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I was the Art Director on the short film, "Deer Season". The short follows two bounty hunters chasing an elusive criminal through a post-apocalyptic city.
I was in charge of establishing the art style of the film, along with creating guides to ensure that everyone's work was consistent. I also worked on editing, compositing, 3D texturing, and the script.
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As the Art Director, I was in charge of mapping out the use of color and lighting throughout the film. This meant thinking about the environment, mood, and tone of each scene, and figuring out how each color palette impacted the narrative.
We also used an unconventional, comic book inspired 3D rendering style, which included toon shaders and screen tones. To figure out how this would look, I took key moments from the color script and painted them out in full detail. This way, the team would have a go-to reference when lighting, rendering, and compositing the film.
I designed the character of Lucia: a tough bounty hunter hardened by the post-apocalyptic world. I wanted to give her a practical look, with clothes that would be realistic for action. To achieve this, I took inspiration from female characters in both classic western and post-apocalyptic films, comics, and TV shows.
In our film, our characters encounter a 2D animated creature that resembles a deer, which they believe to be a monster. It was challenging to create a scary/mysterious design that could still believably be a deer. I ended up taking inspiration from the shape of deer skulls, and emphasizing sharpness to give it a menacing look.
We didn't want our film to feel like it took place during a generic apocalypse; we wanted everything to feel intentional and real. So, I created a variety of props and posters that could be 3D modelled and placed throughout the environment.
While designing these props, I had to keep in mind our fictional city's backstory, which items could withstand an apocalypse, and how much weathering/damage each object would take. This led to the creation of the evil corporation "Fossoil": an oil rigging company that caused the apocalypse. So, I used many of the prop designs to foreshadow the company and the environmental destruction they caused.
When developing our fictional city, I did a lot of research on how buildings in real life have been impacted by pollution, destruction, and natural disasters. I also considered what kinds of stores, architecture, and advertisements would have been present before the apocalypse, and what would have become of them afterwards. This gave me a great opportunity for environmental storytelling and worldbuilding throughout my designs.
The very last shot of the film includes a giant oil rig looming over the city, revealing the extent of environmental destruction. Because this was such an important shot, we wanted full control of every little detail. So, instead of making a 3D model of the oil rig, I created and composited a 2D matte painting into the shot. I had to match the exact art style and perspective of the shot to get it to blend just right. Then, in After Effects I applied principles of atmospheric perspective to make it seem huge and faraway.