Behind The Scenes: Wednesday (Patreon)

I always love it when a new TV show lands and takes the internet by the storm. It means mostly two things. First, it's probably fairly good and worth to watch. And second, it's getting the attention, so there is an opportunity to showcase your style and craft to a larger audience than usual.

And this one took me by surprise, I haven't seen any trailers or news surrounding the release, I just saw it drop. And seeing the two names next to each other - Addams and Burton - was an instant dream come true. I just love Tim Burton's art and craft and I was probably all his movies to date (let's not talk about Dark Shadows). Creepy characters, stripes, spirals, swirls and the way he can use the full color spectrum and still make it look gloomy.

Add the ultimate nihilistic virtue and sadistic cuteness of Wednesday Addams character, and you have a formula for success. 

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Sometimes, I really have to dig around to find the a good scene candidate to adapt. But this came so easy, it's almost a crime. First, the window. The moment she arrives at the dorm and there is this amazing spider-web mosaic window, that divides her part of the room from the freaky candy colored personality of her room mate (again, the genius Burton's use of color in dark context), I just knew that's something I need to make. 

Second, they sit her in front of that window outside on the gazebo, wielding her badass black cello and shredding Rolling Stones' Paint in Black. Right there was a scene, I need to make next.

So no need to do a wide research on this one. I just needed some frames from the show to have different angles available and then some cello and gargoyle reference.

Even though I was about to recreate an existing scene from a show, it's not that straightforward. If you just take the setup and make it proportionally 1:1, you get a large scale scene that's hard to frame, your assets (cello, chair and stand) can get lost, and you loose the focus on the window.

Thats' when the compression, abstraction and sketching can begin. I sketched the wall with the window, ignoring the fact, that in reality it's only a small part of the terrace. Then I directly connected the railing to the wall and made it to scale with the window. This resulted in a chunky and compressed scene. Something you would get if you take all the assets in the scene, and just reduced space in between them.

This way, I was able to place the cello and it's assets in the middle at a respectable size, to make them a focus of the scene.

There were some other elements, like pillars and gargoyles around the scene. As mine was already compressed, there was no way to add them all and keep the scene readable. Additionally, the composition still felt empty, and would benefit from some more assets. So I just used one gargoyle and one pillar, to make the railing more sophisticated on one side, breaking the symmetry, but keeping the scene readable and not empty at the same time.

You can watch the process video on Youtube