Kevin Dart is an Art Director who has worked on many different things, and also with various renowned animation studios like DreamWorks, Pixar, Disney, Laika and Passion Pictures. He’s also Art Director for Steven Universe, and has published two books.
His style is something that I enjoy looking at, as he incorporates outlines and patterns to further designs, as well as keeping a simple style with block colours being used to describe solid structures such as buildings.
Some of his most well-known concept art is from Big Hero 6, where he worked in block colours to produce concept art for the streets of San Fransokyo. These concepts were made early in development, so there are many differences with designs compared to the finished movie.
These environments are all set in a futuristic city, where superheroes and super villains exist, which is why in a few of these images, there are early concepts for Baymax, and also scrapped designs for villains. The top image is my favourite, as it's not only an action shot with tilted perspective, but it also sets the scene perfectly. It shows a city, recognisably Asian in style, and a group of burglars stealing from a shop and fleeing the scene.
The tone of the first image is somewhat light-hearted, while also sinister. It's light-hearted because of the geisha-like thieves running away from the scene, which isn't the most serious looking situation in the world. Having geishas as thieves is mildly amusing, as geishas are known to be well-mannered and poised. In short, this image is light-hearted and humorous because of the irony. It's sinister because of the smiles the front two geishas are giving, as well as people in the background running away from the robbery. One of the geishas has a flail, which she is in the middle of whipping at the shopkeeper, who has his hands up in surrender. The fact that the thieves seem to be enjoying themselves is also unnerving.
Although the colours in the first image are bright, the shading also helps convey the sinister tone. The light sources of the image are used to silhouette the two geisha running away. The main light sources are lights from the shop being burglarised, the lanterns and signs hung up around the street, and the bright light coming from down the street behind them. The yellow used on the lights gives the pallet of the image a warmer pallet, which creates the effect of city smog polluting the air.
Another one of the images that I like is the concept image of the 'Airport of San Frantokyo.' This image is a lot simpler than the first, with Baymax and Hiro sitting on the roof next to the sign. I like this image because the colours are muted, which makes any colours added highly visible, which means the two characters in the image are the focal point of the image.
The tone of this image, in contrast with the first is cold, although the two characters in the scene brighten it up. Most of the building is shadowed, with the side facing the characters being a reflective shadow, and green instead of reddish. Adds some difference in the colour pallet, as everything else in the image is very muted and grey. The sun speaks in at the side of the building as well, which casts a yellow glow over the edge of the building and also some of the letter, which adds more warmth to the pallet. Although the pallet is mostly warmer colours, they are very muted, and not as eye-catching as the greens used on the airport and also on the skyscrapers in the distance. The sky is also smoggy, with no clouds, which makes the composition seem spacious and open, not just confined to the scene shown.
Since all this art was done early on in development, it's that similar to how the finished movie turned out. Some of the scenery used in these images matches the movie, but the futuristic style was upped in the finished product. The stories and scenes happening in these images unfortunately never happened, which is a shame, since I think having geishas running around as burglars would make for an interesting film.
Kevin Dart also created some concept art for Steven Universe, a Cartoon Network show by Rebecca Sugar. These were later used by the background artists to create the ones that would feature in episodes of the show.
The top two are of the same subject, which is a rock structure in the shape of a woman, with a lighthouse on the top of the cliffs, and a house built under her hands. All these images have the same style sky, with the clouds streaking across the sky diagonally in varying shades to match whatever the main colour of the sky is.
The overall tone of all these images is light-hearted because of the bright, abstract and pastel colours used to describe the various terrains and an interior. Darker parts of cliffs are painted in streaks with textured brushes, which creates the effect of shading while also having shadows in the scenes. There's also line work used to describe the details in anything that can't be shaded to show it, like interior of the shop, which has a lot of detail in the fridges against the back wall. The colours used in these images are all ethereal, and definitely solidify the cartoony style that's featured in Steven Universe.
My favourite of these images is the bottom one, which is a view of a town and a cliff, with a part of the statue sticking out into view. I like the cold pallet of it, and the simplicity of the colours used. What interests me about this image is the lack of contrast in colour. Everything is very uniform, which is odd, as usually with cartoony styles, everything is exaggerated. There is a lot of sand in the image, which could've been made golden to contrast with the ocean and sky, but it wasn't, and the image feels more harmonious because of this.
The style of Steven Universe stayed very much the same throughout concept art, although the colour pallets were changed from being realistic to being abstract and pastel.
I had a go at recreating a landscape in the same style. Since I'm not good at drawing landscapes, I used the Seven Sister Cliffs in Sussex as reference, but I did change a few things to give myself a challenge. I started by creating the ocean, which I used three shades of blue to create, much like how Kevin Dart did. Against the sand is a lighter blue, which looks like waves hitting the beach from a distance.
I put a gradient on the grass, so that it isn't just one giant block of colour, and instead has something interesting going on. It also helped me determine where the light source is in the image. I also made the cliffs a slightly bluish grey, which I then lightened, turned a brush sideways, and put strokes up it to create a similar effect. I mainly stuck with the style he used in the Steven Universe concept art, but I tried to bring in some bolder colours like in the Big Hero 6 concept art.
I think I did well with this image, but I definitely didn't get the sky right. Part of the problem for this is that I made the dark clouds too big, and there already wasn't a lot of the sky in the image. I also think I could've experimented with more colours. The overall tone of the image cold and quiet, which fits with the style Kevin Dart used for the Steven Universe concept art. If I were to try and match the Big Hero 6 concept art instead, I would add a town in the cove, and also some pylons with cables running in between. I'd also add a glow to the streetlamps in the town, which is something he did in the Big Hero 6 art.
Overall, I think I got the basics of Kevin Dart's style down, and if I wanted to mimic it perfectly, I'd have to work on having more coordinated colour pallets and the flow of the brush, since Kevin Dart uses before smooth shapes and harsh geometric shapes in his art.