Hi all! I'm Steve Nicodemus and wanted to keep all the Marvel fans and animation students informed on the inside scoop of how the production of Planet Hulk the DVD animated movie evolved. I can only give you what I know from my perspective as a background painter. I was the only in house painter and background paint supervisor for the last four Marvel animated movies starting from The Next Avengers, Hulk VS, Tales of Asgard and Planet Hulk.
Before we had final designs approved for the colosseum, An Sara village and the lava chamber, I had rough sketches that were done on post-it notes. These are used to establish the locations in the storyboards. Fedja Jovanovic did these with amazing detail. Then I took them and did these three samples. I did more. When I find them I'll try to post them. It was easy for me to blow them up in photoshop and start working. I knew from working on other productions that once we got into full swing that time would be short to get these paintings looking good in short time. So I took the opportunity to take the comps to as close to finish as I could. This saved me later when the shipping dates were locked and it's up to me to get everything done. We did have some money left over from development to use on some freelance painters but it was limited. The only design that changed in final was the An Sara village but it was close enough that I was able to submit this comp on the shipping deadline. The colosseum comp was mostly used for the CGI artists to follow for color and lighting.
I did have to help them out by providing them with texture maps that they used for some of the surfacing. I hope you enjoy these and if anyone has questions I will be happy to answer them. I enjoyed working on these projects and hope they decide to do more and ask me to come back. Cheers!
