If you’re new here, let me introduce myself – I’m a giant fan of “Tangled”. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does, it sweeps you off your feet. A visual journey so wonderful that you catch yourself watching it over and over again, discovering yet another subtle layer of colors, textures, strokes and shapes. A splendid feast for your eyes that passes by in a blink of an eye without you noticing how the time has passed. In short, a movie that sets the bar so high that you never expect another movie in the same genre to be quite on the same level.

So you can only imagine my excitement when Claire Keane has graciously agreed to answer a few questions i had about her work on “Tangled” and the animation industry in general. Going under the rather dry title of “conceptual artist”, Claire’s work spans the entire movie, from the leading characters to Rapunzel’s surroundings – not to mention the intricate details of her magic hair.

Kirill: Tell us about yourself.

Claire: I grew up in southern California until the age of 16 when my family decided to move to France for a year. After one year our family loved Paris so much we stayed many years thereafter. After graduating from the American School of Paris I went to Parsons School of Design in Paris for one year thinking I would like to go into fashion design but soon enrolled in the Ecole Superieure D’arts Graphiques realizing that illustrating and drawing was really my passion. In my fifth year at ESAG, I chose to write and illustrate a fairytale book for my thesis project. It wasn’t until then that I realized how much I loved the development phase of a project. When “Tangled” came to the point where they needed to bring people on to develop Rapunzel’s world I was ready to go with my thesis project in hand as my portfolio.

Kirill: How long have you been working on Rapunzel? Has it been an all-consuming adventure or a more structured “work” project?

Claire: I worked on Tangled (Rapunzel) for 6 years with a small break to do some work on Enchanted. Working on Tangled was an all-consuming adventure – I like it best that way.

Kirill: Where do you find your inspiration?

Claire: I usually find inspiration in other artists. A few that I tend to come back to a lot are: Matisse, Rembrandt, Klimt, Marie Laurencin, Ronald Searle.

Kirill: What is your preferred drawing medium and why?

Claire: I love pen and ink for the simplicity of being able to do it anywhere but since I’ve started using photoshop so much I have become completely addicted to the undo button… and I find it very hard getting back into using *real* medium again.

Kirill: How do you recreate the world as seen through the eyes of a girl that has spent all her life locked away in a tower? How much of yourself have you channeled into the fabulous wall paintings?

Claire: For Rapunzel I drew my inspiration from my own life. Early on I realized that the paintings on Rapunzel’s walls were going to be a representation of Rapunzel’s personality and her subconscious thoughts and desires. To be able to accomplish that I felt I really needed to know who she was. I ended up carrying a sketch diary with me on my free time to document what I was doing when I wasn’t doing anything  in particular so that I could have a sense of what Rapunzel could be filling her days doing in her tower. So if I was putting my clothes away I would get out my sketchbook and draw Rapunzel hanging up her clothes in her room, and then I’d see that I was drawing while I was supposed to be doing chores which led me to an idea that Rapunzel would be constantly creating: if she had mending to do it would turn into a full-on craft project. Needless to say not much housework got done those few weeks of “research”!

Kirill: Your character and scene sketches are wonderfully expressive and exude a lot of vibrant warmth and energy. What does it feel to hand them to be transformed into precise mathematical models and how much (if any) of the original feel is lost in the process?

Claire: I’m honored if any of my sketches get handed off to be modeled! It is so rare to have your inspiration be taken all the way through to the finished product. As for the mural paintings, they weren’t really finished until they were mapped onto the CG model and lit. Once we saw them like that it all felt so much more real. It added another layer of believability to the character- as if Rapunzel had really spent all those years in her tower painting them.

Kirill: What do you think about the transition of the industry in general, and full-feature animation movies in particular, to the 3D world?

Claire: I feel really lucky to be apart of this time in animation. It feels like it is full of ripe ideas just ready to present themselves to the public. There are so many amazing things that are possible to do and very little of it has yet made it into a full-length feature film. I think we will start to see hybrids of 2D and CG animation and completely new styles and ways of animating that we have yet to conceive of coming out of the industry soon.

Kirill: “Tangled” has an amazing level of detail everywhere – tree leaves, grass blades, wall stones, pavement blocks, dresses and, of course, the magical hair. That leaves the characters’ faces as the only flat element lacking any level of realism. Is this related to the “uncanny valley” that has plagued movies such as “The Polar Express”, “Beowulf” and, to a much lessed degree, the Clu character in “Tron: Legacy”?

Claire: Yes, there was discussion about how naturalistic they wanted to make the characters. They ended up with a more stylized version for the sake of animation.

Claire: Cinderella for the colors, composition, and story which are so magical. But I think the movie that has most inspired my visual development work on “Tangled” in particular was Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation”. I loved how she spent time with the main character without having to get to a plot point right away. Everything I was doing in my sketch diary that I spoke of earlier was really inspired by watching Scarlett Johansen’s character just sit in her hotel room- you really start to feel like you could hear her inner thoughts even though nothing was really happening externally and no dialogue was being said. I’ve found I really love exploring a character’s private moments that may not necessarily be scripted in the movie but they make me believe in the character I am spending time working on. And I have seen that it helps me a lot when thinking about anything I would need to design for him/her: be it the character’s bedroom, costumes or even their paintings on the walls.

Kirill: What’s next for Claire Keane? Anything exciting you can share with us?

Claire: I am hoping someday to find the time to work on my own personal project. As for right now though, I’m having a lot of fun working with some wonderful people: Chris Buck (director of Tarzan and Surf’s Up) and Mike Giaimo (art director of Pocahontas) on a really fun and whimsical film. Mike has such a bold personal style and I am so excited to help get that style onto the screen.

And here again i would like to thank Claire Keane, not only for taking her time to answer my questions, but also for bringing us such a wonderful cinematographic experience. If it takes another six years for your next movie, my daughter and I will be waiting.

Today’s post highlights the design of CubanCouncil.com. The design has a rather loose layout, with heavy reliance on large images with significantly varying sizes and styling. From precise square corners of the images in the bottom row to slightly rounded corners and drop shadows of the four-cell portfolio to the completely round thumbnail of the blog post – it’s an interesting exploration that forgoes a rigid grid in favor of a more relaxed arrangement.

The round shape of the blog post thumbnail also serves as a very attractive way to skim the recent entries without leaving the main page. Moving the mouse over the diagonal arrow “expands” that arrow in place hinting at interactivity. Clicking on the arrow initiates a transition that slides the next thumbnail and cross fades the description section below. The same amount of visual polish can be seen by moving the mouse over the portfolio thumbnails, initiating a pleasantly quick fade in of explanation border.

The navigation menu in the left part of the header are particularly well thought out. A multi-state image is used to emulate the mouse as a light source that casts shadows below the protruding menu texts. Pixel-perfect alignment of textures and texts ensures that cross-fading between the matching rows in that image results in a visually pleasing and consistent sequence that is rarely seen in web pages. Finally, notice the double footer with expanding top part, detailed wooden texture of the header, ever so slight horizontal gradient on the wavy pattern of the main section, random perturbations of separators and simply perfect arrangement of client logos just above the footer (click the “show more clients” to see the full listing). Not to mention the great pairing of golden yellow and light blue for hyperlinks and highlights.

Today’s post highlights the design of LucidDesignConcepts.com by Joey Adkins. This single page site has an interesting visual rhythm, alternating between the strong brown, aquamarine teal and brick orange as background fills for the three main sections. This plays rather well with the site logo that not only defines the three main colors, but is also composed of bold large circles and custom slanted glyphs. The designer’s experimentation with typography is seen everywhere on the site, using different font styles, families and sizes (sometimes it feels a little bit too much, especially in the footer). Noise textures and serrated edges of section separators add nicely to the overall retro look of the page, with an extra touch of smooth rollover effects on the main navigation menu and social links in the footer.

As far as the usability is concerned, i’m rather puzzled by the placement and styling of secondary navigation buttons. These can be found in the two middle sections, with very misleading styling of the icons. I assumed that left and right pointing arrows would start paginating the content in the specific section – which is a well-known paradigm for navigating large portfolios. Instead, as i clicked the right arrow button, the whole page scrolled vertically to the next section, while i was expecting the next nine-pack of portfolio thumbnails to slide from the left. Perhaps extracting the secondary navigation to the right margin, or making the navigation header static would be a better solution that is aligned with what visitors have come to expect from in-page navigation.

Today’s post highlights the design of 63under.com. I like the exploration of yellow-orange-brown hues, with wide swaths of deep orange alleviated with faded radial highlights, accentuated bokeh circles and beveled separators. The main navigation menu has nice rollover effects that use the same small triangular pointers as seen just above the first row of the embedded portfolio. Overall, the header part has an inviting open feel to it, with the secondary vertical navigation dissolving into the background and large bokeh circles weaving in and out of the wide margins. On a less positive note, the small white texts in the footer are not very readable, and need either darker shadow or an altogether much darker main color. Make sure to visit the “Services” page that uses very attractive arrangement of section icons in the left column (although the solid block rollovers are quite unnecessary).