“I Am Your Mother” - Star Wars: Visions
Short Film - Production Designer - Aardman Animations / Lucasfilm
I worked as Production Designer on this 11mins short film from December 2021 to December 2022.
Working closely with director Magda Osinska I developed the look of the film and designed the various sets and ships so it could then be physically built by Art Director Andy Brown and his team. Character Designs by Félicie Haymoz , Direction of Photography by Tristan Oliver, Head of Story: Adrian Maganza.
Color Script:
I usually paint a lot of color keys to guide the lighting but as on this project we had the chance to have Tristan Oliver as director of photography, I decided to just do a rough color-script to set the colors and mood of the film, which left me more time to focus on the design of the sets and many space ships!
The Cormoran
Kalina and her daughter Anni live in a rundown spacedug, “the Cormoran”, that they transformed in a kind of camper-van. It’s rusty and haven’t been used for ages.
To design the ship I looked a tugboats reference and mixed it up with Star Wars ships elements. The idea was to get something utilitarian, sturdy and chunky. The iconic tugboat’s bumpers gradually became bumpers pads on springs which I found brought a “Wrong Trousers” vibe. The ship gradually evolved toward a fish-like appearance to reflect the “fish out of the water” situation of the protagonists. The constant challenge on the project was to mix the humour and quirkiness of Aardman’ style while applying the designs rules characteristic to the Star Wars design language.
The final version of the Cormoran.
In order to give the most precise blue-print to the model making department I decided to quickly mock up the design in 3D (Maya) so I could easily do iterations, adjust proportions & scale and check that everything would work as wanted. This process then help me to easily extract orthographic views that I could pass on to the art department:
Behind the scene: All the physical sets and ships were built by art director Andy Brown and his team. We had 2 scales for the Cormoran: one 1:1 with the puppets size and one half size for all the flying sequences.
CORMORAN’s INTERIOR
Anni and Kalina live in
CG mock-up done in Maya:
Behind the scene:
Final frames:
HANNA CITY FLIGHT ACADEMY
The flying school is one of the main sets of the film. We wanted its silhouette to be as distinctive as possible as it is used as a landmark during the race at the end of the film. After playing with different shapes options we settled on a trophy / hour glass shape which fell like a good fit for what the building represents in the story:
Still as a way to save time and provide the best design package to the model making and CG departments I mocked up the city in Maya. That allowed me to precisely define the layout of the building and by working in close connection with the story boarding department I could do changes as the writing and mise-en-scene evolved. I had fun trying to find simple shapes for the city buildings so we could create a rich and diverse looking city while keeping the number of different building designs to a minimum.
This CG mockup ended up being a great help for both the storyboarders and the CG department which later used this rough 3D for the CG layout and as a base to create the final city.
Final frames below, the city is fully CG as there was eventually not enough studio space nor time to build it in real!
The Ships
In addition to the Cormoran I also had to design the other ships participating to the school race, as well as their distinctive booster trails.
The goal was to make the Cormoran stands up as much as possible against the other more “posh” ships.
DOROTA’s SHIP:
Dorota and her daughter Julan are the main antagonists, and their ship is in total contrast with Kalina’s old Cormoran: elegant, slick lines, agressive and high tech.
Creating a Star Wars ship from scratch takes time as it required approval from Lucasfilm’s team to make sure that the design fits into the aesthetic codes of theStar Wars universe. So in order to speed up the process we decided to use as base existing ships and tweak them to fit of narrative purposes. In the case of Dorota’s ship we used the royal Naboo ship as base. After some very rudimentary sketches I quickly pushed the design in 3D in order to lock the scale, cockpit. The trickiest thing was to keep a nice curve with the cockpit windscreen!
THE OTHER SHIPS:
Behind the scene:
