Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1400113
dozens of lenses, the holoprojector build was a collage of talent from construction, to fixtures, to Dan Sudick's extraordinary special effects team. Time Court and Expanse The Time Court was a changeover of the Time Theater. Expertly planned by legendary construction coordinator John Sampson and foreman Tony Media, the ceiling was raised from thirteen-feet to sixteen-feet and the orange doors replaced with six towering 16-foot-tall mosaic murals. Comprising creepy propagandistic and cult imagery, mosaic was the perfect medium because of its absurdly labor-intensive nature. I wanted to show that it took a lot of people a really long time to create these mosaics. The only hiccup was that the crew actually had to make them fast. It was a tricky team effort that required much R&D, but in the end, we landed on the process of dimensional printing. We would dimensionally print the individual, tiny, organic tiles but leave the grout areas low. This would save a huge amount of construction labor but the file design/prep to do this on six 16-foot panels was behemoth. The initial six illustrations were made by Joe Studzinski; three of the six were glorifications of the TVA workers and the other three told the story of the grand multiversal war that led to the Time Keeper's ascent. With such a large final print size, the illustrations had to be made at a very high resolution. Once Joe's work was done, Graphic Artist Jason Sweers began the process of adapting the illustrations to vector art and honing the precise forms and compositions. Then Jason, with the help of our brilliant PA (now Set Designer) Samantha Klemm, undertook the painstaking process of taking each fill color and converting it to a field of tiny organic squares with modulated color all in vector shapes. Once we had these files, and under the close watch of Art Director Marlie Arnold, we were able to do a dimensional printing process directly on 16-foot-tall goods and create the seamless appearance of towering mosaics. Complementing the mosaics were the similarly creepy and imposing, brutalist sculptures of the Time Keepers hovering above the dais. The expanse of the TVA was another very interesting visual challenge. This visual effects set extension that Loki and Mobius see from the viewpoint bridge was dubbed "the expanse." We were tasked with trying to make one of the most awesome sights in the MCU. Others can be the judge of whether or not we succeeded, but the goal was to communicate an infinite scale of a bureaucracy so vast that it had taken on the F. TVA COURTROOM. SET PHOTO. G. TVA COURTROOM. MOSAIC MURALS. SET PHOTO. H. TVA COURTROOM. MOSAIC MURAL DETAIL. ILLUSTRATION BY JOE STUDZINSKI, GRAPHIC DESIGN BY JASON SWEERS. SET PHOTO. F G H