In the Art Department at Blue Sky, our responsibilities are threefold. We have Character Designers, Set Designers and Color Artists, who combine forces to create the look and the color tone of the film. This adds humor, emotion and environment to the story we are telling.

Our Character Designers take into consideration the action that is asked for in the script. Our designs create the personality and look of the character to further enhance the written word. Since we’re a 3D animation studio, we also have to insure that our designs will transition smoothly to the 3D modeling world where our character will gain it’s full life and mobility.

As with any story telling field our characters need a place to live and play, and that’s where the set designers enter the game. In set design, we take the script and fully imagine the world our stars will inhabit. We discuss our visions for the barren arctic of Ice Age or the metallic surroundings of Robots with our Director and Art Director to create a universal visual language where our characters can live and our story can be fully realized by the audience.

In order to move our characters and their sets onto the next step in the process they need to have color. Those of us in color design possess a deep knowledge of tonal relationships that we use to further heighten the emotion in a sequence and the personality of our characters. In Ice Age we wanted to create realistic prehistoric characters, but we wanted them to have life, so we used different tones in their fur and in their backgrounds to make our story as complete as possible.

The Production Designer, Art Director and Director all share with our designers backgrounds in fine arts. This allows them to make careful decisions about visual nuances throughout the entire film. Ultimately these decisions create a subtle visual language that helps the audience better understand the story.