Art Director . Production Designer . Illustrator
Short Film
Concept Art | Colour Script
Layout & Background Design | Supervision
Cartoon Saloon
©2017 Cartoon Saloon. All rights reserved.
Concept Art & Look Development ...
Using as reference the Artwork done by the Director for the pitch, I developed the Final Style used in the Short Film.
The main idea was to create a strong contrast between the 2 main sections of the short: the present sequences, inside the Living Room, and the Memories.
While inside the Living room the canvas was filled with colour, the Memories should have an ethereal composition, where only few elements would emerge from a blank background to describe the location.
The awakening process of the characters is then visually described by the crescendo of light in the Living Room and by an progressive increase amount of details in the Memory sequences.
Here you can see a small selection of Concepts I developed in the process:
Light Direction ...
Despite the final style been very graphic and minimalist, a big narrative component of the story arch is the progressive change of Light inside the living room.
The light rising and filling up the room symbolise the awakening of the main Character. Using the natural progression of afternoon sun light inside the room, I mapped the light position for the key moments of the story to make sure we would have a correct progression throughout the scenes, and especially after each memory.
Colour Script ...
Once established the Style and Light Progression, I work the Colour Harmonies of the other elements of the Story: SubConcious and Memories Colour Palette.
Before entering each memory the Character's mind is floating in an abstract location (SubConscious) where each bubble visible represent an old memory. Like the Light, also here, there is a progression in the colour and quantity of memories as the story progress:
While the colour palette inside the Living Room remain the same for the duration of the story, a lot of though has been put in the colour progression of the Memories.
Each of them has a dominant colour connected with the bubble the Character touch in the SubConscious:
Background Design ...
At Production stage I was leading the Design Team in creating the final artwork of the ShortFilm, making sure to keep the ideas and quality of the Concept Art and following the Light Direction established.
Here a selection of artwork I produced: