Pixar Shares 'Coco' Secrets At Annecy Animation Festival
by The Daily Eye Team June 20 2017, 4:44 pm Estimated Reading Time: 1 min, 6 secsAn audience of animation students and assorted cartoon enthusiasts went cuckoo for “Coco,” as representatives of Pixar — co-director Adrian Molina and producer Darla K. Anderson — shared designs, insights and the first five minutes from the studio’s upcoming fall feature at the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival in Southern France on Friday. Inspired by the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos (or Day of the Dead), when the living honor their ancestors with gifts and celebration, “Coco” appears to be not only the most colorful Pixar film to date, but the first to concentrate so thoroughly on people of color. “I think this one’s going to be extra-specially more beautiful than all of the other Pixar films,” Anderson said, “but I’m biased.” According to Molina, true to Pixar tradition, the creative team behind “Coco” traveled to Mexico to research the culture and context of the story, which involves a 12-year-old boy named Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez), forbidden from playing music by his family, who sneaks out and steals a guitar from the mausoleum of local singing legend Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt) — a no-no for which he is banished to the land of the dead.