Raya and the Last Dragon/Production

In October 2018, Deadline Hollywood reported Disney was developing a fantasy animated film that was being produced by Osnat Shurer from a screenplay by Adele Lim, and directed by Paul Briggs and Dean Wellins. Most of the filmmakers had been involved in other Disney films, including Frozen (2013), Zootopia (2016), and Moana (2016). In August 2019, Disney announced the film during its D23 Expo Walt Disney Animation Studios' presentation; Cassie Steele had been cast as Raya and Awkwafina was to play Sisu.
In August 2020, Disney announced the replacement of several cast and crew members. Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada replaced Briggs and Wellins as directors, and the latter two were demoted to co-directors. Story writer John Ripa later also replaced Wellins as a co-director, and Wellins was only credited as a contributing writer in the final film. Kiel Murray, who had co-written the screenplays for Pixar's Cars (2006) and Cars 3 (2017), also contributed to the story for Raya. Qui Nguyen joined Lim as co-writer and Peter Del Vecho joined Shurer as producer. Kelly Marie Tran replaced Steele to conform to character and plot changes; Shurer said the cast must embody the same spirit as the character and that Tran was better suited to the role.
According to Hall, Disney recast the role because Raya was originally conceived as a "stoic loner" but the team began to infuse her with "levity" and "swagger", characteristics similar to those of Guardians of the Galaxy's (2014) Star-Lord. Tran had unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Raya but in January 2020, when Tran replaced Steele as Raya, she assumed Disney had already rejected her but was now hiring her to replace the lead actor. Disney separately hired each cast member and individually recorded their lines, keeping the actors' identities secret from each other until they accidentally discovered the others' involvement in the film before Disney revealed them to the cast. Despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the film industry, the cast worked and successfully completed the project from their homes. The film's budget was at least $100 million.
=== Development and design ===
Raya and the Last Dragon is inspired by traditional Southeast Asian cultures. The production team consulted experts from Southeast Asia Story Trust to ensure an accurate cultural representation in the film, and they emphasized the importance of avoiding stereotypical portrayals of Asian characters. To conduct background research, the production team traveled to Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines; they were inspired by the local sense of acceptance, unity, and trust, which they adopted as themes for the film. The production team explored ways to express Kumandra's characteristics; they designed its five fractured lands with unique climates and characteristics to reflect the diverse beliefs and culture of their people, and each land and its people represent a mandala icon revolving around Kumandra. This is inspired by the local religious teaching that everything is centered around a common belief system or cosmology. They used unconventional shapes, experimented with scale and color, and placed objects in unexpected locations to convey Kumandra's expression of fantasy. Kumandra's Dragon River is inspired by the Mekong. Dynamic colors in each land indicate Raya's location in the film.
According to character art director Shiyoon Kim:At the core of our film are two characters, their arc, and their relationship, so I tried to imagine the two of them at different moments in their journey. [I] sketched the two as pals who hang out and share secrets, growing closer and opening up over time.
— The production team focused the film on Raya and Sisu, and their conflicting characteristics of trust issues and over-trusting are the basis for the film's humor and emotion. The team initially separately designed the characters, drawing several designs of Raya and Sisu but they felt that something was lacking and their designs were incomplete, prompting them to design the characters together, which helped them better understand how they visually and thematically complemented each other.
Raya was conceived as a serious swordswoman who focuses on finding Sisu, and Sisu was conceived as a dragon trapped in her human form who refused to help Raya. As writing progressed, Raya softened and Sisu became more helpful; the writers approached Raya as a character who acts flawlessly and Sisu as one who does everything sideways. The production team ensured throughout the film, Raya's observed quality would be culturally authentic, functional for her role as a swordswoman, and reflective of her emotional journey. Her costume is based on a traditional sabai top and dhoti pants with cultural dragon references, and her high-collar cape and large hat act as protective layers the team intended to remove as she emotionally evolves in the film. The team designed Raya with a feminine nose and strong, prominent cheekbones; they aimed to make her exceptionally expressive and emotionally diverse but mainly focused on her playful, comedic aspects.
Sisu and the other dragons are inspired by the naga, mythical beings who can manifest as serpents or humans and are associated with water. The team explored many silhouettes and attitudes of Sisu that ranged from ethereal and magical to ferocious and skeptical. Specific design elements in Sisu's dragon form were retained in her human attire to create a cohesive, recognizable character design.
The poses of the dragon statues represent the production team's efforts to convey the same sense of grandeur dragons have in Southeast Asian culture. The production team drew inspiration from the naga's cultural influence and powerful presence in Southeast Asia, seeking to evoke the feeling of them existing in an invisible world beyond their own. As a result, all of the dragons except Sisu were revered and similarly reflect this effect. The designers gave the dragons' footsteps colorful, refracted ripples of light to emphasize their cultural association with water, among other design elements, including glowing characteristics, fluid grooms and textures, scales, and translucent fins.
Water is a central element in the story; it is used used to illustrate Raya's emotional growth. Colored bodies of water represent moments in which Raya feels close to those around her while high-contrast, dark-colored ones represent her distrust and insecurity. The Druun were approached as embodiments of hopelessness and dread, and were given a dynamic, cloudy form that is difficult to perceive as a continuous form; their concepts include aquatic life, water boiling in reverse, dough folding in on itself, black holes, and parasitic behaviors.
Dragons also influenced the design of Heart; dragons appear in sacred fortresses and palaces, and serve as cultural symbols. The production team aimed to make Heart's Pond a magical, sacred place because it represents an important character moment between Raya and her father, incorporating elements of flowers that only bloom at night. While researching these flowers, they came across an art installation involving lamps that would brighten and dim. This inspired them to create Kumandra flowers, which light up when the Dragon Gem is near.
Tail was intended as the wild west of Kumandra, drawing elements from fantasy plateaus and sand waterfalls. Talon is inspired by Southeast-Asian floating markets and night markets. The designers approached Talon as a five-level pier, which they envisioned starting at the top level; as the waterline dropped due to drought, new platforms would be constructed underneath. Spine's design was influenced by bamboo, and focused on natural forms and textures. Its design includes a black, bamboo frame and a colossal, woolly-mammoth-like tusked roofline with large, stone foundations from the surrounding mountain. The production team experimented with shadows and lighting to create a sense of mystery and drama for Spine's design.
Fang's design reflects its commitment to strict principles; design elements include brutalism and strong, monolithic, rigid geometric shapes. The production team explored stretching Fang buildings and using repeated rooflines to evoke the ominous sensation of a large creature peering down. In the Fang Palace, tall, vertical banners and giant, gold, fang-like sculptures hang ominously from high ceilings. Their rectangular, sharp edges and cold, sterile designs were meant to contrast the floral motifs and round, organic shapes of Heart.
To express Namaari's strength and power, the designers experimented with facial expressions and physicality, including her aggressive nature and fierce stare. They provided Namaari with a hard-edged outfit and a predominantly off-white color palette to express her tough personality. Young Namaari's costume is also designed to contrast her with young Raya; Namaari's stark, white and gold elements represent Fang's harsh lifestyle, contrasting with Raya's draped, soft, blue designs.
=== Animation and cinematography ===
Approximately 800 artists worked on the film; they used software applications such as Autodesk Maya, Houdini, and Nuke. The animation team mixed traditional and 3D animation to create a unique style of warmth, imperfection, and distinctiveness that resembles shadow puppets used in Chinese storytelling. The characters' costumes were constructed by folding long pieces of fabric, and the structure of the clothing did not heavily rely on seams; this departs from the traditional method of tailoring, which uses patterns as a guide.
The animation team used intricate lighting techniques to create Kumandra's diverse, atmospheric environments, which range from deserts to tropical forests. They used new techniques to depict the diversity of the crowd within each tribe, including reusing and remixing interchangeable parts to efficiently create diverse characters. They also used a system to manage the assets they were designing, which helped them confirm these elements looked correct and consistent throughout the film. It also ensured the data could be effectively used in the later stages of production. Talon and Tail were particularly complex to animate; Talon's complexities stem from its intricate, diverse elements and assets that needed to be moved around water. Despite Tail's minimalist landscape, the perspective needed to be very close to capture the desert floor; the manual modeling of cracks and the scattering of rocks and vegetation elements were added complexities.
The animators significantly expanded their crowd system, which was used to generate groups of characters and objects, to suit the film's diverse, complex scenes. They modified their existing workflows, tools and software. The animators also experimented with creatively controlled, computer-generated simulations and procedural algorithmic approaches. The in-house Skeleton Library that was based on Houdini software also helped to manage the complexity of the diverse elements.
Anisotropic distances—unequal distances in different directions—in Position-based Dynamics (PBD) and Boids simulation techniques were used to create intricate scenes, including beetles crawling on top of one another, massive schools of fish, and the movements of dragons. PBD is used to simulate the behavior of objects whereas Boid simulations involve modeling the flocking or herding behavior of creatures. Procedural animation layers were applied to simulate the movements of fish and dragons, which were automatically generated using algorithms. A technique called "distance integral invariant" was used to detect contacts between the dragons' feet and the ground, ensuring realistic interaction with the environment.
The film's cinematography focuses on emphasizing Raya's character and her distrust of the world. The animators created contrasting camera-and-lighting styles to illustrate trust and distrust, applying them sequence-to-sequence and shot-to-shot based on her story arc. For example, the distrustful Raya was captured with a wide-angle lens, deep focus, and a narrow color palette while the trusting Sisu was captured with a telephoto lens, shallow focus, and a broad color palette. To highlight the abrupt transition between Raya being thrown into the blue waters of the Dragon River in Heart to the scene six years later in Tail's desert, the cinematographers used light-distortion techniques to create a mirage illusion, accentuating the dramatic shift in lighting, color, climate, and water in the film.
Category:Production