La Biblioteca Fantástica de les Bésties.
An immersive VR journey into the medieval world.
Creative art direction, visual development concept.
A project by: Blit, Layers of Reality, MEV Museu d'Art Medieval, Centre d'Art Amatller. Soundtrack: Rafael Plana
A glimpse into the medieval imagination, a universe rich in fantasy, epic tales, and color that spread throughout Europe and whose creatures continue to influence popular culture today.
Art direction was a central element in the visual development of the experience.
The project was built on exhaustive research into medieval art from the 12th and 13th centuries, analyzing illuminated manuscripts, bestiaries, maps, and iconographic representations to understand not only their aesthetics, but also their way of understanding and narrating the world.
Among these references, the Aberdeen Bestiary became the main foundation, a richly illustrated medieval manuscript created in England around the 12th century. It gathers descriptions of real and mythical animals, combining natural observation with symbolism and moral interpretation.
Beyond its zoological interest, it reflects the medieval worldview, where every creature, real or imagined, carried spiritual meaning.
The beasts
The design and development of these Fantastic Beasts stem from an exploration of medieval art, mostly pictorial representations and those captured in frescoes, oil paintings, and legendary publications of the time, such as the 12th-century “Aberdeen Bestiary.”
The conceptualization of these creatures led us to decide on the style we would give them, “constructing” them as part of an ancient, artisanal, and even rustic art form, making them feel (even though they are not) like medieval art itself, animated and possible to touch.
We sought to study the behavior of wooden toys, attempting to evoke the props of medieval theater by appealing to the very form in which these creatures were illustrated in their original media and how they would behave if they were 3D volumetric, even considering the movement and organic limitations they might have.
The landscapes
The settings for each scene were designed to serve as “living maps.” Our research uncovered original material from the Middle Ages, especially cartographic representations that marked the areas where legendary creatures and monsters were located.
The details of this documentation were transferred to the experience: the orientation lines, coordinates, textures, graphics, compasses, and astrolabes.
The stars themselves are a medieval representation, and the plants, trees, meadows, mountains, rivers, and skies are similar to those found on maps of the period, making the most of the extensive resource library and recreating it to give our settings more history
In addition to the visually perceptible, we devised a way to convey this experience by rescuing details typical of medieval language.
The wooden platforms that were the stages for the comedies of the time played a vital role in creating mysterious atmospheres that better presented our creatures.
Each space was designed to be very much in keeping with the beasts it presented, giving each one enough space to show off.