Research

To find out more about Eyvind Earle's style and the inspiration behind it, I've started gathering some research in the form of reviews, articles, interviews etc. One of the most useful items is the book Once Upon a Dream by Charles Solomon, which looks at various different productions of Sleeping Beauty, looking in particular detail at the two disney films: Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent.

From this research I can pinpoint the key elements that make up Eyvind Earle's signature style and bring some of them into my own work. I would also like to look at some of the artist's work that inspired Earle in order to get a deeper understanding of his style.

Key points from my research:

• Earle was inspired by pre-Renaissance European art, Persian miniatures, Japanese prints. He names Durer, Breughel, van Eyck, and the Tres Riches Heures de Jean, Duc de Berry and 'everything that was gothic' as inspirations. However, Earle reinterprets a lot of these styles with a fifties point of view, and the final confrontation completely abandons the renaissance style for a very abstract look.

• The colours are taken from Tres Riches Heures de Jean, Duc de Berry.

• Disney wanted a 'moving illustration'.

• Earle's art is 'flattened, highly detailed' with an 'emphasis on texture'.

• Earle's backgrounds are rendered with the same focus as the foreground (same style as van Eyck). Illusion of reality is cast aside to create a more unified, stylised look.

• The colour was 'muted' and modulated to ensure clarity and keep backgrounds separate to the action. The colour also emphasises the breadth of the world through tonal recession.

• Light defines where detail is (light has detail, shadow less so).

• He uses a 'strong presence of horizontal and vertical elements' and geometric shapes.

• He uses multiple planes of perspective. Also, perspective is exaggerated in some scenes to evoke emotional discomfort, and flattened in harmonious scenes.

• The film was realised in a wide 2.55:1 aspect ratio to emphasise Earle's paintings.

Information on Maleficent from Once upon a Dream:


For Maleficent, the artists moved away from Earle's style and instead aimed for a realistic look similar to the Celtic moors. However, some of his style is still seen in the film and preliminary studies, and it is interesting to see how they tackled the challenge of bringing his style into 3D.

Earl'es style is probably most apparent in the straight lines and jagged bends used in the production of the thorns, which I think works well. I also like the detailed texture and scale that they used, although in my production I would like to push this even further to make the thorns more stylized.

There are also some interesting digital paintings which show photo-realistic representations of Earle's trees. Again these aren't as stylized as the look I want, but still interesting to see nevertheless.