Angles in the outfield...

Im actually kind of proud of that title. So, time for something a bit different. Last week I was asked by Wes at the LATimes to do a large piece for the envelope section about the movie Inception. Its been about a year of working with the LATimes and Wes throws a lot of assignments my way, so I set out to really knock this out of the park. Basically, they were running a quiz about the movie and my job was to do my best capturing the spirit of the film. Daunting. After lots of roughs I set upon a very ambitios task. So many of the films aspects seemed inspired by, and reminded me of amazing artist MC Escher. Escher had an wonderful way of showing the sureal, in a way that is believable - I decided to do my research on his work, and on optical illusions. images that show a reality that could never really exist.
Inspired by this image and others I sent Wes a load of roughs and really tried to sell my favourite idea - Using this image as a template I set out to re-create this world of weird angles and numerious realities but infuse it with elements from inception - eg. water rushing in windows, mountaintops, a van going over the edge, explosions, a cafe like enviroment, a safe, an elevator, and lots of people fighting, or, just hanging out.Wes went for it. Shit. I had bitten off more than i could chew, as it was due in 3 days, along with a smaller spot image. I buried my head and started planning, drawing and painting. Days came and went, but i didnt leave my desk (except maybe to get coffee)
- i have more process pictures but they wont load for some reason :(
anyway, i tried to draw it out so it could be viewed from multiple angles - heres twoThere was also a spot - which is a little nod at Leo's totem in the film, with a mix of the surreal i was talking about earlier.finally, I submitted a LOT of roughs for this, heres one i was sad didnt make the final cut:Thanks Wes! This was a great project!! Its in todays paper - go pick it up if you can!!
thanks for reading :)