- We are going to go behind the animation on Vivo.
- Vivo is about the story of our main protagonists,
a cute kinkajou who lives in Havana, Cuba,
and the challenges to get to Miami, Florida
to fulfill his owner's dream
of delivering a song for the woman he loves.
♪ Ladies and gentlemen, ♪
♪ I am Vivo the kinkajou ♪
♪ What's a Kinkajou ♪
♪ Oh baby, I think that you're ready ♪
♪ to learn a thing or two ♪
♪ Watch me swing as I sing at you ♪
♪ Every single thing I can think of ♪
♪ To make you scream, whoo ♪
- Calvin Hodge and his choreography team,
when they were designing the choreography,
he designed the entire song through all the dancers,
and through the legs,
and all of that stuff,
to be played in one shot.
That would have been dancers sort of representing
what could be Vivo's dance moves.
And then the background dancers
coming in and out of the scene,
we shot live action footage in reference
to a lot of these dance moves throughout
for even the background characters.
- The first time I watched this,
it was the most exciting,
because for me it was like,
wow, this version is even better
than whatever version we're going to make
in 3D CG, right?
- That was something that was both very exciting,
but also like animation,
like what?
That's hard for animation.
Animators had to work on designing
all the background characters
and all of the foreground characters
to work in animation at one time.
♪ You may be thinking what's a kinkajou ♪
♪ Doing playing music in Cuba ♪
♪ Don't you like usually live in the rainforest ♪
♪ Baby, I fell in the shipping crate as a baby ♪
♪ Next thing I knew I was somewhere new ♪
♪ I wasn't singing the same chorus ♪
♪ All I remember was being hungry ♪
♪ And running from somebody even hungrier ♪
♪ Chasing me up this very tree ♪
♪ But guess who came to the rescue ♪
♪ With his tres ♪
♪ Andres, yes ♪
- Flashback section of One of a Kind
was the opportunity to push the dial up
in terms of cuteness.
- My co-director, Brandon Jeffords,
had really wanted to see
the moment of connection between Andres and Vivo.
And that moment of finding him as a baby
was pitched just as a storyboard.
It really was Lin's idea and Lin's dream
that it would start our music,
and so he said,
"I will take that that bit,
"and I'll put it into the opening song."
So we did this idea that we would freeze time
and let him go back in,
and so he becomes sort of the narrator.
If this was a Broadway musical,
it would be, sort of, the actor would have stepped forward
and is addressing the audience directly.
- We took the Plaza Vieja
and make it feel a little bit different,
like going back in time in Havana
to before the 2000s.
We reuse the present time Plaza
and reset dress,
changing the textures,
changing the look of the windows,
the doors, the architecture.
So you'll see a little bit more decay,
and at the same time,
the color palette is more limited.
For Vivo and Andres,
we want to make them feel very unique,
very specific,
and at the same time,
we didn't want to make them feel
either realistic or completely cartoony.
Vivo was the most challenging.
From a design standpoint,
it was a tricky balance of making feel
still an animal and use the specifics of a kinkajou,
in terms of how his ability to do acrobatics,
hang out, jam,
you know, the flexibility,
and at the same time make him feel and look
like an excellent dancer.
- Our character designer, Joe Moshier,
looked at a lot of kinkajou photos and reference,
and I think he did him justice,
except for the more realistic, very long tongue.
- Sticky what now?
- We are going to the Mambo Cabana!
- The Mambo the what what?
- One of the songs that existed in the earliest demos
was Mambo Cabana,
which tells the story of Andres's love affair with Marta
from many years ago.
We wanted it to be something that Andres
is in his dream state,
because musical numbers are an alibi.
They don't have to be grounded by reality.
You can do what you want,
and so a lot of times in animation,
things are getting pretty realistic and stuff.
And so we're always like now looking like,
"How can we make it more cartoon,
"make it more animated?"
- Really fun to design.
You don't have often very many opportunities
to do that in CG feature.
3D Miami is supposed to be the real Miami in our story,
while the 2D Miami is an illusion.
It's a fantasy that belongs to Andres and Vivo.
- We decided to do in a 2D style,
reminiscent of 1950s album covers
and old travel postcards.
- And the whole sequence looked like illustrations.
♪ I bounce to the beat of my own drum ♪
♪ I'm a wow in a world full of ho-hum ♪
♪ I'm a wild young lady but you know sum’n? ♪
♪ I'd rather be at home with my own drum ♪
- Really did sort of very modern motion graphics
and just literally blow the walls off of the set.
- That's how we designed the whole sequence.
Is based on what we see in Gabi's room,
in terms of the shape.
You, you know, were things we refer in
that are similar to Gabi's hair
or Gabi's colors or her personality,
or bringing things that she will do by herself,
because she's so creative.
Part of the sequence is actually looking like chalkboard,
like the drawings that she's drawn in the walls of her room.
We made it look like she's bringing Vivo
into her imagination.
- Poor Vivo, stranded, running around,
being scared of this girl
who's just like trying to hug him and love him,
but he's just like,
"Please stay away from me.
"How do I get out of this?"
And so that was another one
where we used the animation to reflect his inner turmoil.
The music transfers so much emotion so quickly.
And so when people hear the songs,
they understand who these characters are.
- Make sure to check out Vivo,
only on Netflix.