Turning skeletons into lovable characters
It’s one thing to bring cinematic life to fish, bugs, furry monsters and toy cowboys. But skeletons?
That was the substantial challenge that confronted Pixar artists — including Oakland-born Daniel Arriaga — while developing “Coco,” the studio’s dazzling and heartfelt new feature film.
“Coco” is the story of a boy named Miguel who learns about his heritage during Día de los Muertos, Mexico’s annual celebration to honor departed loved ones. He does so while spending time in the Land of the Dead, populated with the walking, talking skeletons of people who passed away long ago.
The bony characters — and their awkward movements — presented so many technical issues that Pixar had to revamp its hardware. They also prompted plenty of creative considerations: How do you get such macabre creatures — each made up of more than 120 rigid bones — to express emotions and be visually engaging?
It wasn’t easy, according to Arriaga, the character art director for the film.
“They needed to be appealing and relatable and not so scary,” he says. “So what should they look like? How do you vary their appearances from character to character? Do they have tongues, teeth and hair? … It took a long time to find the right balance, and it was an especially difficult process, but very satisfying as well.”
Skeletons, of course, lack muscles, tissue and facial hair. That doesn’t leave much to work with. But things got a little easier when the filmmakers decided to cheat a bit and give them eyes. As director Lee Unkrich explained to Entertainment Weekly, “If I was going to have tender, soulful moments with these characters, I needed the audience to be able to look right into them. It’s a cliche, but the eyes are the window to the soul.”
Clearly, they knew what they were doing. “Coco,” which opened last week in the U.S ., has become another blockbuster hit for the Emeryville studio and its parent company, Disney. And most critics have been entranced. The Hollywood Re--
porter called it “Pixar’s most original effort since ‘Inside Out,’ ” and ranked it among the studio’s “most emotional ly resonant films.”
That’s music to the ears of Arriaga, a Mexican- American who admits he didn’t know a lot about Día de los Muertos while growing up in the East Bay. But over the five- plus years that the film was being worked on, he and his fellow artists steeped themselves in the culture, and Arriaga became a convert.
“After working on the film for about a year and visiting Oaxaca, Mexico, to see how the holiday is celebrated, I fell in love with the idea of setting up an ofrenda ( private altar) in my home with my family, so we could always remember our loved ones who have passed and celebrate them during the holiday,” he says. “Now we’ve set up an ofrenda for the past four years and will continue to do so. It’s such a beautiful tradition, and I’m so happy that it’s now a part of our life. I hope that, after people watch this film, they feel the same way no matter what their background is.”
“Coco” is a major feather in the cap of Arriaga, who attended Salesian High School and didn’t truly start thinking about turning his love for art into a career until after hitting a wall of discontent during his college years.
“I decided I wanted to draw for a living after a year and a half at San Francisco State,” he recalls. “I remember asking myself, ‘ Why am I paying to learn Algebra 3 and As- tronomy when I want to do something creative?’ ”
That’s when Arriaga’s wife, Esther, pushed him into checking out The Academy of Art College in San Francisco. He spent three years there, studying art and illustration, and in 2001 he joined Pixar as a production assistant on “Monsters, Inc.”
Eventually, Arriaga made the transition to the studio’s art department, where he worked on “Ratatouille” as a sketch artist. He went on to design characters and sets for “WALL-E,” “Up” and “Toy Story 3,” before temporarily leaving Pixar to fulfill a longtime dream by working at Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank. There, he lent his talents to “Wreck-ItRalph” and the holiday TV special “Prep and Landing 2.”
In 2011, Arriaga returned home to the Bay Area — he now lives in Dublin — and Pixar to work on “Inside Out” before taking on “Coco.” Soon, he’ll be immersed in another all- consuming project, but this one has left a lasting imprint on him.
“The pride that I feel now is hard to put into words,” he says. “Growing up in the United States and not speaking Spanish fluently, I always felt like I wasn’t ‘ Mexican enough,’ whatever that means. So to be able to work on this beautiful gift for the Mexican people and give them something they can be proud of — especially in this political climate — brings me tears of joy.
“To see that the rest of the world is loving it as well blows my mind away. I’m so humbled by this whole experience. It has truly changed my life for the better in so many ways.”