Pan: Art Department

Peter’s journey to Neverland was perhaps the most difficult conceptual sequences of the show, combining as it does a space setting, flying against a sky, and zero-gravity balls of water, which in turn play host to various pirate ships. The look and overall feel of the other-worldly cloudscape background had a huge part to play; becoming the backdrop to this fantastical voyage. The Art Department were involved from an early stage, providing cloudscape concepts for the initial visual pitch which resulted in a new system being developed which allowed the wider teams to create volume-based clouds.

The pirate ship soon sweeps through the voluminous cloud into a tunnel, landing in a mine environment created by Framestore’s Montréal team.  The primary challenge in designing what the environment should look like was sheer scale and depth. The space then had to be filled with miners - thousands and thousands of them - but it was also key that they didn’t look lost. The team created an endless caverous space which still manages to feel claustrophic. A hub of activity; buzzing with life.

Once the plates were shot, Framestore were in for another year’s worth of work creating Wright’s vision of three visually similar, yet distinct, mermaids. Deemed ‘motherly, feral and flirty’, the differentiations helped the teams to finesse the build and performance of each personality. The Art Department delivered concepts to create the right feel for the mermaid forms.

The aquatic environment was crafted using references of Vietnam’s Halong Bay to inform the work. Framestore’s artists also designed the magnificent Nevercroc crocodile; an imposing and majestic creature who rises from the water with a flourish, and was a shared asset between the London and Montréal offices in the building.