Water is a huge part of Raya and the Last Dragon, and the water in the film looks so incredible because we’ve been able to build even further upon the water authoring pipeline that we first built on Moana and improved on Frozen 2. Young Raya’s fighting sticks are Filipino Arnis sticks, the food in the film is recognizably dishes like fish amok, tom yam, chicken satay and more, Raya’s main mode of transport is her pet Tuk Tuk, who has the same name as those motorbike carriages that can be found all over Southeast Asia the list goes on and on.įrom a rendering technology perspective, Raya and the Last Dragon in a lot of ways represents the culmination of a huge number of many-year-long initiatives that began on previous films. Raya and the Last Dragon has spectacular fight scenes with real combat, and the fighting styles aren’t just made up- they’re directly drawn from Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The way I get to contribute to our films is always in the technical realm, but thanks to Fawn Veerasunthorn, Scott Sakamoto, Adele Lim, Osnat Shurer, Paul Briggs, and Dean Wellins, this is the first time where I feel like I maybe made some small, tiny, but important contribution creatively too! These discussions continued for years throughout the production process, and throughlines from those discussions can be seen everywhere from the movie, from major thematic elements like the importance of food and sharing meals in the world of Kumandra, all the way down to tiny details like young Raya taking off her shoes when entering the Dragon Gem chamber. The Druun as a concept and villain in Raya and the Last Dragon actually long predate the Covid-19 pandemic they’ve been a part of every version of the movie going back years, but the Druun’s role in the movie’s plot meant that the onset of the pandemic suddenly lent extra weight to this movie’s core message.Īlso, as someone of Asian descent, I’m so so proud that Raya and the Last Dragon’s basis is found in diverse Southeast Asian cultures.Įarly in the movie’s conceptualization, before the movie even had a title or a main character, the movie’s producers and directors and story team reached out to all of the people in the studio of Asian descent and engaged us in discussing how the Asian cultures we came from shaped our lives and our families. In the end though, all of the trials and tribulations this production saw were more than worthwhile Raya and the Last Dragon is the most beautiful film we’ve ever made, and the movie has a message and story about trust that is deeply relevant for the present time. Just as production was getting into the swing of things last year, the Covid-19 pandemic forced the physical studio building to temporarily shut down, and the studio’s systems/infrastructure teams had to scramble and go to heroic lengths to get production back up and running again from around 400 different homes.Īs a result, Raya and the Last Dragon is the first Disney Animation film made entirely from our homes instead of from the famous “hat building”.
The story took time to really get right, the technology side of things saw many challenges and changes, and the main production of the film ran headfirst into the Covid-19 pandemic. Raya and the Last Dragon was an incredibly difficult film to make, in every possible aspect.
I’ve been working on Raya and the Last Dragon in some form or another since early 2018, and Raya and the Last Dragon is the first original film I’ve worked on at Disney Animation that I was able to witness from the very earliest idea all the way through to release every other project I’ve worked on up until now was either based on a previous idea or began before I started at the studio. The first of these is Raya and the Last Dragon, which is simultaneously out in theaters and available on Disney+ Premiere Access on the day this post is being released. After a break in 2020, Walt Disney Animation Studios has two films lined up for release in 2021!
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