Early Research

With this project, I didn't really want to go too realistic. Playing to the particular preferences and to the skills of Tony, I felt the project should go for a cartoony, stylised background. I didn't want the fight to be gritty and dark, like Fight Club or something, I wanted it to be exciting but fun too. I had in my mind something like the backgrounds to the Incredibles or the Jetsons and I discovered retro-futurism.

According to Wikipedia, Retro-futurism is a return to and an enthusiasm for the depictions of the future produced in the past both in science fiction and in non-futurism. The key architecture of retro-futurism is Googie architecture. Also known as doo-wop, it is influenced by car culture and the Space Age. Originating in California in the late 1940's, it continued into the mid 1960's. It epitomizes the spirit of a generation, looking onwards and upwards to a bright, technological future.

The elements of Googie are up swept roofs, large domes, exposed steel beams and lots of Kidney Bean shapes. All the examples below are either obtained from wikipedia's Googie architecture page or http://www.spaceageity.com/googie

I saw these buildings and thought that they where so much fun. The colours, the shapes, if the background looked like this not only would it be great to draw and model, but it would always keep the tone lighthearted.

From further reading I discovered that Googie architecture is exemplified in The Jetsons and in Tomorrowland in Disneyland.

It is also heavily used in the backgrounds of the Incredibles, which makes it perfect for our background. The example below is scanned from the book Pixar: At the museum of modern art.

By reading an article at Animation Art Conservation called "The Background Art of Kim Possible" the background artist Alan Bodner was influenced by the futuristic designs created during the 50's and 60's. Looking at some of these backgrounds I felt if we could do something like this in three dimensions that would be great. The examples below were obtained from http://kim-possible.info/index.php.

All these images are copyright Disney.