Ronnie del Carmen boards from Coco
Pixar is doing an amazing series of Instagram posts on the story artists who worked on Coco, sharing a selection of panels by each individual artist.
Ronnie del Carmen only worked 80 hours on Coco (they specify the amount of work each artist did on the film), so I'm thinking the scene these boards are from is the only one he worked on. If you've seen Coco you know this scene. It is very emotional and dramatic.
Often when I'm looking at production boards I'm amazed by the simplicity of the drawings. These are only the absolute basics needed to understand the scene. There is no need to go overboard on detail. In fact you can see that Ronnie is very conscious of where he adds details in his drawing.
In the second drawing, which is a wider shot, Ronnie uses the detail to draw your eye to the hammock. And instead of drawing in the entire cluttered interior of the hut, he uses a simple darker tone. More important than the specific details is the specific feeling the audience should have.
Notice how in most of the closer drawings he doesn't bother with backgrounds whatsoever, and we don't miss them. We know where we are, we don't need to be reminded. If you've browsed this blog you have probably noticed that I'm a bit of a Ronnie del Carmen-fan. It is pretty rare to actually see boards he does at Pixar, although there are a few of them in some of the art-of books. So to get a little glimpse of this typical heartfelt Ronnie-scene is pretty awesome.
It's also interesting to compare these boards with the final scene. I found some stills online, that I posted below. It seems as if the scene ended up very close to these storyboards, although it is a bit difficult to say this based on only nine panels. The only shot I couldn't find was the one of Héctor and Miguel together. It might also be from a different scene?
