Scott Lane faced one minor problem when he set out to design costumes for the “Disney/Pixar’s Finding Nemo” ice show – fish don’t have legs.
“They wanted the actors to be involved and not just be big foam characters,” Lane said of the show’s producers. “They wanted to see the skater.”
Asked at a production meeting just how he planned to handle the fish costumes, the veteran Disney on Ice costume designer threw out the first thing that popped into his head.
“I went back to the drawing tables in the work rooms and said, ‘Can I actually do this?”‘
The answer: A big “yes.”
“Disney/Pixar’s Finding Nemo” brings to the ice one of the most popular and highest-grossing animated films. “Finding Nemo” was released in 2003. The Disney on Ice show is at the Denver Coliseum today through Dec. 18.
The story is about a fish named Nemo who is captured by a scuba diver and ends up in a fish tank at a dentist’s office. Nemo’s father, Marlin, and Marlin’s friend absent-minded friend Dory set out to find him.
Meanwhile, Nemo and the other fish in the dentist’s tank look to escape their plight.
So how did Lane manage to find his sea legs?
“We couldn’t make the legs and the skater go away,” Lane said. “Since fish don’t have legs, we thought let’s just try to marry it all together. It’s like the old adage: If you can’t hide it, feature it. And it worked out very well.”
His approach was to have the fishes’ heads coming out the trunk of the skaters’ bodies and tails coming out of their backs.
“Basically, the body of the fish becomes like a flag, for the lack of a better description, coming off their body to give them that horizontal approach,” Lane said. “We just added a few fins on their legs and on their arms and painted their faces and pulled it all together.”
The painted faces help the skaters blend into the costumes without becoming completely lost in them, said Lane, who has designed costumes for four other Disney on Ice productions.
“Finding Nemo” is one of the most colorful ice shows thanks to varied, bright colors. Each costume was hand painted.
“This show was tricky because we didn’t have multiples of very many things,” Lane said. “Most of the show was one of a kind. So it took a lot of time in the development process. We had to look at each fish on each person for a lot of time.”
Flashy as they are, the costumes had humble beginnings, starting out as concoctions of cardboard, paper clips and coat-hanger wire.
“We go through a number of steps where we make it more substantial each time and we try it on first on fit models who aren’t skaters at all,” Lane said. “Then we get together with some skaters and go out on the ice and see it they can skate in it and get their feedback. It is a lot of research and development.”
Problems surfaced now and again. One character’s tailfin was so long it kept smacking other skaters in the head.
“They skate very fast,” Lane said. “You really don’t realize it until you put something on them that is going to spring around and suddenly go flying in all directions. They can get some velocity behind them and that can be dangerous.”
Another problem was that some fins were at eye level. To protect the skaters’ eyes, Lane put ping-pong balls on the end of the offending fins.
While elaborate, the “Finding Nemo” costumes are not as heavy as most of those featured in other Disney on Ice shows, Lane said.
Like those earlier shows, the “Nemo” costumes require a lot of stretch velvet and Lycra. It is the stretch fabrics that make those pesky legs part of the costumes.
“You really get the sense of all the fish characters and what they are doing,” Lane said. “And you don’t have to try and ignore the human form because it plays into it very well.”
Staff writer Ed Will can be reached at 303-820-1694 or ewill@denverpost.com.
“Disney/Pixar’s Finding Nemo”
ICE SHOW|Denver Coliseum, 4600 Humboldt St.; Various times today-Dec. 18|$15-$70|303-830-8497 or ticketmaster.com
