The Incredibles 2 Production Design Team Discusses The Realism & More in The Movie

The Incredibles 2 production design Team of Ralph Eggleston (Production Designer), Philip Metschan (Visual Designer) and Nathan Fariss (Sets Supervisor) recently spoke with comingsoon.net, here are some highlights…

You guys talked about how you amped up the realism of everything, but you still had the core character designs from the first one that you carried over. What would you say was the biggest deviation from the look of the first one?

Ralph Eggleston: The intentional single biggest deviation is the palette. Whereas the first film is a little more on the primary color side, like people’s memory of a comic book, this one moves us forward to the early 60’s. So the colors are brought down a bit. We go in-between the colors, it’s a little more pastel. There’s still color everywhere, but it’s a broader palette in general.

Philip Metschan: There’s some pretty huge technological leaps, whether it’s hair simulation, cloth simulation, crowds of people. There’s levels of detail we can put into the sets that wouldn’t have fit into computers at the time. The effects are off-charts now. Wait until you see the whole movie, there’s some incredible stuff.

You begin the film without your full bag of tricks to kind of ease people in visually from the first one, but once the Underminer drill comes up it’s full-on quality rendering. Besides the technical aspect, how would you describe the feeling once that drill comes up? What’s the difference?

Eggleston: They’re gonna sit down and the film’s gonna start and they’re gonna say, “Oh it’s so great to see these characters again.” Then they’re gonna go underground with Bob and the Underminer, cool stuff’s gonna happen, and then the second that thing comes above ground it’s like, “It’s the whole family! This is great!” That’s where we take it to 11. The next scene is dialed way way back at the hotel room.

Fariss: When that monorail comes around the corner it gets knocked off the track. Then Frozone comes in and we’ve got falling rubble and trains and ice effects, cars flying. Crazy stuff starts happening. That’s the kind of kick in the pants to the whole film.