The Hunt – Researching Native American Art and Culture

We wanted to work on a legend as we felt it would allow us to make a short stylised animation and leave us a lot of freedom in design. As it comes from a certain part of the world, it also carries a lot of references artistically, which helps give a sense of direction to the design of the entire project and ties it together.

The story (Pre-production and research)

During the Summer 2014, Maya and I spent a few weeks in British Columbia, Canada. We were amazed by how much Native American art and legends were a part of the local culture. We felt really inspired by totem poles and paintings depicting animals with calligraphic-like lines.

Researching Native American Art and Culture

We went to the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in order to find out more about Native American art and culture.

All the pictures we took and the illustrations we collected influenced us all throughout the design process and also helped me in the texturing stage, especially for the textures of the hunters.

We also looked at a few books on Native American Art. Learning by Designing was especially useful to understand the rules governing Native American illustrations, and the kind of shapes around which the drawing revolves. North Coast style is more abstract than realistic (Gilbert and Clark, 1999), and looks like calligraphy in a way. There also a strong emphasis placed on the face of characters and animals in their Native American representation.

I found these patterns quite expressive and strong which can help enhance the composition of the emotional moments of the story.

As well as Native American Art, I looked at Canadian Landscape Painters, and more precisely at the Group of Seven. I found their art really interesting as it combines geometric shapes -reminding of Native American patterns – with figurative representations of Canadian Landscapes. This was my starting point while designing the environments.

All this visual research helped us understand more about the North Coast Canadian culture and was used all throughout the project as a starting point and reference for designing, texturing and matte painting.