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Raya and the Last Dragon

Production
Raya and the Last Dragon is inspired by traditional South East Asia cultures. The filmmakers consulted with Southeast Asia Story Trust experts to ensure an accurate cultural representation in the film. To conduct background research, they traveled to Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, where they were inspired by the local sense of acceptance, unity, and trust which they adopted as themes for the film. The artists explored various ways to express Kumandra's distinct characteristics and personalities, before consulting with the Trust and integrating cultural elements in their designs. Designing Kumandra's five fractured lands was challenging, and the filmmakers approached this by designing them with unique climates and characteristic to reflect the diverse beliefs and culture of their people, with each land and its people representing a mandala icon revolving around Kumandra, inspired by the religious, cultural principles teaching that everything is centered around a common belief sys­tem or cosmology. During the world-building of Kumandra, the filmmakers focused on the expression of fantasy through using unfamiliar shapes, playing with scale and color, and placing objects in unexpected locations. Kaumdra's Dragon River is inspired by the Mekong, and its dynamic colors in different lands are used to illustrate Raya's location in the film.

""At the core of our film are two characters, their arc, and their relationship, so I tried to imagine the two of them at different moments in their journey. [I] sketched the two as pals who hang out and share secrets, growing closer and opening up over time."

- Character art director Shiyoon Kim

The filmmakers focused the core of the film on Raya and Sisu, and their conflicting characteristics of trust issues and over-trusting acted as the basis for the film's humor and emotion. The visual development team initially designed the characters separately, drawing various designs of Raya and Sisu. However, they felt that there was something lacking and incomplete in their designs, and they realized the importance of designing them together, helping them better understand how they complemented each other both visually and thematically.

Raya was conceived as a serious swordswoman focusing on her goal to find Sisu, and Sisu was conceived as a dragon trapped in her human form who refused to help Raya. However, as the writing progresses, Raya softened and Sisu become more helpful; the writers approached Raya as a character who perform flawlessly and Sisu who does everything sideways. The designers ensured that Raya's observed quality would be culturally authentic, functional for her role as as a swordswoman, and reflective of her emotional journey throughout the film. They designed her with feminine nose and strong, prominent cheekbones qualities and her outfit based on traditional sabai top and dhoti pants with cultural dragon references; her high-collar cape and large hat acted as protective layers that the filmmakers intended to remove as she emotionally evolves with the film. They aimed to make Raya exceptionally expressive and emotionally diverse, focusing on her playful and comedic aspects. Raya's sword is inspired by the ancient dagger kris, and her fighting style is inspired by the Pencak Silat.

Sisu is inspired by the naga, mythical beings who can manifest as serpent or human and are usually associated with water. The designers are inspired by the naga's cultural influence and powerful presence in Southeast Asia that evokes a feeling that that they "actually exist in an invisible world of which we are not a part", and they seek to explore this concept in the story where the dragons were revered and similarly reflected this effect. They explored many silhouettes and attitudes of Sisu, ranging from ethereal and magical to the ferocious and skeptical, and they consulted with the Trust to help maintain her fantastical and unique characteristics while also addressing cultural customs and beliefs. Recreating Sisu in CGI was challenging; her unique, otherworldly form was exceptionally complex to rig, and her fluid shape needed to be done as both bipedal and quadrupedal. They understood that she would be very uncomfortable in her human form and accordingly adorned her with oversized attire. Specific design elements in her dragon form were intentionally retained in her human attire to create a cohesive and recognizable character design.

The poses of the stone, petrified dragons represents the designers' efforts to convey the same sense of grandeur, reverence, and awe-inspiring presence that dragons have in Southeast Asian culture. The dragons' footsteps radiate colorful, refracted ripples of light to emphasize their cultural association with water. They approached the dragons' designs based on their glowing characteristics and fluid grooms and textures, referencing various design elements such as scales and translucent fins.

A version of sampot pant was commonly used in most character designs, particularly the crowd. Heart set the tone for the other land. Dragon was a central aspect in its design, which appear in the film’s sacred fortress and palace and served as cultural symbols. The dragons’ design were influenced by water, which were reflected in Heart’s rounded-shape architecture designs that form pattern of ripples. The designers aimed to make Heart’s pond an exceptionally magical and sacred place because it represent an important character development moment between Raya and her father, incorporating elements of flowers that only bloom at night. While researching these flowers they were inspired by an art installation involving lamps that would grow stronger and dimmer based on a person’s location to create the Kumandra flowers, which would light up when the Dragon Gem, symbolic of hope, was near; illustrating an important theme in the story. The Heart Fortress is inspired by Angkor Wat, where five dragons representing each land were magnificently carved into the center of the temple to encircle and guard the Dragon Gem.

The Druun were approached as embodiment of hopelessness and dread with a dynamic form that is difficult to be perceived as one continuous form; their conceptions included aquatic life, water boiling in reverse, dough folding in on itself, black holes, and parasitic behaviors. Tail is inspired by an artist's landscape studies of fantasy plateaus and sand waterfalls; despite its sparse landscape, it is complex to render in CG because the camera needed to be very close to render the desert floor, with added complexities from cracks which had to be modeled by hand and scattered elements of rocks and vegetation. To emphasize the abrupt transition when Raya was thrown into the blue waters of the Dragon River in Heart to the scene six years later in Tail's harsh desert, the cinematographers uses light distortion techniques to create a mirage effect, shimmering illusion typical of hot environments, to accentuate the dramatic shift in lighting, color, climate, and water.

Talon, the floating city that acted as a trading crossroad in the story, is inspired by Southeast Asia's cultural floating markets and night markets. The seafood culture there inspired Talon's shape language with references on its boats and rooflines. They approached Talon's design through building a pier that have five different levels, envisioning the pier starting at the top level, and as the waterline lowered due to the drought, new platforms would be constructed underneath. Talon's exceptionally complex and intricate elements, assets, models, and char­acters with the added necessity to move them around water make it the most complex environment to produce.

Spine's design was influenced by its cultural connection with bamboo and focused on natural forms and textures, approaching its design as a black bamboo frame and a colossal woolly mammoth-like tusked roofline with large stone foundations from the surrounding rocky mountain. Spine's snowy, black bamboo which becomes a deep blue with maroon hints when hit color scheme creates a striking visual contrast that greatly enhances its grand atmosphere. The filmmakers employs "lost-and-found approach to edges," playing with shadows and lighting to create a sense of mystery and drama for Spine.

In the story, the people of Fang were conceived as villains but later evolved as people who only doing their best to survive. Fang's design aesthetic reflects its commitment to strict and stringent principles. They based their designs on brutalism and strong, monolithic, and rigid geometric shapes, reinforcing their rigid identifies. The designers explored stretching Fang buildings and incorporating repeated rooflines to evoke the ominous sensation of a large creature peering down." The Fang Palace include tall, verti­cal banners and giant gold fang-like sculptures hang ominously from sky­ high ceilings. Their color palette leans into stark white and black with red accents, and their structures are composed of slick, luxurious marble and limestone materials. Their rectangu­lar with sharp edges and cold, sterile feel designs were designed to contrast the floral motifs and round, organic shapes those of Heart.

Namaari is Raya's close friend before she betrayed her to steal the Dragon Gem for her people, Fang, acting as one of the main antagonist and her rival. To express Namaari's strength and power, the designers focused on her facial expressions and physical­ity such as her aggressive nature and fierce stare. The designers adorned her with hard-edge outfit with a predominantly­ off-white color palette to express her tough personality, referencing the geometric shapes of Fang for silhouette and patterning. Young Namaari's attire is designed to contrast her from Young Raya, with stark white and gold representing Fang's harsh lifestyles as opposed to Raya's is draped, soft, and blue and an overall serene feel.

Cinematography
Cinematographers focus on emphasizing Raya's character development and her distrust of the world. They create contrasts from various camera and lighting styles to illustrate trust and distrust, applying them sequence-to-sequence and shot-to-shot based on her story arc. For example, a distrustful Raya was shot with a wide lens, deep focus, and a narrow color palette, while a trusting Sisu was shot with a long lens, shallow focus, and a broader color palette.

Theme
Raya and the Last Dragon deals with the theme of trust. Raya learned not to trust anyone in the story's broken world, while her father and Sisu, the last dragon, believed that the broken world only exists because people don't trust one another. Their conflicted beliefs drive the story, and as each character were introduced, they each challenged the theme of trust. When Sisu saved the land of Kumandra from the Druun and rather than uniting over her sacrifice, the people fought against one another to possess the last remnant of her dragon magic; this reflected the themes of greed, selfishness, and the destructive nature of human desire.