Picking up from where I left off from the previous post, I went back to researching and eventually came across the Wokou, who were groups of Japanese pirates that raided the coastlines of Korea and China in the 13th century. I pitched again to Bill and he really responded to the idea of setting Peter Pan in this era, in this part of the world. Yes!
Since I was still playing Captain Hook as someone who protected Neverland, I found this military general, Qi Jiguang. Who apparently was a bad ass and fought off the Wokou pirates!
I felt like Hook could have qualities, and started to do a few crummy sketches based off of Qi Jiguang.
And continued to do more research on the Wokou...
Bill had me play a bit more with caricature and proportion (and make it look a little less like Mulan), so I did these variants of what Hook could look like. The mentors like the last one of the group was most iconic, so I went in that direction.
And started to explore different face possibilities...
Continued on with research for costumes...
I read that the purpose of the extravagant transformational makeup of Kabuki is to "generate the suspension of disbelief in the audience so that they can accept the convention that they are in the presence of supernatural beings."
We decided that this was the way Hook gets others to follow him, by convincing everyone he is a supernatural deity. Although we know that he is as human as they come. He had an explosive temperament, he was bi-polar, but he was also a romantic. He was in love with someone who loved his enemy, which led him to spend many a night on deck writing drunken power ballads.
Refining the design after Bill's draw overs, on the right. Emphasizing a volcano shape. Cory had the great idea of using Kanji to dictate the shape of his hook.
He became this massive, mountain of a man, and I started to reference Mr. Bardem's character in No Country for Old Men.
I fleshed out Smee and the rest of the pirate crew. It was also at this time I became obsessed with Ikea monkey, so he had to be in there.
A volcano that only erupted when it came to Peter Pan.
The Lost Boys exploited the Pirates' superstitious nature and used this fear to their advantage.
I was fortunate to be sitting next to a story trainee named Mike Hererra, who helped me so much with these layouts.
And this was one more of Hook years before, and his fateful encounter with the Crocodile.
This is a small slice, but pretty good summary of my Tal Dev experience. Tons of research, lots of back and forth. Developing the rest of our world and cast marked the halfway point of the program. After the Peter Pan project, during the second half, we got to work with directors on 2 different projects that were super early in development! That itself was incredibly challenging , and they were filled with the hardest weeks of the program for me, but I feel like I grew the most during these months.
Make sure to check out the work of the other trainees as well, they did some amaaaazing work:
(who hasn't posted his work yet but keep an eye out!)
Ah! So inspiring these guys! If you are applying to this year's program, good luck to you! I hope this gave at least a little bit of insight to what it was like. Thanks for checking it out everyone!
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