as Aerojet Solid Propulsion Company. He had grown up in Oakland, where his mother operated a sewing school and designed formal ball gowns. His family moved to Reno, Nevada, to avoid the Japanese internment during World War II.
Bryn Imagire remembers the shop her grandmother opened in Reno. “I always remember just like running through there and just feeling all the different materials,” she said. “So it must have had some kind of effect on me.”
Gloria Imagire had been interned at Gila River War Relocation Center near Phoenix during the war and later studied nursing at University of California, San Francisco. Now 90, she remembered telling her daughter how limited opportunities had once been for girls of Japanese descent.
“I said the sky was the limit for them, so they should just go for whatever they want to do,” Gloria Imagire said.
Bryn Imagire grew up in south Sacramento, moving to Greenhaven around kindergarten. She attended Kennedy High School. “I wasn’t a really great student, but I was really great at knowing what I love to do,” Imagire said. “I love to draw and paint and make things.”
At Kennedy, she took a sign-making class, helping create posters for basketball and football games. “It was such a good training for me, for my eye and just mixing paints and being in that sort of creative collaborative environment,” Imagire said.
She attended American River College before earning a bachelor’s degree in illustration from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena.
After college she returned to Sacramento and got a job at Dane Henas Design.
“We didn’t even know that she was this amazing illustrator and artist,” said Wendy Heaton, now one of the firm’s principals.
The other principal, Dane Henas, who started the firm in 1979, said Imagire was shy when it came to sharing her artistic ability. This contrasted with her otherwise outgoing personality and sense of humor. “She wasn’t shy in any other way,” Henas said.
The company eventually put Imagire’s artistic skill to use for illustration work it still has at its offices: tortilla packaging, a flyer for a cruise-themed party and a program for the Sacramento Opera Association.
Heaton marveled at Imagire’s Pixar career.
“It’s great to see somebody with that much talent go and make something of it like that,” Heaton said.
Getting to Pixar
Imagire was hired at Pixar in 1996 while the company was working on its 1998 film, “A Bug’s Life,” by Tia Kratter, who was impressed by her sample work.
“When you’re looking for a good artist, you look for the worst piece in their portfolio,” Kratter said. “I knew that she would be able to deliver really consistently high-quality art when it came to doing our films.”
Imagire started off with humble tasks for Pixar, doing visual effects work on “A Bug’s Life” and shading for “Toy Story 2,” which came out in 1999. Her IMDB page shows numerous high-profile Pixar credits since then, including shading work or art direction on “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille” and “Up.”
In her time at Pixar, Imagire has won Art Directors Guild awards for her work on 2018 film “Coco” and 2021 film “Soul” and an Annie Award for “Coco.”
Kratter is impressed with the determination of Imagire, who stands just under 5 feet tall, calling her “small but mighty.” In Imagire, Kratter also found a valued confidante, a necessity for their industry.
“We were supposed to be very strong women, but we… found a great sense of camaraderie and sympathy for each other in a world that, back in the late ’90s and early aughts, was very male-dominated,” said Kratter, who left Pixar in 2021 and now works for Disney.
Imagire’s mother, who said the family is “so proud of” her, remembered the early part of her Pixar career.
“When we used to go to those movies her name was real small at the bottom,” Gloria Imagire said. “The family would just sit ‘til the end to see her name come up. But now it comes up big and towards the front. So she’s done really well. She’s worked really hard.”
Bryn Imagire said she is currently working on “Incredibles 3,” which is slated for a 2028 release.
“I love my job and I love working and I love creating,” Imagire said. “To be able to think about a movie when it’s in its very infancy and very beginning, when it’s this very nebulous blob and then seeing it finished on the screen at the end is just like the most rewarding thing.”
This story was originally published March 15, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
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Graham Womack is a general assignment reporter for The Sacramento Bee. Prior to joining The Bee full-time in September 2025, he freelanced for the publication for several years. His work has won several California Journalism Awards and spurred state legislation.