Eric Wong

> It was undoubtedly a surreal moment. Seeing the first teaser trailer for Belle made all the lead up work to designing the World of U feel so real, but it was upon watching the second trailer that I so vividly remember. It was the start of Spring, London was still in lockdown and I was browsing my phone one late evening before bed when I stumbled upon the 70 second clip. The trailer opened with the beautiful voice of Kaho Nakamura alongside Ludvig Forsell's suspenseful musical score. As several cut scenes move between the real world and digital world came to a pause, the grand reveal and slow panning scene of Suzu confronting the vast world of U brought me to tears. It was at that very moment, that I truly comprehended what we have been working towards.
>
> Wong upon seeing his work rendered on *Belle*

**Eric Wong** is a British architect, illustrator, and design tutor based in London. He studied Art and Architecture at the Byam Shaw School of Art, and completed his studies at Cambridge to become an architect. He designed the entire virtual world U, also notably working on minutiae details such as app design and interface, the logo colors, and the dome made up of puzzle pieces.

## Background

Wong worked as one of multiple concept artists in October 2019, rivaling against fifty, and was chosen because Director Mamoru Hosoda liked his initial design. "I got a series of texts, very short sentences talking about a castle, a virtual world, and a place called U". He recalled, "The first communication I received from Director Mamoru Hosoda was back in November 2019. The director personally found my work online and asked [CG studio] Digital Frontier to get in contact with me via email, in fact, the request at the time came through to my junk mail! After submitting a concept art pack for what could be the world of 'U', Digital Frontier put me in to direct contact with Director Hosoda..." He said the brief synopsis he first received from Studio Chizu was "a massive virtual world... with over 5 billion users" that expanded to further concepts, such as "a floating mysterious metropolis... [with] geometrical illumination and sparkling lights from skyscrapers". Due to working daily commutes in architectural practice, he would journey to work, and this would be the time he worked on designing the universe with hand-drawn sketches. Often he worked on the project during nighttime and set up as computer models to examine different perspectives. He began the project in November 2019 and would meet weekly online with Hosoda from then to May/June 2020. Along with this came additional changes from between May-September 2020, which took "almost a year" of the creation proposal.

Wong discussed the three main components in the virtual world: "a central public gathering hub in the city of skyscrapers, the omni-directional landscape and the street view with key lines of light and sizes". He went on to highlight the three key designs, "The first one was the initial concept of the U-shaped castle. And then we moved on to having it *Summer Wars* inspired to have this array-like city. And then we moved to the final linear city that represents not only the river that Suzu passes by, but a single string or line, as you call it. Those were the major city shifts in the proposal". He also remarked upon the latter of the linear choice, "There was this idea of no heaven or earth, no left or right, an omnidirectional stage". A key visualization Hosoda shared with him was a "progression" from the work, *Summer Wars* (2009). Wong added, "Hosoda says the single line reminds him of the river that Suzu passes all the time, which reminds her of her mother in the real world. So, there was some poetic relevance to a previous film, to the current film, and the simplicity of the single line that actually contains this vast world called U".

When *Deadline* asked of his inspiration, Wong replied, "So the architecture is very modular-based, so it's made up of a simple component that then modulates and tessellates throughout the whole city, and it's imagined as this linear city, this single line. But this single line also switches scale and becomes something quite vast and ginormous, so it started from there. And I remember designing it, and the director was like, "Oh, Eric, did you realize that this single line in this opening sequence is much like the opening sequence of *The Girl Who Leapt Through Time*?" And so it really went from there, so the architecture is very modulated. There was a few variants of it. There was an initial concept part of it being a U-shaped castle. Much later, it was quite array-like, much like the *Summer Wars* digital world. And then learning from the other two, it came back full circle to become this city".

## Director's commentary

In an interview, Mamoru shared to *Cinema Daily US*, "I searched for such hidden talents and found someone I could work with. I was looking for someone for quite a bit of time. Under those circumstances, I found a portfolio on the Internet and the work was so good that even though I didn't know who it was, I contacted him. That was Eric Wong, a 27-year-old living in London. He was a young architect. He is very talented, and what he expressed in his architecture matched the way I actually imagined [the virtual world of the Internet]. The way to create it was to make an abstract leap forward — to express a dizzying big city where reality and the Internet were infinitely intertwined. I drew it with a focus on that. Even though he is more of a virtual architect [he had great ideas]". He noted, "It was lucky that I found him, because he was this kind of conceptual architect. Under such circumstances, it seems that we created a new way to express the world of the Internet while trading ideas with each other".

In the behind-the-scenes video, he commented, "But as I was poking around on the Internet, I came across a great visual, Eric's work. He's a young architect around 30 years old. He teaches architecture in college and does his own architectural designs as well. He's, how can I say it... He's like a virtual architect. I created a world called OZ in *Summers Wars* and wanted U to be an extension of that. That said, I wanted a flat and graphical world. And Eric was able to make it seem like OZ and U are somehow connected".

To *Polygon*, he said, "When we were designing the world of U, we knew we needed someone who was really special and had amazing talent. Similar to how Belle is actually this unknown girl living in the suburban countryside of Japan, we wanted to take a similar approach by searching on the Internet for someone who could possibly handle the task of creating U. We found Eric's portfolio and at the time, we had no idea who he was, how old he was, where he was located, or what kind of background he had. It was only after reaching out and talking with him we discovered he was a very young architect, I think about 27 years old, living in London who had absolutely no moviemaking experience whatsoever. We were able to overcome that because of his amazing talents and the fact that he put himself out there on the Internet to be discovered. It shares a lot of parallels with the story of Belle in that way".

## Refereces

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "An Interview with Belle Virtual World Designer Eric Wong". *Otaku News*. June 29, 2022.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Osmond, Andrew (February 6, 2022). "Interview: Eric Wong". *All the Anime*.
3. ↑ Fleming, Ryan (December 8, 2021). "How British Architect Eric Wong Designed ‘Belle's Virtual Reality World: "It's Made Up Of A Simple Component That Then Modulates And Tessellates"". *Deadline*.
4. ↑ Hosoki, Nobuhiro (January 17, 2022). "An Exclusive Interview with Director Mamoru Hosoda on "Belle"". *Cinema Daily US*.
5. ↑ "Making of BELLE | Designing the World of "U"". *YouTube*. January 19, 2022.
6. ↑ Egan, Toussaint (January 12, 2022). "Belle is the virtual world anime that Mamoru Hosoda always wanted to make". *Polygon*.

## External links

* @ericwong\_folio on Instagram
* Official website