Pixar Animation Studios has just released a clip from its upcoming short film Lava.
Directed by James Ford Murphy, Lava tells the love story of two Hawaiian volcanos. The volcanos are voiced by Hawaiian singers Kuana Torres Kahele and Napua Greig.
Having mountains be actual characters provided an interesting challenge for the Pixar artistic team. Murphy told Yahoo!:
“We struggled with it a lot…But I feel like, once we were able to embrace the limitations of it, it unlocked all sorts of possibilities. I love that about animation: You can really make a mountain come alive. You can’t do that in another medium.”
Murphy also said that face of Uku (the volcano in the clip) is an “amalgam of the faces of Kuana Torres Kahele, the musician who is the voice of the mountain; Honeymooners star Jackie Gleeson; and the bulldog in the Chuck Jones animated classic ‘Feed the Kitty,'” which Murphy said is probably his all-time favorite cartoon short. “That cartoon has so much heart and so much of the humor comes from genuine emotion…That was a major inspiration for us.”
Lava will continue to screen at various film festivals and events and will play in front of Pixar’s next animated feature Inside Out which opens in U.S. theaters on June 19th, 2015.
Source: Yahoo Movies
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