page_title: Treasure Planet
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Treasure Planet / Production / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: "One more step, Mr. Hands," said I, "and I'll blow your brains out!" Illustration by N.C. Wyeth for the 1911 edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.
context_page_description: Treasure Planet is a 2002 American animated science fiction action adventure film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on November 27, 2002. It is the 43rd Disney animated feature film. The film is a science fiction adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 adventure novel Treasure Island and was the first film to be released simultaneously in regular and IMAX theaters. It is at least the second retelling of the story in an outer space setting, following the 1987 Italian miniseries Treasure Island in Outer Space. It employs a novel technique of hand-drawn 2D traditional animation set atop 3D computer animation. With a budget of $140 million, it is the most expensive traditionally animated film ever made.
  The film was co-written, co-produced and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, who had pitched the concept for the film at the same time that they pitched another Disney animated feature, The Little Mermaid. Treasure Planet features the voices of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brian Murray, David Hyde Pierce, Martin Short, Roscoe Lee Browne, Emma Thompson, Michael Wincott, Laurie Metcalf, and Patrick McGoohan.
context_section_description: While designing for Treasure Planet, the crew operated on rule they call the "70/30 Law" (an idea that art director Andy Gaskill has credited to Ron Clements), which meant that the overall look of the film's artwork should be 70% traditional and 30% sci-fi. The overall look of Treasure Planet was based on the art style promoted by illustrators associated with the Brandywine School of Illustration (such as Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth), whose illustrations have been described by the film's crew as being the "classic storybook illustration," having a painterly feel to it, and being composed of a warm color palette.
  There were around forty animators on the crew, and were further divided into teams; for example, sixteen animators were assigned to Jim Hawkins because he appeared on the screen the most, and twelve were assigned to John Silver. To ensure "solidity" in illustration and personality, each major character in the film had a team of animators led by one supervisor. Conli mentioned that the personalities of the supervisors affect the final character, citing Glen Keane (the supervisor for John Silver) as well as John Ripa (the supervisor for Jim Hawkins) as examples. The physical appearance, movements, and facial expressions of the voice actors were infused into the characters as well.
  When asked if they drew inspiration from the previous film adaptations of Treasure Island for the character designs, Glen Keane stated that he disliked looking at previous portrayals of the character in order to "clear his mind of stereotypes", but that he drew some inspiration for the manner by which Silver spoke from actor Wallace Beery, whom he "loved because of the way he talked out of the side of his mouth." For the characterization and design for Jim Hawkins, John Ripa cited James Dean as an important reference because "there was a whole attitude, a posture" wherein "you felt the pain and the youthful innocence", and he also cited the film Braveheart because "there are a lot of close-ups on characters...who are going through thought processes, just using their eyes."
  Animators also used maquettes, small statues of the characters in the film, as references throughout the animation process. Character sculptor Kent Melton mentioned that the first Disney film to use maquettes was Pinocchio (1940), and that this paved the way to the formation of an entire department devoted to character sculpting. Keane noted that maquettes are not just supposed to be "like a mannequin in a store", but rather has to be "something that tells you [the character's] personality" and that maquettes also helped inspire the way actors would portray their roles.
  The animators took Deep Canvas, a technology which they had initially developed for Tarzan (1999), and came up with a process they called "Virtual Sets," wherein they created entire 360 degree sets before they began staging the scenes. They combined this process with traditionally-drawn characters in order to achieve a "painted image with depth perception" and enabled the crew to place the camera anywhere in the set and maneuver it as they would maneuver a camera for a live-action film. In order to test how a computer-generated body part (specifically John Silver's cyborg arm) would mesh with a traditionally animated character, the crew took a clip of Captain Hook from Peter Pan (1953) and replaced his arm with the cyborg arm.
caption: An illustration by N.C. Wyeth titled One More Step, Mr. Hands for a 1911 publication of Treasure Island. This type of illustration, which was described by the film crew as "classic storybook illustration," was the basis for Treasure Planet's overall look.
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