Pixar's "Elio" takes an 11-year-old boy, is looking forward to being kidnapped by foreigners, an adventure of a lifetime when it is articulated to communication, another interplanetary space station filled with foreign representatives of galaxies far and widely. While Pixar took us into space in films such as "Wall-E" and "Lighttyear", the audience never explored a world like communication.

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During the early day of the press campus "Pixar Animation" in Emerivil, California, /The film attended the presentation of "Elio" scenes A total of about 25 minutes and a guided tour behind the scenes of the development and production of the animated adventure. The introduction of Elio, production designer Charlie Esesup and Visual Effects Supervisor Claudia Jung Sani spoke about creating a vibrant, exciting scientific world for Elio, the one who had previously designed and animated. As Sani said:

"In Pixar, and really in our entire industry, I really believe that what is feasible in computer graphics is limited now only by our imagination. We have made water, we have made the world of the dead, we have made water, out of fire and, well, good from dead (and souls).

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And they really used all their technology, including a new aspect that was still in the prototype stages. (Pixar has a habit of breaking up a new terrain with its productions, as it happened at Dori's "finding".. In fact, this development has changed the production pipeline for the whole film.

But before we dug into the specifics, we need to explain exactly what communication is in the center of Elio.

When Elio is kidnapped by aliens, which he is actively trying to achieve by writing countless messages in the sand and sending radio messages to the sky, he ends up in communication. It consists of four parabolic rotating discs, which look like a colorful, cosmic sphere of jigsaw with topography and structures on both sides of each disc. Lete let's let Charlie Essup detail exactly what they came up with when they created what he called a "unique, glittering version of the space that was never seen in the film". He explained:

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"Communiv is a colorful, interplanetary space station with the primary purpose of maintaining peace and security in the universe. There are 16 planets with embassies for ambassadors and their delegations. Four different ecosystems are presented on rotating disks: there is a volcanic warm disco.

Each drive is nice in its own way, with an organic, glittering look of countless colors that touches the night time Pandora's landscapes in Jamesiames Cameron's Avatar, But with an even lesser known design, as structures take inspiration from microscopic organisms. And since communication consists of those four rotating parabolic discs where both sides are inhabited by buildings, aliens and what not, there is always something stunning to catch in the background, no matter which you are focused on the story.

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However, something that this beautiful is with certain challenges. And here comes Pixar's latest innovation: a tool called Luna.

Since Pixar developed the visual style for "Elio", the team understood something about the environment they created for communication: much of what they created in this world space station releasing light, which created a challenge in perfecting the look of the film, without completing the lighting or shading of the film. Claudia Jung Sani explained in the presentation:

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"In past performances, materials, shading and lighting actually happen to the last step of production. It's kind of strange, not like real life. This is especially great when everything that is made of luminescent and pro -concaring materials. We had to move lighting and shading in our process.

As Sani said, "Luna has allowed us to use both lighting and camera at the same time to find out how to lead our eyes and tell a story." The result is the glittering world you can see in action in the latest trailer for "Elio" right here:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is2Meozrnx0

Charlie Essesup is a veteran of "Visual Effects" who worked in "Industrial Lights and Magic" in the 1980s and 1990s films such as "Innerspace" and "Hook" before heading to Pixar as a designer of film production such as "Monsters, Inc." and "Ratuatuil". He will step down with "Elio" as his latest project, so he has seen a lot of innovation in both VFX and animation, but Luna is one of the highest developments in animation technology. Essesup said:

"We wouldn't see the sets or characters illuminated to the very end where all these possibilities were presented, but there would not always be time to follow them. I am proud of those early movies, but there is much more possible for (...) to be able to see a beautiful picture much earlier."

Sani further explained how the production pipeline changed thanks to Luna's help:

"It was enough to inspire how," Oh, we can do it. We can first put the light. " Well, even if we were not interactive to see the set with full lights, which we really did, in fact, looking at them when we did.

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Sani felt like Luna also helped bridge the gap between art and technology that often exists on animated films. She noted:

"I think it's interesting, because traditionally there is usually a separation between art and technology and you feel it. You're like," Oh, I have to go back to my computer and program it. " But I think Elio was the first time I experienced together.

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As for whether this is new to Pixar, Luna is not yet there. While doing "Elio", Sani noted that Luna is still in the "pre-alpha" prototype phase. So, although helped in the production of Elio, it may not be ready for primary times. But even so, Sani said, "I think future shows will use it even more."

For the time being, we will only have to be amazed at what Luna helped Pixar make it when the film hit theaters on June 25, 2025.