Project Review: Phantom 2040 Part II-Characters

The Phantom [ AKA Kit Walker the 23rd-VO Scott Valentine]

Vaingloria [ VO by Debby Harry "Blondie"]

Sagan Cruz in Armor[ Law Enforcement- VO Leah Remini ]

Rebecca Madison[ VO Margot Kitter ]

Mr. Cairo[ VO Paul Williams]

Jenna is Space Suit

Phantom 2040- Part II Characters

Client: Heart Animation
Art Director: Myself
Project Date: Fall 1992

Tasked with Art Directing the new Phantom 2o4o series for Hearst Animation, I was responsible for developing the look and feel of the show. I was brought in after the producers had freelanced out the character designs to Peter Chung of MTV's Aeon Flux fame. The skinny gaunt body type was directly used from Aeon for Phantom, and since I was not going to touch the faces of any character, I developed a show look around his original designs.

The show theme was "Tall and Thin" as a design rule used for everything from backgrounds to props. A tall-thin character would not use a regular rectangular door, but something more like a "slot", thin to match the characters proportions.

I revised all tech on the characters as the design of anything robotic or teach based was straight lined conceptual design, so to mix the look up and make it unique I used curved lines and soft arcs rather than "Straight edge design". Art Nouveau was the architectural influence that I was inspired by, so the Biots, Architecture, and vehicles show a "wrapping" of ribbions to make up legs and bodies rather than cylinders covered in "nurnies" as seen before on various shows.

These above images are the marker comps that I did to hand off to the color key artist to cel shade to match for our South Korean vendor Sei-Young/Anitel Animation Studios.


Cheers, THOM