Luca's Transformation From Sea Monster to Human

 


I know Luca came out just last weekend so this will be a spoiler-free post!

What I want to talk about in regards to Pixar's newest animated film (aside from it being one of the cutest and funniest movies they've done!) is how the main characters Luca and Alberto, or just their species in general, transform from sea monsters to humans. There's one scene where we get some really cool shots of Luca slowly transforming. When I first saw it, I thought it was so cool! As the movie went on, I began to wonder how on earth they animated that. I have very basic knowledge on CG computer animation, but it's still so mind-blowing and I could only guess how they were able to do that. 

In Luca, the sea monsters all have scales, actual scales that pop out from the model and if you were to run your hand across it, you would feel all the bumps from that texture. Their ears and their "hair", too, are all vastly different materials than their human counterparts. So when Luca transforms, watching all of those features disappear and become replaced by smooth human skin and soft hair was very interesting to see. I could be thinking too hard on the "how," but I suppose being so interested in this industry has left me to watch movies like these in a different lens.

Comments

  1. Nicole InJune 28, 2021 at 2:54 AM

    I remember seeing a trailer for Luca and it was definitely a really cool animation! I also didn't expect the whole transformation thing from being a sea monster to a human!

    ReplyDelete
  2. N°5 (Chanel)June 28, 2021 at 2:57 AM

    I cried at the end of this film no joke, this movie is so charming and heartfelt that I want a sequel already ;____;

    On Disney+, they have a mini feature about 11 minutes about the making of Luca, the director and his colleagues visited Italy and did field research about how they came up with all the textures, landscaping, etc for the movie! So when you do get your animation job, hopefully, you get to do on field research trips and travel around the world lol! Looking forward to reading your future articles about animation movies Alyssa ;D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rachel VidaJune 28, 2021 at 3:30 PM

    Thanks for keeping it spoiler free, I'm planning on watching it once summer classes are done! I love hearing your perspective on these movies. I never really thought about the work that goes into the design and execution of animation films.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJuly 3, 2021 at 7:08 AM

    I love this movie! I just watched it a couple days ago, and I would like to watch it again! Everything in the movie is so cool and the storyline is awesome! After I watched it, I kept telling everyone to watch it because it is a really good movie.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stop-Motion Animation

Image
  We'll talk about something a little different here and that is stop-motion animation. You thought drawing each frame of animation is hard work? Try moving puppets around mere millimeters and taking a picture of it for each frame. Actually, both styles of animation are very hard work and take an incredible amount of practice and skill. Stop-motion is a lot more expensive though. Essentially that's what stop-motion animation is: taking a picture of something, moving it just a little bit, taking a picture again, and so on. It can get crazy complicated the more polished and detailed you want your animation to be. Some of the more well-known stop-motion animated movies consists of The Nightmare Before Christmas , Coraline , and the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special.  Each type of animation has its own kind of flair and magic to it, and stop-motion is no different. It has an aesthetic so unlike those of the hand-drawn or computer-animated variety. It's a different style
Read more

The Beauty of Hand-Drawn Animation

 Even though the majority of animation studios have been using computer-generated and 3D to make their movies in recent years, I still love and honestly prefer the look of the traditional 2D hand-drawn animation style. There was something a lot more magical about it and the way an animator could draw a character to life. Computers and 3D models are great, don't get me wrong, but it just doesn't give the same type of feeling that traditional animation does.  For traditional animation, it's the artist drawing everything that gets me. If you've seen a video of a rough animation (no colors, no background, just the pencil sketches), you could see the beauty of it, as if the character is actually moving on a piece of paper. It's also really hard to get something moving naturally as if it were in a three-dimensional space on paper. Good animators have done it though, and they do it really well. The study and do research, and even add their own personal flair that makes wh
Read more

Dreamworks, The Croods, and Animation Styles

Image
  Since I've been praising animation for all of my past posts, I thought it would be nice to switch it up a little and talk about some ... less amazing things. These are all my personal opinions, so keep that in mind.  Listen, I adored Dreamworks' animation style, specifically with their CG-animated ones. Whether it was Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, or Monsters Vs. Aliens , they all had this more gritty look to it. Not the oversaturated, big-eyed, kiddie vibe you get from other animation studios (not to put any of them down for it, every studio has its own style). I just like that Dreamworks had a more original look to their films. Emphasis on had. My example for this would be The Croods series, although you can definitely see this type of change in the How To Train Your Dragon trilogy and the more recent movies as well.  The first picture is from the first The Croods movie. Now for context, the Croods are a family of cavemen and the aesthetic of the first movie reflects that. You
Read more