AnimationWorld Magazine — November 1, 2017
Concept Artist Ana Ramírez Brings Homegrown Touch to Pixar’s ‘Coco’
Pixar’s Coco, the forthcoming Day of the Dead-themed animated feature set for release on November 22, is directed by Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3) alongside writer and co-director Adrian Molina and producer Darla K. Anderson.
A multi-generational story about the power of family relationships, Coco follows Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez), who lives in a lively Mexican village but comes from a family of shoemakers that may be the town’s only music-hating household. For generations, the Riveras have banned music because they believe they’ve been cursed by it; as their family history goes, Miguel’s great-great-grandfather abandoned his wife decades earlier to follow his own dreams of performing, leaving Imelda (Miguel’s great-great-grandmother) to take control as the matriarch of the now-thriving Rivera line and declare music dead to the family forever.
But Miguel harbors a secret desire to seize his musical moment, inspired by his favorite singer of all time, the late Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt). It’s only after Miguel discovers an amazing link between himself and De la Cruz that he takes action to emulate the famous singer and, in doing so, accidentally enters the Land of the Dead.
In the underworld, Miguel encounters the souls of his own family — generations’ worth of long-dead but no less vivacious Rivera ancestors, including great-great-grandmother Imelda. Still, given the opportunity to roam around the Land of the Dead, Miguel decides to track down De la Cruz himself. He teams up with a friendly trickster named Hector (Gael García Bernal) to find De la Cruz, earn his family’s blessing to perform, and return to the Land of the Living before time runs out.
Pixar concept artist and CalArts alum Ana Ramírez recently detailed her contributions to creating the lively, colorful world of Coco at this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival, speaking to a packed and very enthusiastic house. (Check out her graduate film, So Long, Yupi, on Vimeo.) Ramírez described the research into her native Mexican heritage conducted by the filmmaking team, and later sat down with AWN to discuss her approach to her work, her designs for one of the film’s central characters, Mama Coco, and her newly-discovered love of hand-drawn type.