Behind The Scenes: Movies Mashup Illustration

After few TV show and games illustrations, I wanted to close the circle of these conceptual mashups with favorite or significant movies collection. I already had an idea what to include, but I found out, that when facing a blank page, your brain can turn blank very quickly as well.

So just to be sure I have everything, I put together a list of movies to include. It was supposed to be my list, so I just fired up a few chart articles (100 best movies and stuff like that) and started pinning the ones I like to keep the bookmarks.

Visit the full Pinboard here

It was apparent, that I have a bit too much on the plate and if I tried to include everything, it could become a mess. Sometimes, less is more (often, in fact). I went through my pins and started to drop few of them until I had a nice well rounded collection. When doing this, I was watching the genres too, so I don't end up with pure sci-fi list, that will be a story for another time :)

The next step was to think about those particular movies and their iconic scenes, while pinning some of those references down. What makes a scene from a movie recognizable? For most great movies, it's the characters. Which is no good here. I can't just have an isometric islands full of low detail characters running around :)

Luckily, most of the movies offer a great memorable moments, surroundings, architecture, or vehicles. It's no brainer with Titanic right? (Though cupboard floating on water would be a nice touch too) But others can sometimes flex your grey matter. I though about doing the human battery pods for Matrix, but I think the strongest moment of the movie is the choice - red or blue. And it happens in the room with two chairs and a TV. And it's the same setup, that's later introduced in the Matrix contruct.

I continued this way, until I had everything prepared. I think the hardest to come up with and to recognize would be Pulp Fiction. Just a white Honda Civic on a red traffic light. Those who know to movie well, know it's a strong breaking point of the Butch story.

So far it was mostly curator work, rather than creative design. But that's how it sometimes goes with conceptual works, even for clients. You need to do your homework and then just ease into the flow.

Before I fire up the 3D software, I always do as much detailed sketch as I can, allowing myself to sketch and scrap repeatedly until I have a layout that I like. Always keep in mind the goal. To ideate. Something doesn't click? Don't just wave your hand over it, later it will probably bite you. 

Trust your feeling and try different idea, you will thank yourself later.

You can watch the process video on Youtube