Environmental Storytelling: Up

The art directors at Disney outdid themselves in the movie 'Up'. The lighting and shadows in this movie are so realistic. This movie really shows the importance of observational on location drawing because, although the actual location of Paradise falls in the movie doesn't exist, a team of artists and photographers for Disney went to South America to draw and capture the surroundings and environment of jungles for their fictional world.

In these two images taken from Up, you can see the use of light and shadows and how realistically the shadows fall on the ground. This amount of realism could only be achieved through actual research of the table top mountains and jungles.

 They have also captured realistic rock textures and the texture of the jungle trees from a distance which makes this scene even more believable. 
I also like the way they have put detail into the distance, the way you can see other mountains faded into the horizon, blending into the sky. So much detail has gone into the backgrounds for this movie.


The lighting in this final picture shows paradise falls in the sunset and the shades of pink look natural in this light.