To get into the mindset of a real beaver, John Cody Kim – a Langley Fine Arts School alumnus – did what any Disney animator would do.
The 32-year-old climbed into a deserted beaver lodge, settled in for a while, and checked out what he described as a somewhat palatial habitat.
“It was pretty comfy in there. I could fall asleep if I wanted,” he said.
What better way to understand the main characters that Kim was helping bring to life for Disney’s Pixar latest animated movie, “Hoppers.”
“Hoppers,” which revolves around beavers and a number of their wildlife friends, hit the screen Friday, March 6. That’s the same day Kim shared with the Langley Advance Times a bit about himself and his involvement in bringing that film to life.
Kim, who was born in Vancouver and grew up in Walnut Grove for 11 years, has since moved around the continent a lot for education and work. He’s now settled close to work in the San Francisco Bay area, but still considers Langley his home.
“Langley Fine Arts is really where it allowed me to kind of pursue filmmaking and just art, and that’s where I really was able to get into animation. And then, basically from there, I was accepted into Cal Arts (California Institute of the Arts),” he said.
He was initially drawn to character animation – and Pixar in particular – after seeing the movie, “Up.” He knew for certain that’s what he wanted to do.
At Cal Arts, he quickly realized that his passion and love of filmmaking and animation was best realized through storytelling – as a story artist, taking the script and visualizing in a series of drawings (almost like comic strips) how that story should unfold.
Prior to Pixar, Kim began his career as a story artist at Blue Sky Animation in New York – working on projects such as “Spies in Disguise” (2019) and “Nimona” (2023).
Kim then started at Pixar as a story artist in spring 2021 – during COVID – joining the “Hoppers” team the moment he was hired. He first worked on it as a story lead and was then promoted to story supervisor – overseeing the story department and acting as part maestro and part architect to transform the script into a visual blueprint that guides every department from lighting and animation to voice acting and directing. He held that role until the movie was finished in late 2025.
“It’s like a blueprint, like when you’re building a house,” Kim elaborated. “What story artists do is basically make blueprints before we actually start to build the house.”
“We’d be in there for hours, just coming up with ideas,” Kim explained. “And we’d put them up on the wall and see what sticks… what’s memorable… We would explore. We would come up with characters… Rather than just pitching ideas verbally, the moment you draw them, it becomes very real,” he added.
For “Hoppers,” it took literally thousands of idea exchanges over several years to bring it all together.
He calls the completion of this storyline a rollercoaster ride, that brings together a story with many unexpected twists and turns.
“But it was a really fun, collaborative process,” he said of creating “Hoppers.”
And now he’s almost as excited seeing the film finally reach the theatres.
“I’m starting to hear a real buzz,” he added. “I’m so happy to hear the movie is being well received.”
While Kim admits he was feeling a lot of anxiety leading up to its release, he is thrilled to not only help give viewers some much needed laughs, but help present a fresh premise for a movie, and most of all – on a personal note – paint beavers in a positive light.
In Disney and Pixar’s all-new feature film “Hoppers,” scientists have discovered how to “hop” human consciousness into lifelike robotic animals, allowing people to communicate with animals as animals. The adventure introduces Mabel, an animal lover who seizes an opportunity to use the technology, uncovering mysteries within the animal world that are beyond anything she could have imagined.
Kim loves that it’s primarily a story about beavers, an animal which is synonymous with Canada. And recognizing that people don’t know much about the animal, he’s psyched to be part of changing that.
“It puts beavers in a really big spotlight,” said Kim, who believes very little is know about what he calls “amazing ecosystem engineers,” that have an incredibly powerful and positive impact on nature.
“I’m really excited for the world to learn about that,” he said, elaborating more on his own education, which included extensive research and a visit to an old beaver home in Yellowstone National Park four years ago.
“It was just big enough for me to squeeze in,” he said.
Kim was the only one on the team willing to go inside the beaver lodge. He recalled how the well-crafted habitat featured a series of various rooms set up inside that mirror human homes.
Kim said he has pulled a lot of the characters and their actions from his personal experiences at the lodge and as a kid growing up outdoors in nature in Langley – be it building forts in a ravine in his Walnut Grove backyard, or being out snowboarding, camping, or rock climbing and interacting with nature.
“I remember growing up and going camping. In the early mornings, next to the Fraser River, you’d get this thin layer of fog. And I still fondly remember as a little kid seeing this like log floating down the river, and my dad was like ‘that’s not a log, that’s a beaver.’ And I remember thinking that was really, really cool. And so working on this movie reminded me a lot of home,” he said.
“When you watch [Hoppers], there’s going to be a lot of laughs, there’s going to be a lot of goofyness. It’s a wild ride. But there’s surprisingly also a lot of heart to the movie,” Kim concluded.