During development, La Luna wrestled with several technical challenges that are often a result of working with a small budget, minimal research and development time, and accessibility to the latest and greatest tools. One of their biggest hurdles was something Pixar had yet to tackle in any of its films: facial hair.

“Computers don’t naturally do hair,” said Casarosa. “There are thousands of hairs and whether they do or don’t move isn’t easy to control. We’ve done a lot of that in the past with Monsters, Inc. with fur, but we specifically hadn’t done the kinds of mustaches and beards that we were looking for, which was something that needed to be animated with the talking.” Credit: Image courtesy of Pixar Animation Studios