Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1490572
7 0 P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 3 Coming back to the project after the 2012 phase was amazing and exciting, Guillermo had new ideas that pushed it into an even more inspiring and unique direction than where we had been. Originally, I thought we had a good start at the earlier phase but soon realized everything needed to be revisited for the current version of the story. Some things did carry over with minimal reworking, like Geppetto, the Dogfish and the Black Rabbits, but new designs that I worked with Guillermo on, like the Wood Sprite and Death, were created from scratch. We also revisited the entire design sense of the world as part of Guillermo's "Filmic Alchemy" of tone and style where so many real and fanciful characters and places felt whole and cohesive on screen. During the redesign part of production, we also had to work out benchmarks of caricature and how far Guillermo wanted to push the design and stylization. An example would be Geppetto and Carlo being more grounded but still far from any "uncanny valley" realism, and Volpe the extreme example of caricature in his features and proportions. This benchmark also carried over to the more mythical creatures like Death and the Wood Sprite, who while fantastical were more grounded in design compared to Spazzatura or Sebastian J. Cricket, but every character needed to feel connected and part of the world they inhabited. That world too needed to feel "real" but not so much "realistic," and would be caricatured like the cast, a realism of texture and color over a more stylized form. Guillermo made sure that reference was always demanded in order to guarantee that the world did not feel "whimsical." So, buildings, clothing and set details were all referenced to the real world by Curt for appropriate time period and setting. The focus was on elements of proportions being revised to match the characters interacting with them, so as an example, a building shape would be A. A COMPILED INITIAL PASS AT OUR COLOR STORY SHOWING THE RED MOMENTS OF DANGER AND THE BLUE MOMENTS OF HOPE. B. COMPRESSED COLOR SCRIPT IMAGES SHOW THE PROGRESSION AND FLOW MORE CLEARLY. A B