The art of Dali is ever present throughout Destino. All images © Walt Disney Pictures.

Largely produced at Disney Studio France, Destino is the perfect 2D/3D animation hybrid, making a stylish Dali concept both timeless and contemporary.

When Dominique Monfery, a veteran of Disney’s now defunct Paris-based animation studio, was asked to direct the Destino short, the multiple festival award-winner bound for Oscar contention, his first reaction was “No.” He wasn’t about to tackle the legendary unfinished collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali as his directorial debut. It seemed like a no-win situation. But the more he thought about it, the more Monfery liked the challenge of bringing Dali’s surrealistic vision to animated life — to continue the adventure. Like so many before him, Monfery was entranced by Dali’s complex story and art direction, which were fostered by his 15 conceptual paintings and development pieces along with 135 story sketches. The possibilities provided by this beautiful roadmap were too creatively enticing to pass up.

Besides, as producer Baker Bloodworth and exec producer Roy Disney kept insisting, Destino was going to be completed with or without Monfery. So despite the anxiety, Monfrey came onboard, thanks to his animated UNICEF work, compelled to make Destino more understandable: “I tried to react really as an audience. And that’s why also I didn’t want to direct this movie at the beginning because I felt that I don’t have enough story vision, I don’t know the surrealist art. But I tried to turn this weakness into a strength by approaching it from the standpoint of the audience? Does it make sense for you?

Director Dominique Monfery (left) and producer Baker Bloodworth. Photos courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.

The Cross-Dissolve and Removing Character Outlines
Visually, Monfrey began by reviewing a rough edit of the original artwork adapted from the song. He had good feeling about the song, which was also redone, and was heartened by the strong visual ideas conceived by Dali and John Hench, the Disney animator that worked alongside him 57 years ago. The first decision was to make the film the way it originally would have been done in 1946, choosing to rely mainly on traditional animated techniques. The first challenge was figuring out how to insert an animated character into a painted environment by analyzing how Dali painted light and shadow.

“One important fact is that we have 2D character animation but we don’t have lines on the character [in keeping with Dali],” the director explained. “Also, the volume of the character is revealed more by light and shadow than by color. In order to better match Dali, we decided to remove that dark line that usually outlines the character sheet.”

Destino reaches for an ethereal plane.

The essential technique embraced was the cross-dissolve, part of the montage strategy that Dali intended to utilize in the animation, which Monfrey paired with classical movement and timing to bring clarity to the poetry. The director was very intrigued with both a timeless and contemporary quality about the work: “I felt very impressed with the contrast between the old fashioned in terms of the sound and to create some more modern imagery using new technology like 3D.”

For instance, a 3D model of the Tower of Babel was created using Maya and Disney’s proprietary CAPS system. They also used 3D for complicated camera moves and for the Chronos fight because of the difficulty of preserving the volume of this stone character.

Inevitably, though, Monfrey and his 25 fellow animators applied a hybrid sensibility to this pristine love story containing graphically striking symbolism (a barren landscape, melting clock, a bell tower, a stone pyramid, a floating dandelion). So they used simple texture maps to seamlessly blend the 2D and 3D elements.