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.