Art Director . Production Designer . Illustrator
©2020 Cartoon Saloon . Melusine Production. All artwork copyright reserved.
Final Painting Style ...
At the start of the production, in order to establish a workflow for both styles used in the Movie: watercolour of the Forest and linocut print for the Town; I worked on a series of Final Backgrounds to create guide lines to help the team been consistent and deliver technically correct Artwork to the following department, while staying true to the work done by the Production Design team.
Here is a selection of the Artwork I've done in the process:
While the Pencil/Watercolour painting of the Forest was already established. The Linocut style was an uncharted territory for the studio and required a few extra steps to find a set of rules to keep consistent this painting style throughout the production.
The Woodcut had a very graphic approach and the best result would be achieved by adding the less number of layers to the already gorgeous linework. While experimenting I had much interesting composition by simply play around with the linework: inverting the negative spaces, using the linework as masking element for a texture or erasing it to create an off-set and making an object more readable.
Using this approach we kept the Backgrounds simple, with a lighter composition while also adding atmospheric depth, without compromising the quality of the artwork.
Here you can see some examples from the guide lines I created for the team:
Colour Keys & Colour Supervision ...
As Colour Supervisor I was tasked, by directors Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart, to lead the Background Team and achieve the mood desired for the Feature Film while working on the Final Backgrounds. I was also asked to further develop the colour palette of the movie to correctly reflect the colours of the Irish landscape and support the story arch.
I worked directly with Director Ross Stewart on sequence by sequence Colour Keys to help the Team achieve the correct mood intended by the Directors and to have an overall view of the final picture, including: scene/characters grading and FX treatment, before final Compositing
These digital Colour Keys were done using the artwork from the Layout Team to make sure the balance the black of the linocut prints and graphite of the penciled layouts into the final artwork.
Here you can see a small selection of the Colour Keys I created:
Sunset progression ...
The hardest sequences to plan Colour wise were the villagers gathering inside the main square and the escape from the town at sunset. The idea was to use how the light direction and colour progression of the sunset affect the town to push the intensity of the story.
The crescendo of emotions were pushed by the intensity of the Colour Harmony and contrasts used in the scenes.
To make sure we had a correct progression I did some research on Irish sunsets to find realistic colour palettes that would serve our purpose. Those photos were then used to create a series of Colour Keys, to guide the Team:
