THE ARTISTRY AND INFLUENCE OF VISUAL DEVELOPMENT
Meet the visual development artists that helped conceptualize the video game worlds and gaming characters in Wreck-It Ralph.
Learn about the research that went into creating the look of this film –
from game playing to unexpected trips – and the unique ways these
artists found to showcase their ideas. We talk to Mike Gabriel, Art
Director; Ian Gooding, Co-Art Director; Lorelay Bove, Visual Development
Artist; and Cory Loftis, Visual Development Artist, to bring you the
lowdown…
LEVEL ONE: A GENERAL BACKGROUND TO WRECK-IT RALPH…
Art Director Mike Gabriel reveals: “Wreck-It Ralph is
a completely unique film. I get the feeling it’s one of those movies
that a lot of other animation studios are going to see and say, ‘Why
didn’t we think of that? Why haven’t we put more than one simple, little
world in a movie?’ The way that kids today click around devices and
multitask, it’s seems ridiculous to think about trying to give them an
hour and a half in one simple world. Why not let them jump into a new
world every 20 minutes? That’s what we do with this movie. It’s a
different experience for the audience, and it’s exciting.”
THE SHAPE LANGUAGE OF THE MOVIE…
Mike Gabriel continues: “There are various different game worlds in Wreck-It Ralph. There is the 8-bit world of Fix-It Felix, Jr.; there is the first-person shooter game, Hero’s Duty; and there’s the candy-kart racer game, Sugar Rush.
For each game, we wanted to create a distinct world that’s different to
the other worlds, so we put distinct shapes in each one. Niceland [the
world of Fix It Felix, Jr.] is based on squares that make it feel very solid and rigid. In Hero’s Duty, we wanted Ralph to be scared, so he gets thrown into this violent world of diagonals with a triangular-shape language. Sugar Rush is cute, benign and childlike, so if you look closely there are circles everywhere.”
GAME ON…
Visual
Development Artist Cory Loftis adds: “Before I moved to Disney, I
worked at a video game company. Whenever they were trying to figure out
what type of video game they were going to make next, everyone would sit
around and discuss ideas. They would say, ‘We want vampires. We want a
Tyrannosaurus Rex. We want a magical bear in a top hat. We want
soldiers. We want princesses.’ They wanted all of these random things,
but I remember asking what they all have in common? One guy said, ‘They
are all awesome. That’s what they have in common.’ I think that’s very
true for this movie, too. There’s such a great variety, but the unifying
thread is the fact that all of the worlds and characters are awesome.”
LEVEL TWO: THE CREATION OF THE WORLD OF FIX-IT FELIX JR.
Co-Art Director Ian Gooding explains: “Fix-It Felix, Jr.
is an 8-bit world from the 1980s, and at first I thought it would be
simple to create, but it turned out to be very challenging – in a fun
way. How do you design something that shows that real people live here
but at the same time shows the technical limitations of processors in
the 1980s? That was the challenge.”
LIVING IN THE 8-BIT WORLD…
Ian
Gooding continues: “The one thing that John Lasseter kept rubbing in is
you have to celebrate the 8-bit as much as you possibly can in this
world. Whenever we didn’t jump on an opportunity, he would notice it and
say, ‘That’s not right here.’ It was fun to squeeze as many
square-centric, 8-bit things you can into one environment and still have
it look sophisticated, believable and fun.”
A PASSION FOR FASHION…
Ian
Gooding reveals: “We had a lot of fun dressing the [Niceland]
characters of this world. When you take something very sophisticated and
tailor it with little hats and brooches, and you put it on these funny
little people, it becomes hilarious. The more serious you get with the
clothing, the funnier it becomes. They dress 80s-centric because that’s
their era and they think that’s really cool. Again, really cool and
serious becomes funny when you scale to the people of Niceland.”
LEVEL THREE: THE CREATION OF THE WORLD OF HERO’S DUTY
Visual Development Artist Cory Loftis reveals: “For Wreck-It Ralph, I worked on the world of Hero’s Duty.
In the very beginning, Mike Gabriel came into my office and he gave me
some ideas to think about before I started designing. First and
foremost, he explained that Hero’s Duty needed
to feel like a real first-person shooter game; it needed to feel like a
legitimate sci-fi shooter. I always kept that in mind when I worked on
the design.”
A TRIANGULAR TECHNOLOGY…
Cory Loftis continues: “Hero’s Duty had
to have that really strong triangular-shape language that Mike
mentioned earlier, so I tried to pack as many triangles into the design
as possible. The whole tower design is a big inverted triangle stuck
into this planet. The windows are triangles; the decals are triangles;
even the dust and debris that’s floating around in the air are
triangles. Everything is sharp and angular.”
A WHOLE NEW WORLD…
Cory
Loftis adds: “I watched a lot of sci-fi movies growing up. All of the
movies I really liked had one thing in common about the design of the
technology featured in them: the spaceships, robots and hi-tech things
weren’t made of sleek materials. They weren’t glossy or shiny. They were
rough; they were bolted and riveted together; they had hoses and vents;
stuff leaked, metal rusted and paint was chipped. I tried to take this
idea along with the triangular shape language to create this unique
world; not just in the tower and the planet itself, but also into the
props and characters that are in Hero’s Duty.”
LEVEL FOUR: THE CREATION OF THE WORLD OF SUGAR RUSH
Visual Development Artist Lorelay Bove reveals: “When we first started working on Wreck-It Ralph,
we wanted to create a candy world that was new and different to
anything we’d seen before. I’m originally from Spain and I’ve always
loved Antoni Gaudi and his modernist architecture. When I was little, I
thought his architecture was made of candy. That’s where the idea came
to use this modernist architecture movement and mix it with candy to
make our own world and our own style.”
SPANISH DELIGHTS…
Lorelay
Bove continues: “We took a research trip to Spain to study the shapes,
rhythm and patterns of the architecture of Gaudi and it seemed to fit
our new world perfectly. But we did not directly copy Antoni Gaudi or
the modernist architecture; we just caricatured and made it a new,
distinct world. Alongside the trip to Barcelona, we also took a research
trip to the world’s largest candy convention in Germany. It was like
the Comic-Con of candy, and we took lots and lots of pictures for
reference.”
SWEET LIKE CANDY…
Lorelay Bove adds: “If you look at the world of Sugar Rush,
you’ll see the circular shape language everywhere; there are circles
all over the place. Plus, everything is sugar coated; even King Candy’s
castle. When it comes to the citizens of Sugar Rush, [Wreck-It Ralph director]
Rich Moore had the idea of using Japanese Harajuku girls as an
inspiration because they are so unique. It worked really well,
especially with the Japanese candy we found along the way.”
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