It was nice to work alongside the very talented original crew from Kung Fu Panda. This time around it was a little different for me. I was no longer the new girl. So working again with the team that gave me the initial opportunity to come over to the surfacing department, was definitely fun and presented many new exciting challenges.
I was on this show for about ten months I think. It wasn’t very long. I came in midway through production and helped out with some environments and buildings. This was the first time I had worked on buildings or environments so I learned a lot. As a surfacer it’s always super exciting to work on films that allow lots of detail. Kung Fu Panda is definitely one of them. The art direction is superb on this film, and they really push for believability. It’s an easy crew to work for because they know exactly what they want.
Here are samples of the some assets I surfaced on this film.
This boat was technically an environment, as the entire scene took place on the boat. It was challenging because the details had to hold up. We were going to be super close to the wood so I had to make sure all the textures felt believable and didn’t break. At the end the lighting was a bit dark so you couldn’t really see much of the detail. But regardless it was really fun to paint. Here are some movie stills followed by detailed renders in neutral lighting.
Most of my work for this film was done for this area in “Gongmen City” around the “Tower of The Sacred Flame” (where Lord Shen comes back to live while he reclaims Gongmen City). All these towers and bridges end up being blown up at one point in the film. Here are a few movie stills and some neutral detail renders of the Buildings, Bridges & Four Seasons Towers I surfaced.
These are scattered around the “Tower of Sacred Flame”. There is so much awesome detail in the designs we get from the art department in this film. It really made these buildings super exciting to bring to life.
You can see by Po’s scale reference that these bridges are huge. They are also scattered around the tower. This Dragon Bridge is the main bridge that Lord Shen walks on as he enters this area. ~ By the way if you ever wondered what the characters or assets look like without surfacing they look like that gray Po (that’s how we get them from the modeling department).~ This Dragon Bridge took forever to get approved. It was challenging to get the design to feel believable on the concrete. Here are some details of the Dragon Bridge followed by the supporting bridges.
Some of these are not as detailed as others because you literally never see them. I am still trying to figured out where we see most of these bridges. They show up here, and there in the background, but other than that we don’t really see them.
These towers were super fun to paint. All the graphic imagery really brought great personalities to each of these. It’s a shame we never get to see them up close. Their destiny was only to get blown up. How sad. Here are some movie stills featuring the towers. Aren’t their silhouettes so pretty? lol .. Good thing I kept some neutral images as a reminder of how cool they really are.
Last is this gate I painted. I have no idea where its featured. But I had neutral stills for it so I thought I’d share.
That’s it for “Kung Fu Panda 2”. An amazing pleasure as always. No doubt some of my favorite people to work for~ art director Tang Heng & production designer Ramone Zibach. Check them out. How wonderful to work with such talented people, I am truly blessed. Thank you for looking.
Blessings,
