Inside the Making of ‘Ray Gunn’ and Brad Bird’s Vision of a Noir Future

Nearly 30 years in development, Brad Bird is finally ready to unveil Ray Gunn. The retro-futuristic animated film blends the pulpy adventure of Buck Rogers with the shadowy intrigue of The Maltese Falcon, setting its mystery inside Metropia, an optimistic vision of the future with corruption lurking beneath its polished surface. At its center is Ray, a down-on-his-luck detective who, alongside his alien partner, becomes entangled in a case that transforms Bird’s long-gestating project into a colorful love letter to film noir.

The Nerds of Color joined a select group of journalists for a visit to Netflix Animation Studios in Burbank, California, where Bird reflected on the film’s nearly 30-year journey to the screen, the challenge of balancing its mystery with humor, and the creative process behind bringing its retro-futuristic world to life.

Part of that process was creating memorable visuals closely tied to the films that inspired it. So it needed a retro-futuristic feel, with Art Deco designs. Our titular character, Ray Gunn (voiced by Sam Rockwell), has very prominent eyebrow ridges and a big forehead, which makes him harder to draw. These features are tricky because the margin of error is tiny. If an artist moves a line “a little too far,” the character can read as a different person.

So the team had a reference model of Ray’s head where, turned one way, he looked 20, and turned the other, he suddenly seemed 40. Finding that sweet spot, somewhere in the 30-40 range, became less about a numerical age and more about having the design convey weary suspicion, physical comedy, and emotional vulnerability expected from a noir detective.

Once those proportions were established, maintaining them became important as Ray moved from storyboards into 3D animation, where the character still had to remain recognizable through different poses, angles, and expressions. When the storyboard artists get the script, they draw out where the camera is going to be and what the acting will look like. Characters like Eyera are stripped down to bold, readable shapes, with just enough background suggestion to sell the space. Those boards are then screened for Bird, who gives notes on coverage and rhythm such as when to cut wide, where to sit in closer, and which moments need to land harder. From there, the team iterates until the sequence plays as a convincing first version of the movie.

In contrast, Eyera (Tom Waits) was easier to draw. While early iterations saw Ray’s partner more as a half-organic and half-machine, the filmmakers settled on something more organic, with three spider-like legs. Sure, that presented some challenges, but Bird embraced them. As such, the three-legged alien, whose eye doubles as an old-fashioned film camera taking photos of evidence every time he blinks, has more distinctive shapes, including broad shoulders, a bow tie, and an enormous Art Deco-inspired collar on his oversized coat. The coat reference was from Columbo, in terms of texture, feel, and how it should behave.

A traditional biped character gives an animator a familiar foundation for movement, but adding a third leg meant developing an entirely different rhythm and physical language for Eyera, who is an alien that resembles a tripod. For Bird, that constraint could become a source of invention, with the character’s design directly influencing how the animation team approached his performance.

As such, Eyera’s complexity was on multiple levels. On top of the coat, he had a jacket, and below the jacket there was a shirt, and all of these aspects created complexity in the simulation. And of course, rigging this character and then handing it to an animator to find the style, because, you know, a biped is pretty straightforward for an animator. But as soon as you have that third leg, it creates some complications. As such, Eyera’s oversized proportions made him instantly readable in storyboard form. However, Eyera’s single eye forced the team to rethink how they got emotion on screen.

Initially, the design team wasn’t sure how a single eye could carry a full performance, but they discovered that the eyelid could do far more acting than they expected. Instead of spreading expression across a pair of eyes, they concentrated it into one where tiny shifts in lid height, the pace of blinks, and the way that lone eye opens or narrows became the source of conveying emotions.

That whimsical design also evolved through collaboration. Teddy Newton would develop a more exaggerated, cartoony version of the character before Tony Fucile created his interpretation, and the two artists went back and forth as the design evolved. The team used this process for many of Ray Gunn’s characters.

While Eyera’s design leans into exaggerated shapes and Art Deco geometry, Venus Nova’s (Scarlett Johansson) film noir inspirations draw from the glamour of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The film’s leading lady is a high-functioning, volatile star caught between genuine artistry and manufactured scandal, with a design that evokes the screen sirens of the era.

Venus has sharply defined features, an hourglass silhouette, and a signature curl that falls over her shoulder in one bold stroke. Her look draws particular inspiration from Veronica Lake and Lauren Bacall, giving the character an unmistakably 1940s quality even as she inhabits Bird’s futuristic Metropia. Bacall’s sultry, half-open eyes became one reference point, while Venus’ long, curled hair and sharply defined features helped give her the screen presence of a classic Hollywood star.

That contrast extends beyond the characters themselves and into their wardrobes. Ray has 10 different outfits throughout the film, fitting for a private investigator who often needs to sneak into places or blend into his surroundings. Along with his classic noir detective look, his wardrobe gives him options depending on where the investigation takes him.

Ray’s outfit is only one part of what makes the character’s appearance. The team also created variations for elements like his hair because Bird wanted the characters to have a tangible relationship with whatever happens to them. If Ray gets into a fight, his hair should become disheveled. If he walks through the rain, it should look wet. If he flies through the city and gets hit by the wind, some of that carefully groomed detail should disappear.

It’s those small, considerable nuances that, when combined into what the team calls “presets,” allow Ray’s appearance to reflect what he has experienced during a particular sequence. For some of the main characters, that number climbed as high as 70 presets.

To match Venus’ star power, the character has 23 outfits, plus different makeup, skin, hair, and other variations that can be combined into as many as 67 presets, depending on the sequence. Her long, curled hair presented its own challenge, since all of that movement adds another layer of complexity once the character is in motion.

But these aren’t simply costume changes. The wardrobe becomes another way for the filmmakers to reinforce the collision of influences that defines Ray Gunn, bringing the glamour and silhouettes of the 1940s into Bird’s retro-futuristic world.

That level of variation also serves the mystery surrounding Venus. This mysterious femme fatale can shift considerably in appearance depending on where she is and what the story requires. At the same time, the filmmakers remain deliberately guarded about how those different versions connect to the larger character. As the visual development team teased during the presentation, “there’s a lot more to her that you haven’t seen yet.”

Having seen only about 30 minutes of footage, much of the mystery around who these characters are and their backstories remains intact. What is already clear, however, is how much of Ray Gunn’s identity extends beyond its characters and into the world surrounding them. In fact, Bird wanted Metropia, the city that the film is set in, to be as much of a character as Ray, Eyera, and Venus.

Described as a bright, utopian 1939 “future city” with a noir underbelly, Metropia takes much of its architectural inspiration from the monumental work of Hugh Ferriss. Those towering, blocky forms gave the filmmakers a foundation for the city’s imposing vertical scale, but they wanted to contrast that with something sleeker.

For that, the team turned to Streamline Moderne, an architectural style defined by horizontal lines, rounded corners, and sweeping curves. The team used references including the era’s Greyhound bus stations, Hollywood’s former NBC studios, and the Pan-Pacific Auditorium, whose distinctive design was later recreated at Disney California Adventure. By combining those streamlined curves with Ferriss-inspired verticality, the visual development team created an architectural language that feels rooted in the late 1930s while still imagining a future that never existed.

The approach to Metropia’s exteriors was different from its interiors. For interiors, the environment could be built first, and the filmmakers could then scout it virtually to find the best camera angles. Building an entire city that way, however, wasn’t practical, especially given the time and scale involved. Instead, the storyboards became the blueprint, with the team constructing only the parts of Metropia needed for a particular shot or sequence.

That approach became especially important for two of the film’s major sequences: a vertical chase and a horizontal chase. Rather than relying heavily on DMP, or digital matte paintings, the team wanted Metropia’s buildings to exist as 3D geometry, giving both the animators and Bird more flexibility if a shot or camera angle needed to change.

Instead of building one enormous digital city and simply moving the camera through it, the filmmakers approached Metropia as a collection of smaller backlots built around the needs of individual shots and sequences. They could then connect those pieces seamlessly, creating the impression that a complete city exists beyond what the audience can actually see.

That sense of scale became especially important in a city conceived around extreme verticality. Metropia stretches from its towering skyscrapers through a mid-city level and down into streets and caverns below, giving the filmmakers opportunities to move through the city vertically as well as horizontally. Different districts also carry their own visual identities. One entertainment district was described as “Times Square on steroids,” filled with giant billboards and neon signs, while quieter areas closer to street level draw on Greenwich Village and Bauhaus architecture.

On the city’s outskirts sits the Maze, a location designed as the visual opposite of Metropia itself. Where much of the human city is rigid and geometric, the Maze twists into more organic, weaving forms, helping distinguish the alien spaces from the world surrounding them. Even within the same futuristic city, the filmmakers could therefore shift architectural language depending on where the story takes Ray.

To capture the look and feel of film noir, Ray Gunn had to strike a balance between Metropia’s bright, utopian surface and the darker underside lurking beneath it. By doing so, the cinematography reinforces that contrast, with Ray uncovering many of the story’s truths in darkness. Adding to the film noir motifs are Venetian blinds, shadows, and vignettes, and the shift from black-and-white contrasts to color.

That emphasis on contrast carried into the film’s color development. When reviewing color keys, Bird would often ask, “Can I see it in black and white?” The question ensured the images still maintained strong separation between light and dark before relying on color to create the mood. To capture the look and feel of noir, the filmmakers even added a lookup table during the final stages of production to further accentuate color contrast in the visual language.

Lighting plays an emotional role in animation just as it does in live action, reinforcing the performances and helping guide how a scene feels. That contrast does not always require darkness. One brightly lit sequence shown during the presentation drew inspiration from Chinatown, one of Bird’s favorite films. The scene has the outward appearance of Metropia’s utopian ideal, but something about the character within it feels unsettling. That tension lets the filmmakers use brightness itself as part of the mystery, rather than treating film noir as something that can only exist in shadow.

Chinatown also influenced the film’s approach to lensing. While the 1974 neo-noir film starring Jack Nicholson was shot anamorphically, Ray Gunn uses spherical lenses, with Bird favoring a 28mm lens and occasionally pushing as wide as 21mm. The wider focal lengths add depth and distortion to the frame, giving the filmmakers another way to make the camera feel active within Metropia rather than simply observing it from a distance.

For all the talk of Ray Gunn’s nearly 30-year journey, Bird is quick to clarify that he wasn’t continuously developing the film for three decades. He had tried to get it made years earlier, but when those efforts stalled, the project was eventually put away. “I actually had given it up for dead long ago,” Bird said. When another opportunity emerged, however, reviving it still required getting the project out of its previous studio, freeing it from existing obligations, pitching it again, and finding financing.

Some pieces survived that long dormancy remarkably intact. Pointing to one piece of artwork during the conversation, Bird noted, “That poster is 30 years old, believe it or not.” His conviction in the idea apparently survived with it. “I thought it was a good idea then. I still think it’s a good idea.”