Behind The Scenes: Home Alone Illustration

Another festive design is here, and with this close to X-mas, I really wanted to pick something iconic. I left a traditional piece as last (coming soon) and focused on the pop culture. And I can't imagine more staple X-mas movie, than Home Alone. Since 90's it plays in almost every home on earth and brings a little bit of that holiday spirit.

There are few ways I could have gone and a lot of great scenes and environments from the first movie, but for some reason, the magic of the Duncan's Toy Chest store from the second installment stuck with me. I always wanted to do this, but with the amount of works I'm doing, I was afraid it would take too long to finish.

But a friend suggested I could do the outside store front and it immediately struck me as a great idea. Completely in line with the layouts I do, there's even a car to make (and I love to make vehicles). 

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I started gathering some references and quickly realized this one won't be easy either. But I was already hooked and good things don't come easy. On the contrary, few of my most successful works were always very difficult and until last minute I wasn't sure I could pull it off.

I got to study the set a bit, and found out few interesting things. Fun fact, the building that's used in the movie isn't a toy store. It's some bank building. And it's not even in New York, it's a building somewhere in Chicago. Luckily, that meant I could get a good reference without all the decorations, that will help with modeling the set.

The other images were sparse and low quality, but I was able to get everything I need to start thinking about the layout.

Now this was the most difficult part. From the experience I know, that if I just started modeling all the assets from the references and then bashed them together, the result might be uncertain. Most of the time, the scale and proportions of the scene are the culprits.

Somethings that's iconic and looks good on the movie camera shot, might fall completely flat in isolated environment with a different camera angle. And this was a really good candidate to end up like that. The large building entrance with dense decorations combined with a long limousine vehicle that's low and protruded. That's a recipe for a disaster in diorama world.

I called my good friends compression and stylization and they came to the rescue. When stylizing, you're basically trying to remove abundant details to better deliver the main subject or shape. In this case, instead of four characters and a lot of toys and gifts under the store logo, it meant only Santa and teddy bear heads with few gift boxes. Instead of revolving door surrounded by another set of doors, it meant only revolving door with some thin windows around. Instead of a multi-story building, it meant ending the building with a roof. You get my point.

And of course, to make the composition pleasing to look at, it meant a bit of a compression and stretch. So the car is modeled according to a Lincoln blueprint, but then it's hood and roof are raised a bit to make it look more chubby, and the length is compressed so instead of long window in between the doors, there is only a hint of another window. And basically all the assets are little bit blown out of proportions, which helps to deliver more playful and cartoonish looks.

But most of all, it delivers the scene emotion, without the need to build it exactly brick by brick.

You can watch the process video on Youtube