Bringing Skeletons to Life with Animation in the movie Coco #PixarCocoEvent

How Do They Bring the Skeletons to Life in Coco?

In August, I was invited to Disney Pixar Studios to learn all about the movie Coco. During our time there, I learned how they brought the skeletons to life in the movie Coco.

Character Art Director Daniel Arriaga shared that there were early exploration drawings. They also had to keep in mind how the clothes would hang without a body.

Character Shading Lead Byron Bashforth, Simulation Technical Director Emron Grover, Supervising Animator Gini Santos and Character Art Director Daniel Arriaga at “Coco” Long Lead Press Day, which included a filmmaker roundtable, presentations about the music, story, characters and set designs of the film, on August 3, 2017 at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, Calif. (Photo by Deborah Coleman / Pixar)

There were many details to think of such as how does a mouth work in a real skull. There was lots of anatomy that they needed to explore.

Simulation Technical Director Emron Grover, Supervising Animator Gini Santos and Character Art Director Daniel Arriaga at “Coco” Long Lead Press Day, which included a filmmaker roundtable, presentations about the music, story, characters and set designs of the film, on August 4, 2017 at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, Calif. (Photo by Deborah Coleman / Pixar)

Design questions when thinking about how to create the skeletons:

How do you show a range of emotions?

Would the skulls wear face paint?

Do they have hair? Wigs?

Was face painting distracting?

Where do you put face paint? Where does it stretch?

All of these questions brought out design problems that needed to be discussed and worked on to make the skeleton look they wanted to achieve.

Animation Process of Creating Skeletons

Supervising Animator Gini Santos shated that Pixar never animated skeletons before. They had to think of ways to respect structure and design with skeleton motion.

First, they start with a rig which is a 3D models used in animation. Then they would have the character start walk cycle to see how it would it propel itself. They had to keep in mind that skeletons are much lighter in weight.

Then they performed a wedge test to see the varying degrees of how you can separate bones.

Then, they had to consider physicality. This is what would determin the personality and behavior of the skeleton.

To do this, they look towards vision of the director.

When creating the skeletons, they committed to having eyes and also committed to no tongues.

Simulation Technical Director Emron Grover discussed the challenges of making clothes for skeletons.

With cloth collisions, the simulator tells how to animate. But, the collision system was not enough. They worked for years to improve it.

Director Lee Unkrich told them to embrace the skeleton and see the bones. With this, they Kept ridges between fused radius and ulna and tibia and fibula. Then, they kept the knee bone separated for shaping.

Character Shading Lead Byron Bashforth shared how they had to create a program to work with all of the bones. In a skeleton, there are 127 bones, so there were thousands of bones to work with on the movie Coco.

When program runs, the skeletons are shaded.

Bashforth then discussed how do you make bones appealing and more stylized. They needed to have realistic features too. To do these things, they sampled real bones from a variety of animals and fed them into the program.

While learning about the skeletons for the movie Coco, it reminded me of the massive amount of work that happens to create one movie. Listening to all of animators speak, you feel a sense of imagination and technology going hand-in-hand. Creating new animation programs to problem solves seems to me exactly what Disney Pixar is all about.

Character Shading Lead Byron Bashforth, Simulation Technical Director Emron Grover, Supervising Animator Gini Santos and Character Art Director Daniel Arriaga at “Coco” Long Lead Press Day, which included a filmmaker roundtable, presentations about the music, story, characters and set designs of the film, on August 4, 2017 at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, Calif. (Photo by Deborah Coleman / Pixar)

Now that you have learned all about the skeletons, take a look at the trailer to see how the skeletons will look in the upcoming movie!

Follow Pixar Coco on Social Media to find the latest information

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Stay tuned in the next few months to learn more about the movie Coco!

COCO opens in theaters everywhere on November 22nd!

Comments

Sarah L says

October 2, 2017 at 11:24 pm

What a lot of thought at work went into these skeletons. I want to see the movie.
Adriane says

October 3, 2017 at 4:07 am

Fascinating! I want to see it 🙂
Janet W. says

October 3, 2017 at 8:01 am

This is so interesting! I love the skeletons they came up with! They are all so unique!
Julie Wood says

October 3, 2017 at 8:35 am

This is such a creative and well made movie! I need to take the kids to see it! I see that it comes out next month!
Cynthia R says

October 3, 2017 at 10:01 am

I have always thought these animation cartoonist creators are so cool, probably the coolest job out there, looks so fun and how talented are these people!
Dandi D says

October 3, 2017 at 12:09 pm

This looks like a movie that my niece and nephew would really enjoy!
Christina A. says

October 3, 2017 at 9:49 pm

I cannot wait to see this one! I actually visited Disney Pixar Studios last year and I was just AMAZED at the work that went into each and every film! It’s an amazing place!
Jana Leah says

October 4, 2017 at 5:55 pm

How fascinating. I would have loved to be able to go to this event.
Richard Hicks says

October 6, 2017 at 12:58 pm

I am amazed at how this is done. Takes lots of talent.
Stacy says

October 8, 2017 at 5:01 am

I love that Disney/Pixar animators pay so much attention to detail, like how the clothes will fit on the skeletons without bodies. Also that they study so much anatomy to get realistic movement on the skeletons. I am so excited to see this movie!
Cheryl says

October 8, 2017 at 1:46 pm

This looks like it will be a fun movie. The characters remind me of Day of the Dead.
Sherrie Cruson says

October 8, 2017 at 9:38 pm

Wow these people are amazingly talented!
Zoey says

October 9, 2017 at 4:10 am

I’m really looking forward to this movie. It seems like the animation is going to be gorgeous. And Pixar pretty much never lets me down.
Lynda Roberson says

October 10, 2017 at 3:23 am

I love Skeletons can’t wait!
Tammy Woodall says

November 7, 2017 at 3:29 pm

Animation has come so far — it’s unreal what they can do now. I remember watching Roger Rabbit years ago and it was the first animated movie that showed the characters shadow and was deemed a great feat at the time. Now with technology, it is just amazing what they can do.. This was very interesting post. Thanks.
ellen beck says

November 29, 2017 at 1:02 am

I am amazed by Pixar. It really has taken animation to a whole new level. To me, it is almost 3D compared to the old fashioned cartoons. So lifelike and the movements so smooth and natural.