Behind the Scenes: Jurassic Park Control Room

As John Hammond said, they really spared no expense. Goes for both story and movie production. One of the most defining movies of the 90's era in my opinion, and overall one of the greatest movies of all time - Jurassic Park - got so many things right.

As a designer, I always admired the attention they were able to put in all the details aside from the main story and VFX. They created a beautiful park brand identity carried across all the signage, even traffic signs, building and room labels, merchandise. As if they were really creating a park. Even the computer systems, operating systems UI and and all the screens. Everything just clicks together.

Since I already made some Jurassic Park dioramas before - both in low poly and in semi-realistic style - this time I wanted to explore interiors. There is a lot to pick from though. Honestly, I don't know if there's any other movie, that makes it so easy to recognize different sets and interior designs.

Visit the full Pinboard here

I will probably go on with these as a series, but as the first candidate, I chose the JP control room environment with a focus on Dennis Nedry's workspace. The ultimate culprit of the Isla Nublar incident, genius and very very flawed programmer was nested next to one of the CM-5 supercomputer units and was infamous by overflowing trashcan and snack wraps lying all around.

I looked up all the references I could find and organized them into a Pinterest board to make it easy to reference and share. After that, I always bring my references into PureRef to create more organized and focused board, with cropped details and different areas of interest joined into chunks.

Also, it's important to get as many mood shots as possible, to have a good starting point reference for the shading and lighting later on.

Probably the biggest challenge was the stylization and composition. I generally don't like to create indoor illustration based on real measurements and proportions. I like the creative freedom when making a layout and also, with isometric projection and without perspective, real proportions sometimes look dull and interesting details get lost in the scale of things.

That's why I always start my process with sketch. To give objects the proportions and visual relationship I want to see as a result. Then I try to match this concept as close as possible in isometric 3D. Sometimes it might mean that the table is as large as half of the wall, but if it serves the creative result, so be it.

I also like to simplify and compress things. Here for example, you might tend to include all the supercomputer units, or include Arnold's desk at well. But is that really necessary to deliver interesting and recognizable illustration? I always try to find the least amount of objects and themes needed to keep the scene still recognizable. I then have the option to compress everything together and blow it out of proportion for the artistic effect I'm going for.

You can watch the process video on Youtube.