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I had the great pleasure to design the vicious White Spikes for 'The Tomorrow War'. (Watch it on Amazon Prime Video)

Back in 2019, I worked a few weeks with director Chris McKay and production designer Peter Wenham on the film. To my surprise, I was told at the very end that other designers (some I know and admire) already had previously worked on various alien designs, and ultimately it was my design that got picked for the film.

The White Spikes had to be a powerful enemy. Director Chris McKay described the White Spikes to me as vicious creatures that attack and eat everything in sight. He asked for a compelling design that conveyed the hunger and intelligence of these creatures. Additionally, the White Spikes needed to have different abilities such as fast swimming and flying. It was important that they were agile and able to move extremely fast. It was my job to translate all this information into one cohesive design.

Because there was no clear description of the White Spikes, I gave Chris a few different options to choose from in the beginning. In this early stage, it was all about brainstorming and coming up with interesting ideas.

In order to make them more threatening, Chris felt they needed to have some kind of an offensive weapon, and asked for a plausible way of how the White Spikes could shoot at their targets. I came up with the idea of spike-shooting-tentacles and presented the idea in a sketch. Chris and everyone else loved that idea and wanted me to develop that particular design further. I think it became one of the more memorable features of the design.

After that sketch got approved, I created a 3D model and a few renderings that were presented to the studio. Later Weta Digital, Luma Pictures, Framestore, Method Studios and Spectral Motion used my work to bring them to life.

Read more about my design-process and inspirations: www.behance.net/gallery/124512…

You can follow me and my work on:
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/kenbarthelme…
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/theartofkenba…
TWITTER: twitter.com/KenBarthelmey
My Website: theartofken.com/

Description

I had the great pleasure to design the vicious White Spikes for 'The Tomorrow War'. (Watch it on Amazon Prime Video)

Back in 2019, I worked a few weeks with director Chris McKay and production designer Peter Wenham on the film. To my surprise, I was told at the very end that other designers (some I know and admire) already had previously worked on various alien designs, and ultimately it was my design that got picked for the film.

The White Spikes had to be a powerful enemy. Director Chris McKay described the White Spikes to me as vicious creatures that attack and eat everything in sight. He asked for a compelling design that conveyed the hunger and intelligence of these creatures. Additionally, the White Spikes needed to have different abilities such as fast swimming and flying. It was important that they were agile and able to move extremely fast. It was my job to translate all this information into one cohesive design.

Because there was no clear description of the White Spikes, I gave Chris a few different options to choose from in the beginning. In this early stage, it was all about brainstorming and coming up with interesting ideas.

In order to make them more threatening, Chris felt they needed to have some kind of an offensive weapon, and asked for a plausible way of how the White Spikes could shoot at their targets. I came up with the idea of spike-shooting-tentacles and presented the idea in a sketch. Chris and everyone else loved that idea and wanted me to develop that particular design further. I think it became one of the more memorable features of the design.

After that sketch got approved, I created a 3D model and a few renderings that were presented to the studio. Later Weta Digital, Luma Pictures, Framestore, Method Studios and Spectral Motion used my work to bring them to life.

Read more about my design-process and inspirations: www.behance.net/gallery/124512…

You can follow me and my work on:
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/kenbarthelme…
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/theartofkenba…
TWITTER: twitter.com/KenBarthelmey
My Website: theartofken.com/