Dreams (1990), Pom Poko (1994), and Song of the Sea (2014)
Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams was never mentioned in our conversation, as I only thought of it after the call based on what Enrico Casarosa says below about where his interest in shapeshifting creatures originates. The first segment of Dreams, entitled “Sunshine Through the Rain,” has a lot in common with the first act of Luca, only it’s an inverse of the relationship between humans and creatures because here a human mother tells her son not to go into the woods where the kitsune (shapeshifting foxes) are, rather than a shapeshifter mother telling her son not to go to the surface where the humans are.
This entry also recognizes another, non-Miyazaki Studio Ghibli movie, Isao Takahata’s Pom Poko, because it’s about a different sort of shapeshifter from Japanese folklore, plus the Oscar-nominated animated feature Song of the Sea, about a sea-based shapeshifter from Ireland. But this part of the interview originated with me asking about any horror influences since that is common for a lot of animators these days, and I was especially curious if there was any particular monster movie inspiration for the look of the sea folk characters in Luca. Given that I am not much of a horror connoisseur and appreciate creatures on a more mythological level rather than when they’re employed for scares, I respected this response more.
I must admit that I was a little bit into horror earlier on in my age, but then I became — I sleep better without it. I get to a nice psychological thriller. I do enjoy those. But I’m not a huge horror [fan]. I used to be as a kid. I was a little bit of like growing up and showing you have some courage, you know, to watch some of those movies, but now I’m not. I’ll say that we wanted to make a little bit of a ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ homage with the Ugo poster that shows up in the middle of the movie. That was a little bit of our attempt at a joke there in that ballpark.
I’ll say this: I think the idea came in the inception of it as I’m fascinated by folklore where there are changelings. Something that can look a certain way but it’s something else. I remember I was really fascinated by foxes in Japanese folklore [kitsune]. There’s a lot of stories in which they show up as a human. They’re tricksters. That was part of it. And some of it is shapeshifting of some sort. I do like those kinds of stories because as a kid you’re like is there another side to this? I am fascinated with that imagination of like, that old man is fishing, but when I leave, what does he do? Does he jump in there and he has a whole other life? Those thoughts were in the very beginning of the inception of the what-if of the movie.
Tanukis [from ‘Pom Poko’], which are kind of like raccoon dogs of Japan, are like foxes. And I think in that movie there are foxes and tanukis. Another one that’s wonderful is ‘Song of the Sea’ from Cartoon Saloon. I don’t know if you’ve seen that; that one’s about the selkies. That’s the Irish kind of shapeshifter, a seal that kind of sheds its skin and turns into a beautiful woman. I love all those kinds of folklores where there’s something more than meets the eye.
The Wrong Trousers (1993)
Going even broader than a wholly influential filmmaker, this is essentially an entry on the general work of another studio, Aardman Animations. I went in knowing that the stop-motion clay animation style of Aardman had been cited in reviews and interviews in relation to the look of Luca, but I was again hoping to get something more specific. It makes sense that there’s not really one singular film applicable to this part of the conversation, which goes a little deeper into the production of the Pixar feature as opposed to its conception. However, Enrico Casarosa does mention Nick Park’s second, Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit short film, The Wrong Trousers, by name. Maybe it was his first? It is arguably the best thing Aardman has ever done.
Who doesn’t love Aardman? I grew up with Wallace and Gromit as well. I don’t mean grew up — I was already in the industry; I wasn’t a kid — but there was something absolutely amazing in ‘The Wrong Trousers.’ I think what actually influenced us is that when I think even of movies like ‘Up,’ for example, when you start stylizing a little bit, it does go to where it’s a little bit [like] miniature. When you stylize props in a film like that. We sometimes have discussions about it: are you imagining this like a miniature?” Well, not exactly. I want to be immersed. I don’t want to think I’m all of a sudden into a small set.
But there was something in the sets and in the characters that we were interested in, in the sense that they showed that they’re handmade. There’s a craft. The discussions we’ve had were a lot like, how do we bring — it started more with my watercolors and pencil drawings, but there was [the question of] how do we bring some of that vibe that this is handmade into the computer? So, a skin tone, for example, is something that I think has always been kind of difficult in CG; it can go doll-like or too air-brushy. It can feel a little bit like, to me, not lively. So we worked really hard to get the rouge right. We don’t have pores; we let it be textures that are actually more like artist-made. That kind of took us a little bit where, when we looked at hair, we’re like oh, maybe we could, yes, it’s hair but maybe for Giulia we can push it a little bit toward felt. Giulia’s hair is kinda unusual and cool.
I think there are a few cues like that because we wanted to bring some sense of craft and warmth to the computer. But we wanted to do something more playful. We wanted to do something a little different for these characters. We’re in this kids’ world. How do we heighten it a little bit? How do we make it expressionistic a bit? So we looked at, again, ‘Future Boy Conan,’ ‘Castle of Cagliostro’ — what are the held poses? We took some really interesting little timing hints that then the animators were trying to do in 3D. Not that we went to limited frame ranges, but we would just get inspiration so maybe we hold a pose and then we snap out of it a little quicker. On the runs, if you look at our runs, you’ll see sometimes they hold and then they go down. There’s 2D-inspired timing.
Then when we started talking about the things that really inspired us, we were like, there’s something about Aardman’s mouths, their lip-synch, that’s so charming. And how we’re drawing these characters, they kind of have that round shape anyway. So that is a little bit of inspiration. We said, oh, maybe we could make them talk a little bit in a more limited way. What Aardman does because they’re in twos, they’re not hitting every single perfect lip-synch; they’re a little bit quicker and expressionistic. So we took that idea and like, oh, maybe we can be a little snappier with the mouth, too. Interestingly, we pushed it so far that we had to pull back a little bit. We realized that if you’re not careful, it starts feeling like a cutout, and it just draws your eyes in a weird way.
Style is one of those things where you have to find the limits. If style becomes eye-grabbing, we step back. We found that, for example, as long as we gave them a physical stretch on the jaw, then those cool mouths could work well and they could be a little poppier, in timing. So we find our middle way there. We didn’t want it to look like it was just a cutout and now all of a sudden we’re completely in stop-motion. But we wanted to have a little snappiness. We lost some of the shapes, and they worked well with our design, so that is I think what makes it feel that way. There’s something really cool there. Is there anything that we can bring a little bit into the 3D world that the 2D world and the stop-motion world have?
Luca is now streaming on Disney+. Check out our review of the movie here.
Related Topics: Enrico Casarosa, Hayao Miyazaki, Luca, Movie DNA, Pixar
