M A D E L I N E P I T T M A N
R E F E R E N C E S
I M A G E S
 Willy Wonka Ref 1 |  Willy Wonka Ref 2 |  Willy Wonka Ref 3 |
|---|---|---|
 Willy Wonka Ref 4 |  Willy Wonka Ref 5 |  Mood Board |
 Flower Design 1 |  Flower Design 2 |  Flower Design 3 |
 Ice Cream Reference |  Ice Cream Reference |  Ice Cream Reference |
 Ice Cream Reference |  Topping Study |  Topping Study |
 Topping Study |  Mashed Potato Test |  Mashed Potato Test |
 Mashed Potato Test |  Mashed Potato Test |
V I D E O S
When I first began allowing my original concept to marinate in my brain, I envisioned the tone of my piece as a serious message about friendship, with the blooming ice cream flower as an obvious symbol representing beauty and friendship growing from adversity. As I continued developing and refining my idea, I realized that I had been leaning more toward a light-hearted mood all along. As evidenced from the images below, I began to draw inspiration from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, as well as developing the clash of flower and ice cream to the level I wanted. I also took my own pictures of ice cream to develop a better sense of the arrangement of toppings, and I took test pictures of the cones I was going to use during my live action filming to see if I could make mashed potatoes look like ice cream.
Beginning to design my flower, I looked up a variety of different kinds with an eye toward finding the best one that I could transform into ice cream. Right in the beginning I found the iris, and it stuck with me. Not only was I fascinated by its silhouette, but also by the way it bloomed. Early on, I was very interested in incorporating spirals in my design choices. A combination of the spiral bud from a Japanese flower and the burgeoning opening of the iris seemed the perfect combination of drama and beauty for the look I was trying to accomplish. Though spirals did not become a major aspect of my design as I had supposed, and I later refined the design to incorporate some elements from tropical flowers, my vision still included irises and I adhered to a lot of my original choices.