Belle - Concept Art

Belle// 竜とそばかすの姫 - Dream Sequence Design. Back in 2020 a group of Salooners Maria and Alice, lead by Tomm More and Ross Stewart, worked with director Mamoru Hosoda to design a dream sequence inside the artificial world of “U” for his film ”Belle”. After much concept exploration with the team, I was tasked to design the final style of it, as well as creating images that would then be animated as the final backgrounds at Studio Chizu.
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Our task was to create an illusion, a mirage, that is generated by an artificial intelligence. For that we worked through symbolism, to re-create an iconographic representation of reality in a succession of digital landscapes as Belle travels through a dream - glitch. We tried to design how a machine would interpret the idea of a tree or a flower, in a very diagrammatic representation of nature.
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We designed a very flat space, artificially arranged, very repetitive and boundless, that is not limited by the physical world, that is just a huge expanse, deep and infinite.
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Color and light needed to follow the main concept, so very inspired by different landscapes of Japan like The Takeda Castle Ruins and Nikobuchi Waterfall, we looked at inverted photography and how, even though you can still recognize reality and nature in them, all of the colours follow a very different logic, so we infused our world with that.
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For the designs we tapped into Fauvism and Cubism, Art Nouveau, as well as Japonism. We looked at fractals, and microchips, designing endless roots with leaves branching off and breaking up into smaller and smaller shapes, like an eternal mathematical repetition of itself.
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Images craftily animated at Studio Chizu. Incredibly thankful for the experience, the opportunity to work directly with director Mamoru Hosoda, Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart, Maria Pareja and Alice Dieudonne, and the great creative collaboration we had. Very blessed to have received an Annie Award nomination for Best production design for feature for it!
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Don’t miss this beautiful film and the love all Studio Chizu poured into it!
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