Project · Illustration, Look development · Hybrid · Photoshop · Feature film sequence

The Kid Who Would Be King

An animated prologue and illustrated prop book for The Kid Who Would Be King, Joe Cornish's modern-day King Arthur adventure.

Book spread titled The Battle With Morgana, showing an army marching toward a fortress on a hilltop.
Prop book spread.

Glassworks Barcelona created an animated prologue and illustrated prop book for The Kid Who Would Be King, Joe Cornish’s 2019 modern-day King Arthur adventure. The illustrated legend takes its look from inexpensive, misprinted children’s books of the 1970s.

The Sequence

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Design

I researched the printing and illustration styles of 1970s children's books, then illustrated the prop's pages alongside Guy Pérez and the other illustrators.

Illustrated map of Britain in the Age of King Arthur, with a king, shields, an owl and a sword rising from a lake.
Early map design.
Blue illustrated map of Arthurian Britain, with Stonehenge, Tintagel and Glastonbury Abbey on shield panels.
Alternate map design.
  • A hand rises from a dark lake among reeds, holding a glowing sword upright.
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  • Book spread titled The Battle With Morgana, showing an army marching toward a fortress on a hilltop.
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Characters

I did not design the characters but helped refine their color palettes and shapes. All of them were animated in 3D, with some extra line details, such as hair and capes, animated in 2D.

The characters began as 2D designs and were modeled in 3D. I then developed a rendering treatment to reproduce the printed lines and halftone shading.

Black and white profile sketches of a boy and of King Arthur wearing a crown.
Character sketches.
Front, three-quarter and side head studies of Morgana wearing a spiked golden crown.
Morgana character design.
Four flat color bars in cyan, magenta, yellow and black.
CMYK palette.

I kept line layers separate from color layers in the final artwork and look development, giving us more control over the halftone treatment.

For the print patterns and misaligned colors, I also explored a 2D treatment in Photoshop: separating the renders into CMYK channels and shifting them against one another.

Four heads of a crowned king: black line art, then yellow, magenta and cyan halftone layers.
Halftone color separation.
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Two full-length costume designs of Arthur and Uther in armour, crowns and red capes.
Arthur and Uther costume designs.

Stills

  • A young knight in a red tabard stands with sword and shield on a battlefield at sunset.
  • Two armored knights clash swords on a battlefield, one holding a blue shield with gold dragons.
  • A crowned king in armour faces a ring of raised swords between two stone towers.

Making Of

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  • Photoshop window showing a purple 3D head model of Morgana beside a line sketch.
  • Grid of forty grayscale storyboard thumbnails showing knights, swords and Morgana.

More on Glassworks' website.

A young knight in a red tabard stands with sword and shield on a battlefield at sunset.

Credits

Written and Directed By
Joe Cornish
Production Company
Glassworks Barcelona
Prologue Director
Javier Verdugo
Executive Producer
Duncan Buxton
Producer
Belén Palos
Production Coordinator
Sara Camacho Gutiérrez
3D Animation Lead
Hugo García
3D Artists
Abner Marin • Julio Lorenzo • Gergely Wootsch • Carlos Cortés • Marc Gual • Joan Guasch • Victor Vinyals • Kiko Navarro • Marco Rossi • Rob van den Bragt • Tiaan Franken • Pol Soler • Kornel Makarowicz
2D Animation Lead
Pablo Navarro
2D Artists
Javi Vaquero • Richard Anderson • Ezequiel Cruz • Guy Pérez • Jérémy Baudry • Amanda Garcia • Juliette Oberndorfer • Libardo Bohórquez • Luis Gaspardo • Macarena Ortega • Margarita Rojas • Marion Louw • Oscar Carambano • Pere Hernández • Toni Sala • Eva Puyuelo • Hugo Perdiz • Heidi Stohr • Bey Rodríguez
Digital Compositors
Carlos de la Sotilla • Roberto Garcia • Dani López • Albert García • Karen Weiss
Flame
Dani Granado
Colorist
Pepin Pedraza
Making Of By
Maria Medinilla
Visual Effects By
Glassworks
Executive Producer
Duncan Buxton
Producer
Joe Billington
Data Wrangler
Martin Wheeler
Compositing Supervisor
Duncan Malcolm
Compositing Supervisor
Mark Harris
Visual Effects Artists
Mark Harris • Davide Uccellani • Duncan Malcolm • Julian Johnson • Leanne Pletersky • Heriberto Penche • Richard Russell • Ephraim Mkwandu • Sacha Danjou • Stephanie Joy