Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/916056
gave the Art Department the freedom and framework to expand its research into the different cultural backgrounds for each species/race, and elaborate on their identities. The added time also allowed the graphic designers, Andrew Campbell and Simon Jones, to collaborate with the language creator David J. Peterson on what the orkish and elvish iconography would be, including a few different digital and editable fonts for all to work with and understand. As with most current projects, the script changed numerous times to refine the story and characters, as well as to accommodate the finances of the film. One of the main issues for the locations department (and its budget) was the gentrification of Downtown Los Angeles. Michael Haro and his locations team probably contacted everyone within a five-mile radius of Downtown Los Angeles to find the appropriate locations for the grimy, detritus-ridden look Andrew was trying to create. Approximately sixty percent of the locations that Andrew, David, and Roman signed off on fell through due to changes in ownership and non-negotiable rental rates. This gentrification made Andrew and David realize that this film, set in the gritty underbelly of L.A., was going to be a document of what the city looked like at the time of shooting, as very rapidly, it will all be developed and gone. Ultimately, the search for locations was mostly pushed out of downtown and into the more affordable MacArthur Park/Rampart area of Los Angeles. This part of town allowed the production to truly dig into the gritty, smelly, rough environments that were wanted, and it provided "great bones" to work from. This put more pressure on the set decoration team, lead by set decorator Cindy La Jeunesse and leadman Jack Blanchard. They, and their talented crew, worked tirelessly to make the dressing feel like it had been there for twenty years. They even had an outdoor cage enclosure at their shop, in Highland Park, curing C. For budgetary reasons, we found ourselves shooting in unsanitary alleys throughout Los Angeles. The bones in the foreground are real—with cured meat attached. D. Concept art showing one of four vignettes, intended to set up the social issues and texture of the film, visible from our hero cop's drive through the neighborhoods. Illustration by Alex Cunningham. E. Orc mural, inspired by murals in Northern Ireland depicting a complicated political history. Designed by graphic artist Stephanie Charbonneau. C D E