A mere year and a half after the release of Raya and the Last Dragon, Don Hall and Qui Nguyen are back with another wild animated Disney adventure, Strange World. When Searcher Clade's (Jake Gyllenhaal) father, Jaeger (Dennis Quaid), goes missing, Searcher steps up and becomes the new hero of Avalonia. However, Searcher's notoriety doesn't come from being a legendary explorer like his father, rather, he wows his hometown by discovering an energy-packed miracle crop called Pando. Many years into harvesting Pando, Searcher's shocked and horrified to learn that the crop is dying. His only chance of saving it? Venturing below the surface of Avalonia to find the root of the problem.

During their interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Hall and Nguyen discuss the support they were given from the studio to make Strange World weird and include bizarre creatures like "Poop Pickles." On top of that, they reveal the key to creating such unique, stunning imagery and also highlight rising stars in animation that could change the industry for the better. You can watch the interview in the video above, or read the full transcript below.

PERRI NEMIROFF: Qui, I wanted to start with you because I believe this is your very first time co-directing an animated feature, so why was now the right time and also maybe why did Strange World feel like the right story for you to take that leap with?

QUI NGUYEN: I think it was a huge mistake. I think this was a terrible time to do it and I think collaborating with Don was awful. [Laughs] No, it was actually a dream come true. It felt like a natural thing coming out of Raya and the Last Dragon, wanting to be involved in the story as much as I already am [and] to take that next step and also be able to help influence what we're seeing on the screen, it was perfect. And Don and I love action-adventure stories. The reason why I even got [to] the studio was the conversations I had with Don. When I first met them, we geeked out over all the same things — comic books, football, and big adventure films by some of our favorite creators — Indiana Jones, Empire Strikes Back, Superman. And so that felt like the perfect combination, the perfect movie to be jumping in to do my first directing job.

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Image via Walt Disney Animation

Don, you’ve got quite a few features as a director under your belt now. What is something that you managed to accomplish on Strange World that 2011-you making Winnie the Pooh would look at and go, ‘Oh my god, I can't believe I'd be capable of doing something like that one day?’

DON HALL: Oh, that’s such a great question. I think the fact that the movie is thematically solid, and the animation is obviously top-notch, but I think one of the things that 2011-me would be surprised [by] is how weird the movie is and how much that was indulged and accepted by my colleagues and peers and everybody at Disney. Got nothing but good vibes in how weird we wanted to make this movie.

You guys seem to have a habit of doing that. The last time we spoke we were talking about the things that you couldn't believe the studio let you do on Raya, so I guess I'll follow that up. What is the farting beetle equivalent in Strange World that you cannot believe you got away with?

NGUYEN: We had a whole sequence of creatures called Poop Pickles where it was just creatures that's almost sole purpose was to be awkward looking and make weird sounds, which also helped motivate the story and blah, blah, blah. But the fact that the whole studio came aboard, we had a sequence where we wanted to be super, super weird and our VisDev department came in and created these great little Poop Pickles. We had our visual effects department decide to make crazy walls that moved and acid legs. And then Don and Henry Jackman collaborated on a goofy waltz to have [when this] action sequence happens. So it's a fun collaboration. [Laughs]

There are a lot of details and creatures featured in this movie, and I want to buy all of them. I liked that line in the movie quite a bit, by the way. Is there a particular favorite creature that you developed, whether it's something that's front and center in a frame or maybe something that's in the background and doesn't get as much screen time?

HALL: I love them all, but I think the creatures we call the Filterlopes, they look kind of like an elk, but then they have almost a peacock fan that fans out, I just think they're really elegant and beautiful. And originally I think they were only in one little sequence and I think everybody fell in love with them, so we just kind of started peppering them throughout the movie.

NGUYEN: I always loved the little nubbin things that we have. They're basically like little glowing balls with feet. They're so simple, but yet so — I just love them. Every time I get to see a close-up shot of them I'm just like, ‘Oh, they're just adorable.’

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Image via Disney

There's a lot of really stunning design elements in your creatures, and also the world overall. Are there any new animation tools or techniques being used in Strange World that let you create visuals that, at least to me, feel like something I have never seen rendered quite that way before?

HALL: That's a good question. I don't know if we had any specific new toolset. I will say, I think the artists are at such a high level that no matter what tool set we have, they're going to put something on screen like you've never seen before. And that was one of the promises of the movie to me is just creating space in a movie to allow these amazing artists to let their imaginations run wild, and to not put any barriers on it and just let them go. And it was such the spirit of the movie. Anybody could think up whatever they wanted, and we'll just figure out how to do it.

NGUYEN: I think actually [the] huge leaps [weren’t] technological, but actually how we approached making the film because of the environment also being kind of a character as well as effects being tied to an environment. We had artists working together in ways that — animators were talking directly to layout because one of the ground plains was a group of little creatures that they had to run on top of, so that was actually character and animation, but it was also an environment … It was just the way we were all talking to each other. Even when Henry [Jackman] showed up as composer, his influence actually made me cut a lot of my lines out of the movie because I was like, ‘Oh, I know that we can lean on the music.’ That's basically act three of this film, so when you look at all the dialogue in act three, it’s maybe two or three pages of dialogue. It's mainly pushed by his amazing score, and the amazing shots that our animators and layout artists were able to pull off.

I love hearing about the level of collaboration on this film. I had watched a couple of interviews with your voice cast, and it's something that they had emphasized quite a bit. It feels like I hear about voice actors getting to play and experiment in the booth and then the animation adapting to what they're doing more and more nowadays. Is there anything about the filmmaking process that has changed in recent years to accommodate that more?

HALL: I don't know if it's the process itself. To me, it's more directorially how you approach working with your cast. It's always just been part of the way I've worked and was taught to work; that we work these scenes, we write these scenes, and storyboard the scenes, and get them perfect, and then we go in the room, and we record them, but that so many times, the actor will do something that you want to respond to in the booth, and sometimes it can mean rewriting a scene.

Like Jake had a question about a scene that led to a conversation that led to Qui rewriting the scene that night, and we rerecorded it the next day. I think for us, it's just a natural extension of what we do every day with our artists, as Qui mentioned, in how we collaborated to make this film, the voice cast being no different. I think this is, ultimately, a massively collaborative art form when it's at its best.

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Image via Walt Disney Animation

Given the emphasis that this film places on how each new generation can influence the world that we're in, I'm gonna turn that towards this industry; can you each name someone who is rising in animation that you think has the power to change that corner of the film industry for the better?

HALL: I always go with whatever pops in my head first and so the name that popped in my head first is Tyre Jones who is a storyboard artist and new to Disney. I think this was his first film — well, certainly his first Disney film, it might have been his first film that he's worked on. I had never worked with Tyre before, but it was so amazing to work with him not just in terms of his storyboarding, but in terms of his story skills in general. He really collaborated in the room, and he storyboarded one of my favorite scenes in the film, which is when Jaeger and Searcher are having a beverage on the deck of the Venture after Searcher is taught to throw, and Tyre made some wonderful choices in there. So that was the first name that popped into my head.

NGUYEN: I think of our Head of Story, David Derrick, who has worked with us throughout helping us make this film. He was influential on Moana, and now he's directing Moana on Disney+, the series that's about to come out. To see his evolution from story artist to a director in my short four years at the studio has been a gift to see someone just grow and evolve, and now is gonna lead a team all on his own to [make] something that I think is gonna be super entertaining, and it’ll bring us back to a world that obviously Don worked on that we all care about.

Strange World is in theaters November 23. For more from the movie, check out Collider's interview with stars Jaboukie Young-White and Dennis Quaid below: