My first time working as an Art Director, Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs was a spinoff of the 1960-66 Flintstones sitcom. It focused on the Flintstones’ and Rubble’s children, Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles and was most often set in the Crags, the primal jungles outside of Bedrock.
Using a bright and colorful palette, plants and animals were larger than life, while modern inventions such as machinery, glass or electricity were absent in the stone age environment. I used color to differentiate between yellow interior walls of the Flintstone family, versus blue walls of the Rubbles. Color also helped make a clear distinction between the blue sky of "civilized" Bedrock, and a weirder gradient sky above the jungles of Crags, emphasizing an almost "unfinished", prehistoric mood.
Technically, I wanted to emulate the dry brush and painterly look of the original show. This was a challenge because the series was produced in vector-based Adobe Animate. The solution was creating sheets of bitmap textures that could be masked in above the flat colors to simulate paint or canvas. Dry brush effects were created by drawing over the edges of shadows with toothy “vector brushes”. To emphasize the visual style, I drew and printed out zines filled with visual reference.
My design team of Mark Ingram and Brian Pitt were absolutely amazing and advanced the look of the show beyond my expectations.
