Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1480624
P I N O C C H I O | P E R S P E C T I V E 4 5 that the film would have a live-action Geppetto (Hanks), but the whole environment and all the other characters would be motion-captured and animated. The LA-based Art Department would develop the ideas and computer environments, and then the project would move to England for the shoot. To create the sets, the scenery would be "built" in Unreal, the 3D virtual reality gaming engine, where a highly rendered environment can be moved around on actual video screens during filming. Unreal also allows the collaborators to change textures and colors in real-time while filming. Naturally, this gives the director maximum control over the set and composition of the film frame. My job would be to provide the graphic "assets" that the animation team could plug in once the environments were finalized. Doug Chiang would be designing Pleasure Island, and Stefan Dechant would design all the other environments, including Geppetto's hometown of Collodi. Poster Street—The Opening of the Film I started working with Dechant on the "Poster Street" set. In the film, Jiminy Cricket walks down a side street on his way to his assignment as guardian of the newly created Pinocchio. As he passes a wall, we see various ephemera that hint at the action and characters to come. Three groups of graphics would need to be done—wanted posters for the bad guys, tabloid newspapers that introduce the audience to the character of Monstro, and a promotional poster for The Great Stromboli, the marionette impresario. I first tackled the Monstro tabloid paper. This lets viewers know that a huge, monstrous whale has been causing havoc in the sea near town—it has wrecked many ships and eaten many people. The tabloid foreshadows Pinocchio and Geppetto being swallowed by the beast near the end of the movie. To create the tabloid, I wrote the text and dipped into my large collection of 19th century royalty-free artwork and some of the one hundred B C A. GEPPETTO'S SHOP. STILL FROM THE FILM. B. GEPPETTO'S TOY SHOP. PRELIMINARY IDEA FOR THE ESTABLISHING SIGN. C. GEPPETTO'S TOY SHOP. FINAL VERSION OF THE ESTABLISHING SIGN.