Pixar's Enrico Casarosa (La Luna) tells the story of two boys, who are really sea monsters having the time of their lives on the Italian Riviera one summer as they meet new people, try new things, and try to procure their own Vespa.
The film was created throughout 2020, with much of the creative process taking place remotely and from home – even the voice actors recorded parts of their dialogue from converted closets. Along with Soul, it's would be Pixar's film most affected by the pandemic. Just like Soul, and somewhat controversially, Luca releases exclusively on Disney+ on 18 June 2021.
Screen Rant had the chance recently to talk to the production designer for Luca, Daniela Strijleva, about her time creating the film, the Pixar animation innovation it presents, and how she went about working on a gorgeous location inspired by somewhere so iconic in real life. Strijleva ed Pixar Animation Studios on 2008, and has since worked on Academy Award-winning features such as Toy Story 3, Coco, and Toy Story 4, as well as Monsters University, The Good Dinosaur, and Onward.
Rather than the imagined or fantasy settings of other Pixar productions, Luca is set on the Italian Riviera. How excited were you to work on a beautiful real-life area like that?
Daniela Strijleva: I was so excited. Not only because it is beautiful and I got to learn about it – you know, I hadn't been to that specific region of Italy, even though I've been to Italy many times and I lived there. It's beautiful. It's unique. It's so idiosyncratic; like the buildings, the way that they're shaped, how tall they are, how they're just perched against these steep Hills. Capturing that geography was wonderful. And the colors, of course... The colors of the sea there feel like almost like lake water clear, it's so clear and so deep, like emerald blues and greens, the little pebble beaches – there are no sandy beaches, it's all rocks. So it's so specific.
It's wonderful because I feel like the more specific you make this place, the more believable it becomes to the audience. And when it's believable, it becomes universal; even if you didn't grow up there, you can feel like, "I know what it's like to live in a small town." Or "I feel like I know this place." So it was wonderful. I'm a fan of films that do that, set in a very specific place rather than like an amalgam of Italy. That's not as meaningful to me.
How was your process different from working with a fantasy setting like Onward?
Daniela Strijleva: It's nice to have the boundaries of the real thing, and to try to capture something authentic. I worked on Onward in set design, at the beginning, and that world is entirely fantastical. Of course, there are many elements that are drawn from our life and it's believable and immersive, but here (in Luca) we have two worlds. We have the world of Portorosso which is of course inspired by the Cinque Terra. And we can be true to that place, we can be authentic, we can be very specific like I was saying.
On the other hand, there's the balance of being a little more creative, a little looser and less structured with the underwater world and the sea monster life. So it was nice to have that balance. In a way if you go a little more fantastical here, it makes the other place even more real and believable. So it's really nice to play in that kind of sandbox, and I had a lot of fun with that.
In the recent press event for Luca, you and your team spoke a lot about blending 2D elements with 3D animation. What drove that idea, and how did you bring it to life?
Daniela Strijleva: It starts with (director) Enrico's drawings. I think it starts with a style of storyboarding. He draws by hand and – not in his storyboards – he does a lot of sketches. They're very gestural. He does a lot of quick watercolors and that's very imperfect, like in the best possible way. It has the hand of the artist, and it's very Enrico. I myself do a lot of hand-drawn paintings and I draw with a pen and paint with wash. We both have a love for the texture and imperfection of hand drawn art at the same time there's our love of animation. We both love Miyazaki. Enrico has a lot of influences from that. There's just humor and simplicity in trying to make a 3D world be a little bit simplified. It's kind of like more direct and accessible. And this film is told from the point of view of a kid and that simplicity plays well into it, you know?
You also worked to show the hand of the artist in Luca's animation as a particular aesthetic. What key ways can viewers see that on screen? And how does that technique work to enhance and advance the story?
Daniela Strijleva: Because the film is told from the point of view of Luca, from my perspective of production deg and deg the film, trying to make it illustrative, and trying to make it more simplified, lyrical, poetic allows the viewer to what it's like to see the world through a kid's eyes, and the kind of images that you were looking at when you were 10 or 12 and what struck you. I think the kid have a direct way to observe what's the most important feature about anything in the world. In a way, our style is trying to capture that innocence, beauty simplicity, but also our love of art in general. It's the same for the animation; this very exaggerated, cartoony animation style and timing plays up to the qualities of being young and carefree. I think it s the kind of story that we're telling.
The team spoke a lot about the enhancements and innovations in animation for Luca. How does it work with that team innovating, for example how water is shown, then working with your team on the production design?
Daniela Strijleva: It's good old Pixar, "The artist has to challenge the technology." Our tools are so good at making things realistic. Because you and I know what water looks like, if you go and break it even just a little bit, like if you remove some of the detail, it can look unbelievable. So the work that Jon (Reisch, effects supervisor) had to do in effects, for example, to separate all those layers that he showed you guys. That's difficult. He had to rewrite all the software so we could do the things we wanted to do and never lose the richness that you're used to seeing from Pixar.
It was the same from my perspective; a lot of the texturing on the film, like the character texturing, it's not real, there's no pores on the skin, but there's like, watercolor texture. That can look broken – for a while it doesn't look good. It's the same for the texturing on the buildings, again – very hand of the artist, very lovingly made by individual people who had to hand-paint those buildings as if they were literally painting them. And then working with lighting a lot, so that the way that the lighting and the response of these textures is immersive and believable and doesn't look cheap or like plasticky or anything like that. It's a difficult thing to do.
Definitely watching part of Luca in advance, I could tell there was something different, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. Once you kind of slip into it and let the film go, it actually is really charming and beautiful. How did you go about deg the dream sequences as opposed to the real-life scenes?
Daniela Strijleva: Those were so fun and chaotic to make. We made all those from home. We started right when the pandemic started. We had to think a little bit like outside of the normal pipeline. Usually it's like linear, like story, design and moving through the departments. And here we were like, we need a representative from every team, we need to think together. We need to make these fast. So that was one difference.
Then, we always wanted a little bit of a surreal nature to them, going a step further into Luca's imagination and making it like, this is what a little kid who doesn't know anything about this new world would imagine. Literally there are fish in the sky or whatever he's imagining. Enrico and I looked at a lot of like, kind of expressionistic paintings at the colors of a tree – like it's a red tree – and we wanted to push it even further into this pure kind of joyous imagination that Luca has.
Enrico Casarosa was talking about how often there'll something happening in the background, which builds into the whole package, but isn't a key kind of part of the story. Is there something you can recommend that we look out for that's particularly your favorite part or like a little background thing happening that we should look out for that you can recommend?
Daniela Strijleva: I'm gonna talk from my own perspective, of course, having built every single character in every single little story. Look out for the background characters in the town square; we actually called them little vignettes. There's a vignette of the three old ladies sitting in front of the bar. There's the fishermen, there are the kids playing soccer. There's the people playing cards. So just like the little stories, that we're telling through these background characters.
Honestly, it's not that far from reality. When you go to those towns, you see people, you're kind of people watching. It's so rich and full of life. It feels like a play or theater. I felt like that when I was there, I felt like this feels like I'm in a set. These people are all communicating and talking and know each other and are so full of life. I can piece together like who's family and what relationships they have. So I think that's really cool. And then look out for the graphics. There's a lot of names and posters and things like that; all that stuff is really fun to look at in the background.
