Case Study – Netflix animated series
AN ANIMATED FANTASY-ADVENTURE SERIES FOR NETFLIX, BASED ON THE BOOK SERIES BY JULIE SYKES AND LINDA CHAPMAN.
UNICORN ACADEMY
Art Nouveau looks spontaneous, but its line can be decoded. For this Netflix animated series, I broke the golden-ratio spiral into arc segments, then switched and turned them out of their classical order. The same geometry found in Baroque and Victorian ornament, with its dense, symmetrical rhythm, becomes a long, asymmetrical, sinuous line: rebellious and organic. The style guide proposes this line language as key inspiration for developing the visual design elements of Unicorn Island.
Warm
palette
Cold and
Elegant
palette
Golden Dream
palette
Farmland (real world):
generic, squared, industrial, straight
Unicorn Island (magic world):
irregular, organic, natural, charming
Closed composition
Open composition
The very first concept-explorations of the Unicorn Academy location were created by a few other artists before I came on board as the Production Designer. I picked it up from there and designed the Unicorn Academy final architectural ensemble and the land around it, with its sub-locations, worked out in plan, elevation and a 3D layout — brought it to the pipeline for full production development across various departments.
Prism Beach
Unicorn Academy
Unicorn Island
I created the world of Unicorn Island from scratch, starting with the island itself: a full-scale world build, modeled as a proxy in Blender.
I wrote the show’s multipage style guide, built on three directions from art history, each with its own job:
- Art Nouveau drives the design of environments, architecture, furniture and décor.
- The Pre-Raphaelites set the mood: color, lighting and feel.
- Neoclassicism governs the staging, cinematography and lighting.
Style guide
Two different worlds — two different shape languages:
The same geometry that gives Baroque and Victorian ornament its dense, symmetrical rhythm becomes a long, asymmetrical, sinuous line: rebellious and organic.
The farmland is generic, squared, industrial and straight, and it’s framed in closed compositions. Unicorn Island is irregular, organic, natural and charming, and it’s framed in open ones. The set dressing and the shot framing follow the same rule.
Mood is carried by color. Drawing on the Pre-Raphaelite paintings, I built separate palettes for different mood and story moments; a few examples shown below are: Warm, Cold & Elegant, and Golden Dream. Each is a tight range of hues, set up to define the emotional temperature of a sequence. The top square swatches represent the core color range and the vertical swatches below them show complementary and/or moody choices.
Dorms
Library
Grand Hall
Atrium
Mrs. Primrose's Office
Observatory
Story moments sketches
First concept paintings that helped to establish the type of terrain of the island that transitioned from an Irish-like coastal line to a lush Mediterranean, and into arid dry lands.
Common Room
Dorms interiors: early concepts
Whispering Willows
At the concept stage, I created most of the Exterior and Interior Blender proxies for all key locations which allowed for camera/staging tests during the Design steps to ensure everything works for the storytelling in the best way possible.
There are a few locations on the Unicorn Island that needed to look much more dramatic and different from the rest of the very green and lush locations.
Magical places on Unicorn Island...
Grimoria Bridge
Once in a while it's true that early concepts are better than the later ones that actually go into production. I personally think this "snake-bridge" is better compared to the one that made it to the screen — a more simple one. It happens due to production budget and time constraints sometimes.
Scarlet Narrows
A matte painting created for the Island reveal shot
Dwerpin Village
Underground River
Foliage and Sky
These are studies of hero trees and tree-clusters ideas for the overall style, as well as visual flow and staging.
Sky and dramatic clouds study
Characters
There was a lot of work done on the characters in the series both humans and animals. Under the stylized look, there's a substantial understanding of fundamental anatomy and locomotion, facial expressions, complex rigs needed to be applied to make sure all characters' performance looks great.
Prep-work entailed a great deal of research and numerous paint-overs.
Blender model
Camera test
Terra-Mixer test