Monday, November 10, 2014

Work from Epic!

I just realized… today is my 6 year anniversary at Blue Sky! It's crazy how fast time has flown by. I feel very lucky to have such wonderful & supportive co-workers, and to have been able to work on some really awesome projects. I recently got the thumbs up for posting the work I did on 'Epic', so I'm super excited to share them today of all days.

For 'Epic', I created graphic design work for Bomba's house. I'd like to say a big BIG thank you to Mike Knapp for giving me the opportunity to work on these, to Ang Macias for allowing me to fit these in to my schedule, and to the artists for their ever awesome & fantastic feedback. Also, a huge thank you to Tom Cardone who gave me my first taste of creating graphics for the film, 'Rio'. My favorite thing with the graphics is figuring out ways to make them creative and fun, and to make sure they still match with the language of the film so they blend in to the background & become part of that world. And to include little easter eggs here and there! So without further adieu, here are the graphics. My apologies in advance for being a bit wordy with this post, I'm excited to talk about these!

For the wine labels, I knew I wanted to base them on the jinn moth girls, designed by Robert MacKenzie and Marceline Danousha. The labels are dated 1987, the year Blue Sky was first founded. Something I noticed months later was that the girl in the 'vintage white' label is holding a red wine! Maybe she turns it in to white wine with magic.

I used to put stickers all over my headboard when I was a kid, so this assignment was especially fun- stickers for MK's headboard! Stars and flowers are things I usually doodle all the time. If you were to zoom in on the green butterfly, you'd find a little bit of a surprise...

Fangs! Red eyes! EEEEEVIL!

The MK drawings were meant to go on her walls but were later taken out as her room looked overly messy, and were to look as if they were drawn when she was 6 years old or so. I drew these with crayons and with my right hand (I'm left handed.) It was actually really tough trying to channel a 6 year old, this took a lot of research and many attempts so it wouldn't look like a weirdo adult drew them. I especially liked drawing Ozzy with four legs. You'll see in the film that he lost one leg along the way and only has three when teenaged MK comes home.

I had a blast making the magazines. Please note that I pulled a 'Rio' illustration from Kyle MacNaughton, and the 'Rio' pattern from David Dibble for the back of the Gadzooks! magazine. The inside details how the robot was made by 'Dr Ty Carter' (a designer here at Blue Sky) and the imagery there is pulled from our movie, 'Robots'.  For the back of the Everyday Exploring magazine, that is an image from David Dibble and the front is set design exploration art from Sandeep Menon. I added the text, the shoes ('whose shoes are these?'), the postage/scanning tag, and scruffed it up.

Bomba's Academic Journals! That's Bomba's house inside there in the crest.

Baking soda box. BAKING SODA BOX!

More easter eggs - that's Ronin on the 'RONEY!' sticker that went on MK's backpack. This was also based on a popular sticker that was made years ago here at BSS. For Bomba's mousepad, it's a Wonderbot from 'Robots'. I also had a ton of fun creating the Department schedule, where I looked up certain days during the years 1999 - 2000 to make sure they were correct (re: the winters solstice.) 

And last of all, the labels for the bugs and whatnot. To try and get an authentic feel, I looked up their names in latin & based them on that.

I also had the honor to work on Queen Mab's dress with the fashion designer, Han Feng, and got the chance to meet Beyonce at the voice recording sessions when we presented her the artwork for inspiration! It also was so great to have been able to work closely with Chris Wedge. He is a fantastic Director and made it a point to get to know the people who were working on this film. Thank you again, Team Epic, for such a wonderful time & many great opportunities. This was an experience I will never forget.

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