Before Christmas – Concept Art for the Animated Film
Illustrated Logo
I have always enjoyed illustrating logos and type. This was a bit of a throw in that the client liked so we kept it.
If you want to see more logos like this that I worked on over the years click here.
Environments
I created four different environments. After reading the script, I suggested the four specific environments that should be illustrated and everyone was on board. The elf house was my favorite to work on. I liked the idea of a short family still living in a very quaint inviting home. I researched European chalets and architecture to help choose the details.
Characters
I never realized just how many characters have to be thought of and fleshed out when you finally ready a full script. There were easily another dozen characters that still need consideration. These eight are of course the most important to the film.
Movie Poster
I am a fan of movie posters. My room was covered in them when I was a teen. I was thrilled to get to design one for a real movie. There is probably more detail than would be necessary to print but it was fun getting carried away. For example very few may notice that you can see the Elf house in the telescope.
Sketches
Everything still starts with pencil sketches. I did all my roughs in pencil, scanned them and then cleaned everything up in Photoshop. Berkley Breathed of Bloom County fame always said that the inked version of his characters never really look as cool as the original pencils. I totally agree.
