Blasto's recent Streamy Award nomination for Art Direction and Cinematography has inspired me to give a little behind-the-scenes look into the Captain Blasto production design, a subject that is always highly discussed at screening Q&A's.
Captain Blasto is the story of Colin Carter, a teenage boy so enamored with the adventures contained within the pages of super-hero comic book, he begins imitating the traits and story of its titular fictional character. Since Captain Blasto was created specifically for our film, his character design, along with several issues of his comic book series would need to be custom illustrated. This wasn't too much of a stretch since I had plenty of practice drawing Superman multiple times a day back in high school.
Captain Blasto rough sketch, done in the style of Joe Shuster's early Superman designs.
Captain Blasto w/ vintage coloring.
Custom made comic book prop (cover).
Custom made comic book prop (inside page).To visually display Colin's love of the character, we canvased his bedroom with custom made memorabilia spanning decades, including posters, famous magazine covers, statues, and a 1950's Blasto actor autograph.
Notice the above LIFE magazine cover (first photo of set) is inspired by this classic photo of Kirk Alyn, the very first actor to play Superman in the old movie serials.
A few minutes of a fake cartoon were even produced in a 1970's animation style, inspired by the Super Friends.
Captain Blasto and the style of his comic book inform and influence nearly every aspect of the film's design, from Colin's costume to the comic book panel editing of various scenes throughout the film.
The comic book panels even include the classic advertisements!
