Take a peek at the process!
the boards
Our fearless leader, Alex Orrelle, has long industry experience in storyboarding and has been working out the boards, back and forth, for his film for almost a year and a half. The story has altered, shifted, and morphed - and Alex has approached every narrative change with eagerness and incredible skill. Have a look at one of his favorite sequences below!
We began developing the main characters based on Alex’s boards and early sketches. We wanted to keep the integrity of his designs in their simplicity and charm, and explore look development along with style parameters and references.
the characters
As we worked back and forth on the story beats, the main arcs, and the character relationships, early designs - such as this 3D lookdev sculpt by production designer Archer Dougherty - were left behind in favor of styles that had to change along with the narrative.
The main character, 13 year old Akiva, was the one we had to land in earnest before the PoC could be worked on. Our team spitballed lookdev, surfacing experiments, trailblazing hair and eye techniques, and developed a final look which carries through into the world design of the film.
the design
Our production designer, artist Archer Dougherty, has constructed our world using a variety of references - ranging from cave paintings to desert film sequences to manuscripts to cuneiform writing.
Her early explorations revolved around shape, the two worlds concept, and how a natural setting might suggest and support the wildlife of something like a diesel train.
Later, for the PoC, Archer developed look and feel based on the journey of our main character and how his emotional state can be emphasized or diluted by his surroundings, and his interaction with them. She began with how to use cinematography in the film to identify Akiva’s arc changes and how mass, space, light, and scale can be harnessed to create holistic visuals throughout the film, and then began creating a series of abstract paintings to find the feel of the two distinct worlds in the film.
These abstracts finally led to some solid ground for Archer to begin exploring environment lookdev, and to develop a style guide with visual parameters for the entire film: including camera rules, hybrid 2.5D rules, rules of light and shadow, texture and color.
Archer’s style guide provided us with the rules and concept art we needed to start creating assets for the PoC and assign tasks based on the team’s decisions on what would be 2D, 3D, or a mix of both.
