About

About Baris Tansel - Entertainment Design
Hi.
My name is Baris Tansel. I am a designer and according to some slightly metrosexual. But really, I am just another kid in the candy store. I spent the greater half of my formative years in Beverly Hills, California kissing girls and fixing cars. I love technology, nights out on the town and my computer. I owe everything to my family. Hi mom!

High School: Beverly Hills High School
Undergraduate Education: Art Center College Of Design

Profession
While I was in school I was fortunate to do the design work with Dale Mason Design Director, and former Vice President Phill Hetema of the Universal Studios Theme Park division. This experience gave me an opportunity to design every aspects of entertainment assets with the Wizard book. No limits enjoy the process mantra allowed me to create entity I didnt even know I was capable of doing. I love the whole process and the promising field.

Four months after graduating from Art Center, I have taken a position in Palo Alto California with PDI/Dreamworks on Jeffrey Katzenberg’s pet project the Shrek production. I was also one of the sixty that wrote the story outline for Shrek 2. In addition to that, I have worked on Tusker, and many short projects while I was in PDI/Dreamworks.

Shrek has taken over five years to bring to life with a crew of 500 people at the helm of Andrew Adamson, and Vicky Jenson with producer Jeffrey Katenberg, and executive producers Penney Finkelman Cox, Sandy Rabins, and David Lipman.The hard work proved itself to be fruitfull. Shrek established itself as one of the most successful feature animations ever by gaining block buster figure of over two and half billion dollars globally. In addition to that, the big green ogre Shrek snatch the golden boy “The Oscars” for the 74th Academy Awards as the winner of then the new category Best Animated Feature Film division. Coupled with various Annie awards and many other industry awards.

Then the Tusker was put on shelf, and the studio decided to focus solely on Shrek.

I have came back to Los Angeles and worked on Showtime | Viacom in development. I have created many story boards, visual development for many projects that were in pre development for the two in house independent producers. During this time I have also created a lot of theme environments for trade shows, concerts, and other venues.

Then a few years ago, I was brought in for a project at L P I D, then it encompassed of a selected small team and the project grew at a steady pace. Our one and only client Diane Disney Miller ~ aka Walt Disney Family Foundation, requested us to create a theme environment for a Walt Disney Museum proposal. I have been so fortunate to work with so many talented individuals and being exposed to Walt Disney’s personal life on a personal level. It really is an eye opener.

Right now, I am also working on other small projects that I love. This inludes designing various interior spaces and other conceptual entities.

What IS Entertainment Design?

It’s not deciding which toy to toss in a Happy Meal. Leave that for the marketers. We breath, think design.

Entertainment design is about creating themed environments, moods and set ups for: museums, casinos, night clubs, hotels, restaurants, and trade shows etc. It also encompasses visual development and storyboarding for live action and feature animation productions, as well as special effects and video
games. The process might change slightly from production to production. However, usually the production splits into three stages pre-visual development, visual development, post production.

Entertainment design calls for strong draftsmanship and layout skills. In pre-visual development, the drawings and renderings done by entertainment designers are often blue-sky and used to get financing or additional funds for the given budgets. We convey conceptual design ideas in images to help spark investment from the executive team.

Sometimes the pre-visual development and visual development can be a grey area depending on ever changing objectives of the project. However, once the project is funded fully, and all objectives are set, the entertainment designers push the project from the pre stage to the next level in visual development. This entails creating/recreating the boards, and pushing the envelope by creating variety of detailed layouts, mood studies within given shots.

If the production schedule allows it, your design or art team will refine everything from boards to visual concepts. But sometimes in certain productions you are only allowed to focus on certain crucial shots/layouts depending on budget, production objectives, and timeline. If this is a physical theme environment, your production budget restrictions, engineering and city codes might shape your design. Because of these given restrictions within physical theme environments, you might be forced to do more realistic visual concepts than blue sky conceptual ideas and really confined your ideas to these given restrictions.

After everything is complete in visual development stage, you may move to the post stage. Post stage might be considered as quality control. You may need to make sure that all the shots, designs are completed as intended. Depending on the production, you may also do a lot of hands on work with the post team.

You may work in all three stages in production, or only work on one of the stages within the crew.

Attention to detail is an extreme sport for entertainment designers. Cheap metal siding on a Bel Air club house, Paris Hilton’s “toe-bese” foot, klunky buttons on a Mp3 player - these imbalances drive an entertainment designer to distraction.

Is it a gift or a curse? Whatever it is, it’s my life.