Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1438374
22 cgw o c t o b e r • n o v e m b e r • d e c e m b e r 2 0 2 1 animated musical called Colombian Cultural Trust, which from the start acted as advisers, reviewing early scripts and participating in weekly meetings to help ensure that the look and feel of the creative design appeared authentic. This included experts in music, anthropology, cul- ture, architecture, botany, and more. Others from inside WDAS, called the Familia group, also assisted in that endeavor. FAMILIA MADRIGAL The film follows three generations of the Madrigal family. Abuela Alma is the matriarch, whose unwaivering hope led her to the Encanto, where she raised her three triplets. Her determination to protect her family has not diminished in the 50 years since she lost her husband. Her three children include Julieta (husband Agustín, daughters Mirabel, Isabela, and Luisa), Pepa (husband Félix, and children Dolores, Camilo, and Antonio), and the mysterious albeit estranged third child, Bruno (see the family tree graphic on this page). "I have been at Disney for 14 years and this is hands down the hardest movie that we have ever worked on," says Kira Lehtomaki, head of animation. "That was in large part from an innovation perspec- tive because we had essentially 12 main characters with the Madrigal family who were all heavily featured in full character ex- ploration. We've worked on movies with big asks before, like Ralph Breaks the Internet and Zootopia, but when you boil it down, Zootopia is about two characters, Nick and Hopps. Here, the whole family was integral and crucial to the telling of the story, with Mirabel at the center." Miranda wrote a song designed to intro- duce Mirabel and the rest of the Madrigal family members. "The fun was finding a song that could hold all of that information across three generations," says Miranda. "Then it be- comes a puzzle to put together, as (the late) Stephen Sondheim might say. We start with Abuela and work through each generation." Insofar as each character has his or her own magical powers, animators were tasked with moving them in such a way as to emphasize their special abilities. Mirabel, in fact, was the most compli- cated character to animate, as it took the longest to find locomotion befitting her. She is sometimes awkward and tentative in her movement, a little bit clumsy but very capable, just not perfect. "She needed to have her own cadence, her own personali- ty," says Renato dos Anjos, head of anima- tion. And when she sang, she could not look like a professional songstress; rather, she had to perform and move in a way that re- flected her inner self — a 15-year-old trying to find a place in her home. In fact, with Mirabel, no single walk style fits her every moment. For instance, when she is speaking to Abuela Alma, she exhibits one posture, and while she interacts with sister Luisa, she has another that differs from that used when she is with her sister Isabela. "The three-dimensionality of her personality really became a major puzzle that ended up being resolved as we fed her into each of the scenes," says dos Anjos. The magical gis served as the foun- dation for the extended family's character movements, as well. For instance, Luisa is very strong, and all her poses have a strong line of action that feels superhero-esque. As such, the animators referenced people with similar physicality — Olympians and female shot-putters — and observed how they performed typical day-to-day tasks, such as walking or working in the kitchen, to see how those motions were impacted. Isabela, meanwhile, is perfect and wants to be perfect in everything she does, so all her actions have to appear effortless. To this end, she doesn't simply walk across a room, she glides across it. As reference, the animators "stole" some secrets of the trade from beauty pageants (they are very popu- lar in Colombian culture) pertaining to how Isabela should walk and wave just so. To help organize the family tree for the audience, Associate Production Design- Members of the Madrigal Family have special powers, except for Mirabel.