PRODUCTION DESIGNERS: NAOMI SHOHAN & DAVID LAZAN
SUPERVISING ART DIRECTOR: PATRICIA WOODBRIDGE & WILLIAM SKINNER
LEAD GRAPHIC DESIGNER: ADDISON PETTIT
SET DECORATOR: GEORGE DE TITTA JR.
I Am Legend was my big break into film, and it’s still my favorite project. Production Designer Naomi Shohan gave me a huge opportunity, taking a chance on me as an unknown, untested keyframe illustrator—she needed to hire a NYC local instead of bringing in someone more experienced from LA. My normal trade was graphic design for film, and during production I picked up some of those duties too, which put me in the rare position of being able to take a set—working with some incredibly talented set designers, scenics, construction crew, and set dec team—from concept to finished product.
One of the first sets I worked on, both conceptually and graphically, was the Midtown Manhattan Ford dealership, where Will Smith’s Neville was supposed to drive a Mustang through the showroom glass and speed off to Times Square—also one of my sets—to hunt deer. The opening scene was ultimately cut from the final film, but I still love the set. Below is the art gallery that was converted into the Ford dealership.
Here you can see the final constructed set, with previously unseen video of the car crash below.
Next up on Neville’s race to Times Square is the Flatiron District, with keyframe illustration by me with graphics I placed by Addison Pettit. Below a screen grabbed still at the bottom.
Times Square was my largest and most time-intensive set on the movie. I worked on it both conceptually and logistically—coordinating the clearance of existing graphics with our legal department, creating original ones to reflect that the story takes place in 2012 (five years after the film’s release), and developing a system to manage the immense number of graphics with VFX. The set was shot inside an armory in New York against a blue screen and was largely brought to life through coordination with the visual effects team at Sony Imageworks.
