Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Lighthouse: A Visdev Process

Last weekend I had the pleasure of doing a talk on visual development at Hyndol Art Academy. This Lighthouse sample was part of the presentation and thought I'd share it here on the blog. These artworks were done in actual pre-production but eventually never used.

Online research on New England lighthouse structures.

Shapes and Patterns Studies


 Thumbnails
 Often the simplest shot like this is more challenging since there's not much elements to play with. That's why thumbnail sketch is extremely valuable and most of the foundation is laid out in this stage. On this location, I purposely washed away a chunk of the island to break what could have been a boring shape. On a bigger note, it created a history for the island and paved way to putting the structure on stilts making it more interesting.

Values to Color
This is the shot layout that got a nod for exploration. I had to take the house structure on stilts out. Story revision calls for the character to live on top of the lighthouse. Its imperative to get the values squared away before getting into color.



Shape Revision

Style Exploration 
I was asked to try an Edward Hopper style for this.

Since exterior is somehow established and there's enough story information, I started detailing the top of the lighthouse primarily the interior.

Interior
 


Exterior Revision
Based from a story revision, I had to add more stairs outside. No need to repaint since we can still allude to the painted version for reference. 


After a month exploring this location, the whole story was scrapped in the end and this lighthouse never saw the light of day... except in my blog of course. Enjoy.


All images ©Sony Pictures Animation.

37 comments:

Tom Scholes said...

Really great to see, thank you!

Cons Oroza said...

Ha! Bittersweet ending.

www.vanipereira.blogspot.com said...

Muito,mas muito bom mesmo.
saudações de seu fã do Brasil.

Jack Yu said...

thanks!!!
this is really helpful!
would this be the same process if you were to do a design for something bigger? for example a futuristic underground subway tunnel...

LEANDRO OLIVEIRA said...

Stunning!!!

I love your work man!

C.Deboda said...

Thanks for sharing this! Love seeing these kinds of exploration posts.

Lady Garland said...

How fun! I was just looking up light towers the other day! This is truly inspiring! XD

Sachin Kondhalkar said...

Thank you for sharing this along with key drawings

Martin Bergquist said...

Hi Armand, so nice seeing the full process. By the way I'm coming over to attend the ctn animation expo, very exciting!

Alfred Llupia said...

Armand,i remember i saw some of this artwork on your webpage and i really liked,but with all of this i am amazed.Thanks for sharing.Cheers.

A. Riabovitchev said...

Beautiful work!Really good example of development.:o)

Simon Scales said...

Love seeing the process. Such an insight. Awesome stuff!!

TomH said...

Thanks for sharing the process, Armand.
The work is beautiful...as usual.

TREVOR Simonsen said...

Thanks for giving us the peek inside!

Owen Williams said...

Really cool to see the process, many thanks for sharing. Looking forward to seeing you at the CTN expo!

Craig Harris said...

This is really awesome man!! Thank you for posting this. I grew up surfing the Cape Hatteras lighthouse. Have a special place in my heart for these and lifeguard stands.

Great stuff Armand!!

Edwin Rhemrev said...

Thanx for sharing this, very inspiring.

-Edwin

Anonymous said...

Very cool to see the process !
Cheers Armand .

Alessandra Sorrentino said...

It's great to see the development of this Armand, very interesting and very enjoyable! Thanks for sharing it.

Marcelo Vignali said...

Beautiful Armand!

Alberto Hernandez Jr said...

Very very cool!

Hans said...

Aaargh, it sucks when you put so much hard work into something and then it gets scrapped....but that's the nature of the beast. Good thing you have the blog to share it on:) Looks awesome! Some of them reminds me of the beautiful Ghibli BG style.

-Hans

Germán said...

Thank you so much for sharing.

Unknown said...

WOW!! It's wonderful to see your creative process

Jason Kraft (kraftalicious@hotmail.com) said...

I always love seeing an srtists thought process. Especially extremely talented ones.

Moonito said...

you try the light tower like a character i love that

Xavier Yabut said...

Great concepts and color schemes!

fernando juarez said...

Great job as usually :)
Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

SKIZO said...

Thank you for sharing
This fabulous work with us
Good creations

French Blast said...

Very interesting to see what is your process of creation thanks

Roy Santua said...

outstanding work

Unknown said...

Beautiful!!...I love your work!!!!!

Ezequiel Tadeo said...

wow....Great

Unknown said...

Fantastic work Armand. I am just curious how you get from the value drawing to the colour version whilst keeping the values the same? Do you use blending modes, and if so what combination of blending do you use?

GIADA said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
GIADA said...

wow!Fantastic works...love your gallery a truly source of inspiration!
Thanks for sharing!^_-

Lilmendoza said...

these are awesome! love your blog!