Thread by @okeefe_artist

Let’s dive into some of the thinking and details of the Production Design of @SpiderVerse . Focusing in on one very special Spider’s room — Gwen’s apartment thread. #AcrossTheSpiderVerse @ADG800 @AnnieAwards

The work often starts with reviewing reference with the Directors to find the right vibes. At this stage I am asking myself, ‘Who lives here? Where/when is this place?’ And most importantly, ‘What can this set tell me about the characters that live in it?’

The first stage is all about accentuating the characters’ performance. I start with a quick 3D block-in to establish the layout. Gwen and her father George's relationship is in a pressure cooker and the scale of their apt needs to express that feeling.

Once we are settled on a rough layout, Vis Dev Artist Jay Thakur began an initial set design pass. This is when the personality of the character is explored through set dressing. We are trying to find the person that Gwen is, we should see her past and present on the walls.

Gwen is a teenager, her room is in constant flux as she grows and finds herself. We need to create the layers of a person in her space.

After approving the design, Artist Peter Chan took a painting pass to explore the colour and mood of Gwen’s Bedroom. We wanted to pay homage to the source material and as such our first explorations followed palettes directly from the comics themselves.

A set can tell us what a character cannot. There is no screen time for lengthy exposition about every detail that is Gwen Stacy, but through Set Decoration we can get hints of the events and details of her life that shaped her.

Artists Tiffany Lam and Peter Chan painted and expanded on those initial set dressing ideas, adding their own flavour and experiences. What concerts did she attend? What is her fav snack? What social causes does she support? What childhood items are still part of her life?

Once satisfied with the design, paint, set dec, and textures, we hand all of this over to the incredible artists at @imageworksvfx and continue working with them to create the final set that appears on film.

While all this design and paint was happening, we were also developing what we call the “Render Script” for her world. Gwen Stacy was created by Jason Latour and Robbi Rodriguez in 2014. We were inspired by the fantastic, colourful and expressive comic covers from her series.

We broke her world down into a small set of mark-making techniques that reflected who she is. The wet into wet watercolour expressed her emotional fluidity, the vertical streaking an homage to the comics, and the naturalistic pencil for line work would help ground Gwen’s world.

All these elements come together in the paintings by Art Director Dean Gordon and @pixelpchan to create a target for the final look of the film.

When the set is built and the render script is established, we are ready to move on to Lighting, and for that we are going to need some lighting keys.

Gwen’s world is that of a mood ring — how she feels is how the world looks.

Artist Kat Tsai @Chuwenjie created these colour keys for the first time we enter Gwen’s apt. She is at odds with her father and depressed, she is emotionally and literally cold entering into the warm, safe home that her father is trying to provide for her.

As we enter into her bedroom, her safe space, she is more analogous with the palette, it is her! George enters the room, he’s determined to be there for his daughter even if he doesn’t understand what it is that has her down, he brings his warmth with him.

Thanks for following along. This covers (superficially) the Production Design pipeline for one single set from just inside the visual development department

All along the way I am working with the talented Modelers, Texture artists, lighters, compositors, matte painters, and leaders @imageworksvfx as we build the film one set, one prop, one shot at a time, and as we the filmmakers discover the story that we are all telling.