For centuries, people have called out to the universe looking for answers, but the universe has yet to answer back. That’s until the universe gets a call from Elio, an 11-year-old space fanatic with an active imagination and a huge alien obsession. Elio’s favorite pastime is trying to make contact with aliens, and as someone who desperately wants to get abducted, he’s over the moon, literally, when he’s beamed up to a special place in space where planetary leaders convene.
But what Elio really wants is a place to belong, especially after his parents passed away when he was younger. He’s lonely and feels unwanted, but when he sees this magnificence in space—the promise of life—he puts all his energy into that, believing that’s where he’ll find true connection. He often dreams of going to another world where he’s accepted for who he is. But is he trying to avoid connecting with humans by putting that energy into trying to contact aliens rather than reaching out to people around him?
Disney and Pixar’s original, all-new feature film Elio introduces viewers to a world(s) of the unknown when Elio makes first contact with aliens and is beamed up to the Communiverse, an interplanetary organization with representatives from galaxies far and wide. Mistakenly identified as Earth’s leader, Elio must form new bonds with eccentric alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions, and somehow discover who and where he is truly meant to be.
To celebrate Elio’s release, The Koalition spoke to Jasmine Derry, Simulation TD (Technical Director), who specializes in the technical aspects of creating and managing simulations, such as fluid dynamics, smoke, fire, and other effects that require physics-based modeling and computation. Derry was responsible for ensuring the Elio simulations were realistic, consistent, and integrated seamlessly with other visual elements in the film.
While Elio is a sci-fi adventure fueled by imagination, the film is rooted in research. Meetings with Dr. Jill Tarter, one of the founding members of the SETI Institute who also worked with Carl Sagan. As an astronomer who’s studied extraterrestrial intelligence, Dr. Tarter taught filmmakers and animators to think about space in a more expansive way that in turn makes them feel more connected here. As Earthlings, there’s a strong theme of connection in this story that really resonated with everyone.
One of the beautiful elements of Pixar movies is the ability to blend fantasy with hard-hitting realities. There’s a scene in the beginning half of Elio where he has just lost his parents, roaming the room of an exhibit learning about the Voyager space probe. His heartbreak is interwoven with his emotional connection to space travel. It is in this moment you realize Elio didn’t just lose his parents but his sense of home.
For filmmakers, designing and crafting the characters for Disney and Pixar’s Elio felt in some ways like working on two different films. From early on, they knew they would be designing two very distinct worlds. Earth was clearly based on authentic military research, while the Communiverse was grounded in the tiny details of nature, lending an organic order the audience will recognize. Through that amazing macro-photographic research, they tried to look at space in a new way.
Finding the look of Elio wasn’t an easy task, taking years from an initial idea and drawing to the finished polished look. “The process is that you get the script, and our voice actors, or sometimes our scratch voice actors, will read the script and get a certain emotion out of it. It’s actually our storyboard artist who will get a first pass at figuring out what [a character] looks like because scripts are only words on a page, but our storyboard artists are the first visual artists to get in there and see what that motion is and try to find a way to support the script. Sometimes there will be cases where our storyboard artists or even our layout artists or animators will find something unique, find something to pull out of the script that maybe wasn’t in there in the first place. Or find something that’s really inspiring and looks really cool, and we’ll go with that. But the foundation is the script, and at Pixar we’re always open to making new discoveries and making new changes along the way if it looks really compelling, if it supports the story.”
“You have a full script, now you have a full animatic, and you have it all in layout. It works in passes. I would say from start to end of a film, it’ll take anywhere from four to six, sometimes even more than six years, but I would say even with each character, it’ll take multiple years to get that to what we see on the screen. Like the way that Helix, for example, looks with words in a script is different from what he looked like in his first original concept art, which is different from what he looked like when we made a first 3D model, which is different from whenever we actually had to make him move.”
Ambassador Helix (voiced by Brandon Moon) of Falluvinum, one of the more ancient members of this intergalactic senate. He’s welcoming, effervescent, and a lover of parties and words—most of all his own. Helix has seen it all, or so he thinks. He’s a little pompous—a fancy ambassador who always has the Communiverse’s official drink—glorp—in hand. He’s been on the job for quite some time and can’t wait to take Elio under his wing.
“Helix is one of the Communs, and he’s just very, very bouncy. I love the way he bounces around. He always has his little glass gorp in his hand, and if you pay close attention, he has these little jowls or little fronds that kind of bounce along with him, and his tummy bounces too whenever he walks around. That’s something the simulation department would simulate because that wasn’t something the animators put in there. We added a little bit of extra jiggle in there. I think it looks really cool and a little bit cute to me, and that movement really supported his acting and supported his character. What does that action look like? How long does that take? Several years. It’s something we’re always kind of trying to discover along the way. But after the script is dropped, it maybe takes a couple of years to really get the 3D animation, and the motion locked down. I would say it’ll take a couple of years for sure.”
“One really big challenge for our department was Elio’s cape. Our animators are responsible for the acting of Elio, how he moves his body through the scene, but the animators don’t really touch the cape, and they don’t really do anything with, like, the hair. What will happen is we’ll get a fully animated Elio for a shot, but the cape is stiff; the cape is just stuck. What we’ll do is use things like constraints and material properties and velocity fields and physics in order to simulate what the cloth will look like when it’s moving through space and when Elio is turning his body this way or when he’s flying through space on a communiverse disc. Then we’ll try to find a way for the cape to look believable but also support his acting, support the silhouette, and also support the emotion in a shot in the film.”
“The cape had a different behavior on Earth than it does in space, and the cape also has a different behavior when there’s gravity versus when the gravity gets pushed to the right all of a sudden. So, each time it’s different behavior for the cape, it’s different behavior in acting from Elio. But also, it’s different velocity fields we’re applying, differenty, and different forces we’re applying. Each one is a different behavior, and they all presented their own unique challenges.”
A big part of the world on Earth takes place at a military base set on the Northern Californian coast. Everyone, except Elio, wears the same Air Force uniform—muted tan camouflage. The sets are acres of tarmac and Brutalist concrete buildings—very hard-edged, rectangular with a lot of repetition and symmetry. Elio stands out in this monochromatic world by being and looking quirky and colorful.
Elio attends camp in a redwood forest— untamed wilderness providing an almost enchanted backdrop for Elio’s alien abduction. It’s an unearthly transition from the rigid setting of the military base to the vibrant world known as the Communiverse. The contrast is fun—the Communiverse is all curves and translucent surfaces, inspired by macro photography. By just looking through the microscope, it can transport you to an astonishing world very different from what audiences have come to expect. Inspired by everything from tiny mushrooms and fungus to crystals and microscopic sea creatures. Elio creates a fresh take on space.
A year alone was spent designing a colorful cast of aliens with a carefully calibrated palette. Since there would be multiple alien ambassadors on screen at the same time and their colors had to work together in harmony—like the Communiverse itself. Elio, of course, is the link between contrasting worlds where humans and aliens, young and old, and peacemakers and warlords ultimately have more in common than anyone imagines.
“The aliens we have in this film are not creatures we know or can point out and identify, but I will say for a lot of them, we were inspired by animals that exist in the world already. I think a lot of people think Grigon looks a lot like a slug or an inchworm. I would say Ambassador Questa looks a lot like a manta ray.” Voiced by Jameela Jamil, Questa is the leader of the planet Gom and one of the highest-ranking members of the Communiverse. A 15-foot-tall leafy sea dragon with a soothing voice, Questa is an optimist looking to discover the best in every lifeform she meets. Extremely intuitive with the ability to read minds, Questa is all about intense eye contact and has no concept of personal space. Her keen intuition and empathy guide her in the most complex of Communiverse quandaries.
“As animators, we are not able to just throw everything out of the window. We are able to break some rules; we are able to maybe blend the behavior of this animal with this animal to create this unique expression for our aliens, but the most important thing is that it is believable for our audience. So, it must be based on something that makes sense for the shape of the character but also the character’s personality. For example, Grigon, the warlord ruler of the planet Hylurg, is round, bouncy, and friendly, but Grigon is more rigid, strict, and sharp, so we want each alien to feel unique and also to kind of match their personality.”
To learn more about Elio, check out our full interview with Derry in the video above. Elio releases in theaters on June 20th.
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