MONSTERS AT WORK - SEASON 2
ENVIRONMENT DESIGN - fearco scare floor
The FearCo Scare Floor is the central hub of door stations that enable various “scarers” to walk through magic portals into the bedrooms of sleeping children and scare them, which in turn generates energy for FearCo. This was one of the epic locations at the end of season 2 that had to look enormous, scary and foreboding - a fun location to design!
Here, the door stations are in their neutral “resting pose”. In the distance, some of the doors are exiting the cavern, flying on the rails as they head into the cavern’s tunnel system. I designed this location originally in Maya, but I later imported it into Blender for more control over the lighting and textures.
Copyright © 2024 Disney
ANIMATED SET TOURS
This location fly-through begins in the Antechamber and then opens up into the cavernous Scare Floor.
Copyright © 2024 Disney
Here’s another view of the FearCo Scare Floor from the perspective of the door rails looking back at the enormous stalagmite. At some point in the past, a FearCo construction crew was given the task of flattening the pointy stalagmite to serve as the scary location for the scare floor.
Copyright © 2024 Disney
early scare floor concepts
When we were thinking of the overall architectural layout of the FearCo campus, a proposed idea was that there would be five scare floors present beneath the cylindrical main building. We were also trying to incorporate the concept of a pentagon shape language throughout the design of this location.
Copyright © 2024 Disney
This design process was a very collaborative and evolutionary process, involving the director, art director, story team and other environment designers. From the start, the director wanted a space that felt scary, foreboding, and oppressive. It had to be large in scale, while also feel like something was about to crush you from above. There also needed to be an “underworld” type of lighting, indicative of lava or some other mysterious light source that felt creepy and dangerous.
Copyright © 2024 Disney
This diagram shows an early idea about how the door station would rise up out of the ground and also with help of a robotic arm, be attached to the curving rail, whisking the door off into a mysterious tunnel in the cavern wall.
Copyright © 2024 Disney
door station mechanics
Here are some views of the final door station design and animation.
Some preliminary door designs, incorporating the shape language of horns, fangs and bat wings.
Copyright © 2024 Disney
This concept painting explored what the cave walls could look like with various tunnel openings that allowed the curved rails to pass through on the return trip to the Receiving Station. I was referring to various underground cave formations like Carlsbad Caverns as well as Bryce Canyon.
Copyright © 2024 Disney
Finally, here is a schematic of the entire Scare Floor, surrounding cavern and pentagonal structure, along with the Antechamber.
Copyright © 2024 Disney