Saturday, November 7, 2009

The BEAST's Castle

Here's something we've never seen before (unless you worked on the film)- the complete vertical pan background of the Beast's castle from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

This magnificent background art was incredibly difficult to re-assemble. The artists used digital layer multiplane effects. Panning from the bottom up, the gargoyles and statuary in front moved, as did layers of the castle, and clouds in the stormy sky!

Using Photoshop, I cut, pasted, layered and matched, re-creating the stunning artwork you see here.

To be perfectly honest, it's really unfinished. Although essentially complete, there are a couple of very small areas I'll come back and finish one day. In the meantime, I think the results are so incredible I decided to share it with you as a "work in progress."

BTW, the severely angled elements near the left top are positioned exactly as created by the artist and shown in the film. Being a pan shot, this creates some additional visual tension and drama.

I hope you'll enjoy it "as is!"

8 comments:

  1. This may seem rude, but why is it tilted? is a a mistake? are was there a specific purpose?

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  2. i think that it is because of the way he stitched the images together to make the composite

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  3. It is not tilted by me! The composited image is exactly how the artist created it.

    The pan in the film is straight up from bottom to top.

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  4. I'm going to have to pull the movie out and watch that pan. I'm fascinated that they deliberately tilted the top that much.

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  5. either way it's pretty strange Ashley's got the right idea. but I don't have this on DVD.

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  6. If you look at lots of Disney movies, tilting or warping pans is common. My favourite one is from pinocchio: http://one1more2time3.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/pino-opening-a.jpg
    It's one of my favs

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