Daniel Kabanov
Visual Development Portfolio
violent on a case by case Basis
'Violent on a Case by Case basis' Is a Noir retelling of the Pandora's Box Myth set in 1923 prohibition Chicago.
It was decided really early on in the process to use a very limited palette of blacks and whites, with a bright Magenta added for contrast and for supernatural elements. It also helped to hark back to the Noir genre and the time period the story takes place in.
It also worked well for the environment! Early 1920s nighttime photography was incredibly high contrast. This was reflected in the way I rendered backgrounds. In my head, the entire story is set at night.
Violent on a Case by Case Basis has a lot of characters, but I think the one who I had the most fun with was Pandora herself! First generation Chinese immigrant Xiaodan "Cathy" Xin-Yi!
Cathy is a play on the trope of a character with a suitcase chained to their wrist. That case being Pandora's box. I thought it would be fun to have a character with more agency in this scenario, a character who says, "No, I will fix this." She is very nonsense and to the point.
A little storyboard character test.
Finally, every grimy dark noir story needs a poster! I jumped a few decades ahead and took inspiration from mafia movie posters of the 1940s. A mix of poster 'I' and 'G' were picked! The case in the sunglasses worked well both compositionally and thematically.
Overall, I'm very proud of the work I did in the roughly two-month period I was given to work on this little world building project! The shorter deadline for the deliverable created a lot of fun limitations caused innovation such as using blender blockouts and limited palette.
