Get to know some of the amazing universes that Miles Morales will visit in Spider-man: Crossing the Multiverse
Miles Morales after meeting Gwen Stacy, the friendly Brooklyn neighbor Spider-Man is catapulted across the multiverse. There he meets the Spider Society, a team of Spider-People tasked with protecting the very existence of the multiverse. But when the heroes clash with each other over how to deal with a new threat, Miles faces off against the other Spiders and must redefine what it means to be a hero in order to save the people he loves most. Anyone can put on a mask, but it’s the way you wear it that makes you a hero.
Once again, the team behind Spìder-man: Crossing the Multiverse have continued to elaborate on the visual style based on the comic book aesthetic developed for the first film, so we can see how the dimensions our heroes visit and the new characters they that intersect each one has its own aesthetic. Below we review the main worlds that our protagonists will visit in the long-awaited sequel and we will learn from their creators how the creative process was to capture them on the big screen.
Gwen Stacy’s Dimension (Earth-65)
Those who remember the 1990s art scene in Manhattan’s pre-gentrification neighborhood of Chelsea, as well as Nirvana’s music videos, may experience a sense of deja vu upon first seeing Gwen’s home, inspired world. in the aesthetic of contemporary Gwen Stacy/Ghost-Spider comics.
“Much of Earth-65 is based on some of the covers from the early Spider-Gwen comics, covers that feature strong graphics and vivid colors,” explains the film’s art director, Dean Gordon. “Sometimes we can see a lot of silhouettes with strong vertical color stripes running through those silhouettes. Gwen has her own color palette, which is very expressive and based on her mood. The colors we see around her are a manifestation of what she is feeling. This reflects the way colors are used in comics. In a panel sometimes there are realistic colors, but in others there is a solid background color to express a particular emotion.
Since Gwen is hyper-focused on the present, everything that escapes her attention becomes an abstract that fades into the background color, like a visual representation of her tunnel vision. “Gwen’s world is a riot of colour,” explains Alan Hawkins, lead character animation. “There are some moments where scenes fade into the distance and we only see colors. In intense and dramatic moments everything seems like an out of body experience. We’ve pushed each of the worlds to the limit, both conceptually and visually.”
The dimension of Miles Morales (Earth-1610)
This is the Brooklyn we all remember from the first movie. What stands out about this world is the combination of lines in the 3D models, Ben-Day dots (a printing method that uses small, spaced, blended colored dots to create shadows and colors in images), midtones for the textures and the use of displaced colors to create a sensation of depth.
“You can make out the artist’s hand on the screen,” says director Joaquim Dos Santos. “The world of Miles is a great love letter to comics forever, with all those Ben-Day dots and all the other techniques. Our villain, La Mancha, is an interloper in all of these worlds. One of the features of the first film was the incredible Kirby Krackle sets (a stylistic device consisting of a series of black dots, lines, and fields placed on colored backgrounds, created by comic book artist Jack Kirby to visually reflect inexplicable energies). ) that appeared every time the super collider was activated. In this film, La Mancha takes that concept one step further visually.”
The dimension of Pavitr Prabhakar – Mumbattan (Earth-50101)
The world of Pavitr Prabhakar (the Indian Spider-Man) is a mandala of patterns and colors that only he is equipped to navigate. There are colorful glass and steel skyscrapers as far as the eye can see and they are decorated like ancient stone temples. Architecturally, this world combines the modern and the ancient. It is a metropolis full of people of all types. There are touches of traditional Indian culture, but the city and its people are very contemporary.
To imagine this kaleidoscopic hybrid between Manhattan and Mumbai, the creative team was inspired by the Indrajal line of Indian comics from the 1970s. “There are several artists who drew those comics and they all use a very recognizable loose stroke,” says the writer-producer. Phil Lord. “There is a specific way these comics were printed, which we recreated for the Pavitr section of the film. We wanted to capture the texture and grain of the paper on which it was printed”.
“For some of the film crew, these were the comics they grew up with, so they ended up being instrumental in creating this world,” says director Joaquim Dos Santos. “Basically we have made a hybrid between Mumbai and Manhattan by emptying New York’s East River, a space that becomes an abyss where the city is built and stacked in levels. The way the Spider-Mans move through this world is amazing.”
The Miguel O’Hara Dimension – New York (Earth-928)
Miguel’s Spider-man hails from the world of New York, a manicured and pristine city of the future that hides a dark secret beneath the surface. In this universe, the ruling class has sacrificed its humanism for a perfect opulent paradise controlled by artificial intelligence. “This world is callous, unwelcoming to outsiders who disturb the order of things,” says director Kemp Powers. “Regarding the visual style, we can see traces with blue pencil, sketches with a marker and a final appearance of acrylic paint.”
“Earth-928 is a perfect example of how great an animated movie can be in 2022,” says director Joaquim Dos Santos. “We have not left anything in the pipeline. You can see a wide range of images, from the simplest, what a child can have in his imagination, to art created by some of the most sophisticated artists of the moment. This futuristic version of New York, for example, is heavily inspired by the works of visionaries like Syd Mead and Ron Bobb.”
Head of character animation Alan Hawkins corroborates Dos Santos’s words. “I love the world of Miguel O’Hara and how much he’s been influenced by Syd Mead’s concept art. The world above the surface is highly idealized, with deep blue tones and clean lines. Although later, in the underground parts you can feel that darker future like from Blade Runner ”.
“New York has a cold, hard look with many underlying problems, an exact reflection of how Miguel has been portrayed in the film,” adds director Justin K. Thompson. “From the beginning we wanted to evoke an extremely curated future, something similar to the work of Syd Mead in the 1980s and the 1999 Space comics. Everything is clean, impersonal and cold. You can see brutalist architecture everywhere.”
“It’s been very exciting to be able to draw inspiration from sci-fi comics and concept design from the ’70s and ’80s, from artists like Syd Mead, John Berkey, John Harris and John Bell,” says art director Patrick O’Keefe. “We’ve also explored a lot of the work that was done before that, when these artists started their careers selling cars and envisioned a perfect futuristic world. Of course, we later found out that this utopian world actually has a much darker side.”
the world of spider punk
Although we only see it in passing in the movie, the world of Spider-Punk is a variant of Spider-man that is based on the London punk scene. To create a visual background that paid homage to that era. The designers drew inspiration from 1970s England art, comics and magazines. “We focused on using collage and photocopying to achieve that faded effect that happens when something is reproduced over and over again,” he says. art director Patrick O’Keefe. “We wanted to bring all these elements together to create a world that is not always consistent in its execution, but uniform in its emotional aspect. It’s a wild world influenced by artists like Jim Mahfood and Ashley Wood. They bring that emotion and energy to their lines and preserve something of the punk of the time”.
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