As I bang away on storyboards for the film in what free time I have, I thought it might be fun to go through my sources of visual inspiration on this project. I have been collecting things for a good while now, and have a accumulated a pretty decent pile. Heres a small taste!

Graphic novels and comics contribute a great deal to how I think about presenting a story and how to communicate visually. I'm particularly drawn to Jordan Crane's Keeping Two and UPTIGHT series of (mini?) comics, especially the cover art. His screenprinting is so great. Check out more of his stuff on his site. I am going to try to force myself as much as I can to emulate his simplicity of color and design, but it goes against my maximalistic habits. Should be a good stretch for me.

Another big inspiration for me is Hans Bacher. He worked for Disney in the 90s as a production designer, which is sort of like concept design, but usually more for background art style. I'm personally not inspired by or drawn towards that classic Disney look and feel, but the work he did for them rarely transferred to what ended up on the screen anyway. It gave the art dept guides and visual cues and began the visual process for the films. What a weird job! I understand that it takes a ton of messing around and thinking up-front to get the look of a movie just right, but to know going into it that your stuff will likely be ignored on a fundamental level in the end? Damn. I imagine it affected the other artists and producers in some subconscious ways and made for good inspiration, but in my opinion his production design crackles with far more life than the end result in many of the Disney movies he worked on. But, to quote him, “I knew that too much art would destroy the acceptance by the audience. An audience wants to be entertained, not educated.”

Check it out his awesome book, “Dream Worlds”. Hans' blog is an ongoing inspiration for me too.