In these posts, Manuel “Picasus” Perez, tell us a bit about the artistic research process, tha backs and forths in the hunting that started when we first began to think about this story.
I was asked to write a bit about the Art of this project. This is the area that I like the most of all the preproduction stage.
When we started, we had a raw draft of the current script, the story was pretty simple although not completely defined yet at that point, a tale of adventures in the sea, a captain, his wife, the ship, the ice and an exploration travel with no clear destination (there was more, but I can’t tell). First thing I did was to test in Blender a couple materials I had in mind, so I made a test for wood, and a bit of ice , two of the most common materials that would appear in Mercator,. I was enthusiastic, I liked the render I’d got and it already had a feeling of what the art was going to look like.
I dropped the 3D for a while, I think it’s better to research online and in books, so I started reading, watching paintings, photographs, films, learn about ships and their history.
In the meantime I was constantly thinking about scenes, objects, colours, characters that were popping out of the storyboard, but the first thing was to set an environment, a place, and for that nothing like researching. A story can be told set in the year 500, or in 2500, the hyperspace or anywhere, the important thing is to find the environment that best fit to what we want to tell. Malefico had the idea of using a realistic aproach, not for the final render but for the look of the objects (ships, furniture, lamps, etc.).
We had lots of loose ideas like malefico’s Lighthouse render, the first drawings from his original storyboard, the material tests I made, the amazing paintings from William Bradford and the overall style feeling of Romanticism as a general concept.
I started researching about all these, and at first I studied the environment of the XV century, befor Columbus came to America, I was enthusiastic about the idea of raw and primitive technology and the idea of drifting with no precise route.
It was called the “Age of Discoveries”. I thought about a merchant ship, loaded with spices and materials to sell in distant lands, sailing through the “Route of the Silk” (the route for the ships sailing between Asia and Europe). More information about these times, by mid century the print was invented, the first stage of the “Renaissance“, people like Da Vinci, Boticcelli, El Bosco, Donatello, were walking down the streets. Here some paintings from that period.
After further talkings and checking the material I had gathered, we decided the best environment for our story was a more modern period, mid of S. XIX, the ship would be an exploratory one and it would be in a mission of sailing in unknown latitudes, the spirit of the story was the same, a trip of adventure. so I started searching this new period.
Romanticism began near the end of S. XVIII and its most highlighted painters were Delacroix, Friedrich, Fussli, Francisco de Goya, Gericault, etc. Here some definitions I’ve found about this period:
*It gave great importance to the irrational, romantic paintings often deal with the unconscious, the irrational, the madness and the dreams.
*Delacroix said that romanticism was «the free manifestation of your own personal impressions». Romanticism defends the superiority of the feelings over reason, and thus highlights the sensitivity, the imagination and passions.
*The idea that human beings are not over nature forces contradicts with the ideals from Ancient Greece and Renaissance, where Mankind was over all things and owned its Destiny. This thought lead romantic artists to represent the sublime, churches in ruins, shipwrecks, massacres and madness.
I had found an atractive environment for the story. I kept on researching, learnt about ships more than ever in my life ! Read stories about sailors, watched ancient maps and above all, I learnt a lot about artistic styles. I finally had a well defined setting, an epoque, colours, shapes and the spirit of Romanticism.
(to be continued …)
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