Katy Wu

Super Giant Robot Brothers

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This is the work I created for Reel FX’s latest animated TV series, “Super Giant Robot Brothers”, as production designer.  

Some of the artwork on this page was created in collaboration with other artists on the team.  The initial designs of the two robots Shiny and Thunder, are heavily influenced by the designs of the original creators Victor Moldanado and Alfredo Torres. 

Our main character designer is Marie Thorhauge.  Secondary characters designed by Willie Real, Awuradwoa Afful, and India Boekch.  

Main set designers:  James Gilleard, Junyi Wu, Willie Real, Karen Kuo, Dia Jamadron, and India Boeckh.

Development lasted about 10 months, with the art team (myself included) rolling off before production really got going.  That’s the fast paced world of TV!

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This was one of the first images I created as part of a visual overview packet for Netflix and the production team at ReelFX.  This sheet shows a visual breakdown of the largest components/characters of the show, and how the differ from each other in terms of color, shape, and pattern.  (this document has since changed)

As we created more artwork and rules for the stylized look, it would be compiled into a packet to be passed on to production and anyone new joining the project.  That’s the fast paced world of TV!

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The original designs of the main character, Shiny, are fairly similar to the original designs in Headless Studio’s pitch packet.  

I helped flesh out Shiny’s character by exploring facial expressions, his weapons, and smaller details such as graphics and serial numbers on his robot parts.

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This is the mysterious ORT (Onion Ring Thing). It's in outer space near Earth, and spits Kaiju out. It's the source of all our heroes problems!

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Our heroes!

Characters by Marie Thorhauge

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I generally leave character design to the character designers, but become more involved when we are getting closer to the final product.  

These are paintovers of the finished and approved models of main and key characters.  I wanted to make sure there was consistency in how we handled hair, skin, face paint, and eye detail. 

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This is a character that was created by combining Shiny and the other main character robot, Thunder’s models.  In order to keep production from going other budget, we had to compromise by not creating a completely new character from scratch.  

I took care to still make this character feel special through colors and graphics, since he appears in the climax of the last episode. 

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These are environments that are inside Shiny and Thunder.  The interior of the robots is as different as their personalities.  But to save time on production, we had to reuse as many parts and models as we could, and utilize color, pattern, and lighting to create differences.

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One of the environments we spend the most time is in the EDF (Earth Defense Force).  The EDF is a sprawling, underground base.

I first created an intro sheet which shows some reference and sketches of how the environment should “feel” like.  Artists can use this as a guide when they design other parts of the EDF. 

The first set that was designed for the EDF was mission control.  Mission control is where Alex and Creed give orders to Shiny and Thunder.  It’s a space where we want to feel action and drama, even if it is just a room with a giant screen that Alex and Creed are looking at. 

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TnThis is another part of the EDF we spend a lot of time in, the Hangar Bay. This is where Shiny and Thunder hang out and receive repairs and communicate with Alex and Creed in person. Because of that, it's a very tall and big room, hidden within a mesa.

I had to break this large space down into walls. The design is mostly symmetrical, with different numbers and text. The scale of the graphics is large for Robots to see, or smaller for humans, and meant to keep the two safe and separated to prevent accidents.

Lighting keys for Ep01.

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This is the entrance to the EDF headquarters hide out. The entire base is hidden underground amongst a labyrinth of canyons. Doorways and windows are discreet.

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GRITs is a training room for the Robots within the EDF. There is a large arena with multiple obstacle courses and graphics on the walls for the Robots. Above the arena is a small command center for Alex and Creed to observe the action from above.

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These are other miscellaneous rooms in the EDF. The top one is a jet runway and the bottom is a circular loop to give the illusion of vehicles driving somewhere in the EDF.

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This is a smaller mecha piloted by a side character (the love interest of Alex Rose).  His smaller mecha is fast and agile. I don’t normally design mecha but this was a fun assignment. 

To save time in modeling, the model is very simple and has few joints (no fingers etc).

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In the last episode we finally get to a see a little more of the antagonists. Earth is attached by a giant hand/claw shaped spaceship and it’s finger-Kaiju. After it’s defeat, the Hand spaceship reunites with an even larger spacecraft - foreshadowing!

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These are Alien interiors seen inside the Alien Hand/Claw Spaceship. I wanted to create an environment that felt a bit unsettling through it's bright, off-set colors.

The base models for the hangar and hallway are reuses of the EDF Jet Runway and Shiny/Thunder interior hallways.

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These 3 sheets are part of the visual overview guide for SGRB. Using James Gilleard's fantastic city and building designs, I broke down how we can approach modular buildings for quickly creating cities, level of detail depending on how close/far the object is from the focal point, and how to approach stylized and simplified glass textures and reflections.