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LUCA www.postmagazine.com 32 POST JULY/AUG 2021 family are sea dwellers, creatures inspired by de- pictions of sea monsters found on old maps from the Renaissance, as well as scientific illustrations of fish from the region, in addition to Japanese dragons and serpents. In fact, different types of fish were used as reference for the characters in different ways. For example, a larger, silvery fish, like a big tuna or barracuda, was used as a refer- ence for Alberto. A more colorful species, such as a reef fish, was used for Luca. "We looked at marine iguanas because of the way they swim underwater and use their limbs, and their tail is really interesting and different from the way another type of reptile might move or swim," says Albright. As a result, the sea monster versions of the boys are more creature-y and less humanlike when they swim. "We combined all of these dif- ferent influences to make our sea monsters really unique," she adds. The artists also had to ensure that the underwa- ter animation illustrated drift and water resistance. "The characters couldn't stop too abruptly in the water, so they would hit a pose and then float a lit- tle, letting the energy dissipate into the water and slowly come to a stop," Michael Venturini, anima- tion supervisor, explains. The creatures, which are hardly monsters, are appealing and expressive, each playing a ste- reotypical family-member role. Daniela is Luca's overly-cautious mother, whose #1 rule is to not go near the water's surface, where land monsters supposedly live. Lorenzo, Luca's dad, is often distracted by his hobby of raising prize-winning crabs. Grandma, meanwhile, understands Luca's yearning for something more and secretly sup- ports his adventurous ambitions. The people in the town of Portorosso are representative of those found in a typical small town. In all, the artists created 56 individuals for this film, some main characters and others rele- gated to the background. "This is one of those movies where we're not lit- erally just populating the entire place with a bunch of characters. We know them," says Albright. "It's like each one was handcrafted. We spent time with them, and that quality shows on-screen." Ercole, a blowhard, is the town bully who likes to target Giulia. He also owns a shiny Vespa and is the repeat champion of the town's Portorosso Cup race, which Giulia longs to win. Giulia is friendly and adventuresome, though she does not have many local friends since she is a summer resident who lives there with her divorced fisherman father. So, she quickly befriends the two strangers — Luca and Alberto — who suddenly appear in town. MONSTER MASH And then there are the main characters, Luca and Alberto, who presented an even bigger challenge for the character artists and animators due to their ability to shape-shift. In some shots, these charac- ters appear in blended form. "It took us about a year to figure it out," says Skaria of the transformations. The goal was to make the transformation bold and crazy, but not creepy. The group began by looking at various character transformations that have occurred on-screen, such as Mystique's trans- formation in X-Men, which involved feathery, scaly textures. Yet, Pixar wanted something that was more exaggerated and stylized look-wise, as their character scales needed to be much bigger to fit into the style of this movie. The team was also in- spired by the ripple that runs through Gigi the cat's fur in Hayao Miyazaki's film Kiki's Delivery Service. The artists used a 3D pipeline to achieve the de- sired look, which includes tools that have evolved from previous shows, such as a silhouette sketch- ing tool used on Inside Out. Also, there are new tools that were built for this film, such as robust controls to make the eyes more graphic, as well as the transformation rig used to shape-shift Luca and Alberto. During the transitioning phase, both the human and sea monster rigs are present, along with a third — the transformation rig. As parts of that rig are turned on, those elements from the two rigs (human and sea monster) are revealed. "It's like a magic trick, where we're kind of just showing parts of the human and parts of the sea monster, but we give that control to the animators so they can slide things and turn things on and off, and show bits and pieces of each character," says Skaria. "We literally have two Lucas in the same space and show parts of each." Typically such transformations would be hidden off-screen or would be obscured by adding smoke in front of the character, for instance, due to the effort involved. However, the director was very spe- cific about this occurring on-camera in Luca. "It's the core of the movie, it's about Luca as a human emerging out of the sea monster, and we want the audience to see it," says Skaria. When the character becomes fully human or fully sea monster, the transformation rig was not needed and the shot was animated normally. TRANSFORMATION & ANIMATION The transformation occurs in and around 50 shots, so the artists spent a good deal of time and effort on it. Mostly, though, the characters appear in one form or the other. "We wanted to feel the hand of the artist in ev- erything we did on this movie," says Albright. For in- stance, all the sea monster scales were hand-paint- ed. Those paintings then were used to derive the geometric scales the artists used as part of the transformation process. In total, the sea monster Luca has 3,436 scales on his body. Luca's animation style is inspired by 2D animation. "For animation, we wanted to incorporate the bold, illustrative choices and stylized timing of 2D animation, while preserving the richness we've come to expect from a Pixar film," Venturini says. In all, the film features 1,500 shots, but artists produced an average of 10 drawings per scene (amounting to about 15,000 drawings) to help the animators stay true to the illustrative design. According to Venturini, the facial rigs were espe- cially different, particularly in the mouth area. The characters have fun, graphic mouth shapes that can be especially small or large. To get the consis- tent round corners of the mouth, though, required new rigging. "To be more illustrative, we had to come up with new controls, particularly with this design language that Enrico wanted, and to be able to move the mouth all over the face and go into pro- file," Venturini says, noting there are 221 and 223 individual controls in Luca's and Alberto's mouths, respectively, to help animators create the rounded More than 50 characters were designed for the film.