Turkish/Canadian-designer Emrah Gonulkirmaz studied classical animation and figure drawing and eventually found himself working in graphic and motion design. His fascination with generative forms extended into this pitch for the Iron Man III movie for motion design studio yU+co in Los Angeles.

Were you hired on with yU+co specifically for this project?

I was already working with yU+co on another project as a lead designer & director. Garson Yu asked me to create some concept design and styleframes for the Iron Man III pitch.

I performed the research early on. I started by choosing some topics for the story that I planned to tell visually. What influenced me for the Iron Man III project were Generative art and forms, the layers of code created by the software Softimage XSI Interactive Creative Environment (ICE).

I was also looking into concepts of disassembled and corrupted data, as well as Nanotech creations and Kinetic sculptures. This led me to my final approach and direction. And inside the armor, I used the same kind of texture found in nanotech creations.

Research and inspiration (clockwise from top): disassembly, Generative art, topography, nanotech creations and kinetic sculptures

How did you choose the typography?

I visually connected the typography to surfaces with minimal kinetic sculptural forms. I looked at lots of different typefaces, I did not want to use something that looked too digital. When we looked at the approach on the style frames, the art had rounded edges and organic feel to it. I found the font "Quote" from Yosuke Masaki and felt that it was a perfect match for the title cards.

What was your design approach?

As an approach, the bio-electronic data travels around and forms the armor. Dark shaded areas inside the armor represent the result of the "Extremis" virus, which corrupts and hacks the body. Colors were limited to OpenGL shaders, I used simple color combinations that overlap each other and different transparency levels. For the oveall look, I aimed for a pencil sketch-look, more organic… and was additionally inspired by Frank Gehry’s architectural sketches.