NDA_Monster Mia

Monster Mia

Role: Production Designer
Client: Arx anima, Arxlight, Peng-Boom-Tschak

Monster Mia is a 3D animated film based on the bestselling book series ‘Monstrous Maud’ by author A.B. Saddlewick, directed by Verena Felse.

I worked on the film from September 2023 to October 2025 as a production designer. In this role, I was responsible for defining the overall look of the film, working closely with the director and producers, supervising the art department that designed the characters and sets, and then supervising and guiding various departments during the entire production (modelling, surfacing, VFX, lighting/compositing and colour grading).

Initially, we wanted a rather stylised look, with flat, structured shapes and non-PBR lighting, but during production we had to tone down some of the more “bold” aspects to find the right visual balance between time, budget and producer feedback.

IMDb

Visual Development

The film revolves around two parallel worlds,Primrose and Rotwood, where one is orderly, controlled, and evoking cotton-candy vibes, the latter is a chaotic, brutalist-inspired, neogothic fun mess.

So it was very important to develop a distinct design language for both. Given the budget constraint , we decided very early on in the development process to go for a stylised look that would convey these aesthetic and narrative points while maintaining the highest possible production values. We therefore decided to work with simple shapes and stylised, contrasting shaders, placing a strong emphasis on lighting. The idea was to get closer to the tactile feel of stop motion, which was then also emphasised in animation, done in 2s and cinematography.

Key Art

Below are the style frames painted at the beginning of production to establish the look of the film and assist the art department in developing designs for characters and environments.

Color Script

Here you can see a selection of keys that I painted to guide the talented artist Azahara Quesada in creating the entire colour script. As you can see, although the starting point for the lighting is quite realistic, overall the light in Primrose is hyperbolic and oversaturated, with a strong high-key effect (we called it the “Ikea catalogue”), while in Rotwood it plays on contrasts with rather dark shadows inspired by German expressionist cinema.

Modelling, Grooming, Shading, Lighting...

The look development phase was particularly challenging, a critical point where many design issues started popping up. In the end, I think we found a good way to make everything work: stylised shapes, simplified shaders, and grooming help the eye follow the characters in the frame, while lighting gel everything together. We hope this gives the film a distinctive analogue feel and, hopefully, effectively masks the areas where we had to cut corners :P

A selection of images witouth compositing, just beauty renders from the lighting dept. They did an amazing job matching and often improving the color script.

VFXs

... below is a selection of notes and retakes for the VFX dept. Many of the special effects were designed by me on the spot, with only a few mood boards as a guide. The team led by Enrico Seiler worked wonders and created some stunning final effects in Nuke.