A Utah native describes how Pixar's technical team made a sea creature look human in 'Luca'

It’s one thing to put human skin on a computer-animated character. It’s another to put fish scales on a character. And another thing entirely to do both at the same time.

That was one of the challenges Emron Grover and his “simulation” team at Pixar Animation Studios faced doing their work on Pixar’s latest movie, “Luca” (which debuted June 18 on Disney+).

“Luca” tells the story of a young sea creature living in the Mediterranean, who dreams of seeing what’s on the land nearby. He defies his parents and goes to the surface world, where he befriends another sea-creature boy who has done the same thing. Here’s the catch: When they’re on the surface, they look like human boys, with human hair and skin — but when they get wet, they revert to their scaly, multi-colored selves., in a town that’s fearful of “sea monsters.”

Grover, who grew up in Utah, describes the craft behind the storytelling, and how a spit-take turned out to be one of the hardest sequences in the movie to animate.

Read the interview at sltrib.com.