Visual Development

Alice's concept design challenge was given to Robert Stromberg, who worked with James Cameron on Avatar for four years. Stromberg met up with Tim Burton and Rick Carter to discuss the look and feel of "Underland". Rick Carter worked with a team on character design while Stromberg focused on the environment.
"I took some of the color of Tim's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the darkness of his Sleepy Hollow just to see what would happen," said Stromberg about creating the classical world of Lewis Carroll into a twisted manifestation of Tim Burton. After showing Burton the illustration of the caterpillar sitting on the mushroom in the forest as Alice approaches him, Burton was pleased with the image, bringing Stromberg in on the project in London.

Pre production lasted for five months, with a scheduled two week on location shoot in England and then in Culver City, California at the Sony Pictures Studios there would be a 40 day studio shoot. Unfortunately because of the strict time constrants , Tim Burton's desire to build actual sets could not be done pushing for the creation on environments to be completed afterward. Because of this character design went into full swing, several citizens of Wonderland were created but some did not make the cut and since a majority of the characters would be digitally done, costume designer Colleen Atwood collaborated with Burton to create their wardrobes.

Conceptual artists were hired from an online database, CGPortfolio.com by Ralston. Some of these artists included Bobby Chiu and Micheal Kutsche who were important to the development of important characters. Gentle Giant Studios was commissioned also by Ralston to create 2D renderings that would become 10 in tall urethane maquettes. The program Z Brush was was used to to sculpt out drawings into digital models. "Then we printed out physical maquettes and painted them in house to match the key art. Those maquette served as visualization tools that allowed Ken and Imageworks to finalize the characters." said Karl Meyer President of Gentle Giant.