How Pixar Made COCO’s Skeletons Kid-Friendly

Eyes. Pixar has given the skeletons in their upcoming film Coco eyes to help make them more kid-friendly. It makes sense that they would want to make sure kids weren’t scared by over half of the cast in the film seeing as how their target demographic is children, but I found it interesting that the solution was giving them eyeballs. Of course, that seems to be the only feature added so we won’t be seeing tongues or gums or muscles on these skeletons. No eyebrows either. Instead, the eye sockets will move and act like eyebrow for the skeleton characters.

So, how did Pixar decide to use eyes? In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lee Unkrich, the director of Coco, explained,

“You don’t typically see skeletons with eyes, but it was important because without them they’re just blank slates[.] It’s cliché, but the eyes are the window to the soul, and I knew if I was going to have tender, soulful moments with these characters, I needed the audience to be able to look right into them.”

Do you think the eyes were necessary, or do you think eye sockets would've been just fine?