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How advancements in rendering and effects technology helped Pixar bring the characters and worlds of.Coco to life - literally

Coco is Pixar's 19th feature film, and in many ways is unlike anything the studio has done before. Following the adventures of 12-year-old Mexican boy Miguel, as he grapples with his familys celebration of the Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) holiday, Coco is packed with colour and culture, along with some of the richest detail ever seen in a Pixar Film.

THE WORLD OF COCO

As happens on any Pixar outing, the filmmakers embarked on an enormous amount of research to help tell the story of Coco and obtain visual inspiration. "We went down to Mexico many times, on several trips," says Unkrich. "We were there experiencing Dia de los Muertos. Harley Jessup, my production designer, well, I wouldn't be surprised if he shot over 100,000 _ photographs on these trips. And Danielle Feinberg, who is my director of photography for lighting, she shot an enormous number of photographs and they ended up inspiring all of the set designers and the shader writers. I really wanted to add a rich authenticity to all of the textures and just the feel of the worlds. They really did an amazing job capturing a huge amount of reference material that ended up being used to create all the models, sets, shaders - pretty much everything."

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