Celebration and Inspiration: Visual Style of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax

“ But those trees! Those trees! Those Truffula Trees! All my life I’d been searching for trees such as these. The touch of their tufts was much softer than silk. And they had the sweet smell of fresh butterfly milk.” —The Once-ler in “The Lorax”

Because of the close relationship that Meledandri, Paul and Daurio built with the Seuss estate during the production of Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!, the filmmakers understood the nuances of the artist’s work. For the new characters and scenes that populate Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, the team and Renaud insisted on one dictum: follow the spirit of the book. Additional plot, characters and settings all needed to have a Seussian quality that feel consistent with the world imagined by Geisel.

In addition to staying true to actual imagery from the book, there were subtle yet important elements that Geisel employed for the first time in Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. He strayed from his traditional color palette and used colors to emphasize the imbalance of a world without trees. Reflects Meledandri: “As we bring the new story to life, we bring new designs to life. Our designers were always very cognizant of Ted’s style, so there’s an absolute continuity. For example, Ted was doing some interesting things with color in this book. He was departing from a palette that had been quite simple in his previous work, and he was utilizing new colors that were a surprise for his editors. In fact, Audrey was giving him input on the palette, and it’s most notable when you get into his depictions of sky. There are deep purples and new variations of blues that he combines to create what is a very ominous sky.”

Production designer Yarrow Cheney, who created the intricate universe of Despicable Me, returned for Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. He describes his selections for this film’s color palette: “Our plan of attack was to get familiar with the book and its colors, shapes and characters and try to understand what’s special about this world that Dr. Seuss created.”

Thneedville
Naturally, with the book as source material, the team wanted the story to be brought to the big screen as a very bright and colorful world, but also one that illustrates the tone and harmful effects of the Once-ler’s actions. While the book explores the gorgeous primary-colored universe of the young Once-ler’s past and the decrepit, smogulous space that the Once-ler creates after he has chopped down all of the Truffula Trees, the film amplifies Thneedville, creating a fun and modern world.

Thneedville is by no means an awful place for Ted, his mom, Audrey, Grammy Norma and the rest of its denizens to reside. Renaud says: “We came up with the idea to have Thneedville be a bit more relatable. It’s like Vegas or Disneyland or Abu Dhabi. We see ourselves in it a bit, and it is kind of fun. There are inflatable bushes and mechanical flowers and trees, and it’s a place with no real nature. Everyone seems to be happy, and they have everything they want: from giant cars to robots and other mechanical devices. But then it becomes a question about sustainability. While all this stuff is fun and great, is it in balance with the broader planet, and how do we maintain that balance?”

Only briefly glimpsed in the opening pages of the book, Thneedville serves as a bigger setting in the film. Shares the director: “The world of Thneedville was one of the biggest additions for the film. It was so design heavy, and it’s such a colorful and complex artificial place. Its design was something that was important to support the story and the transformation that this world had to go through.”

Ted’s journey begins the minute he steps foot out of Thneedville and discovers the destitute world lying


The Lorax plays cards with a Bar-ba-loot, a Humming-Fish and a Swomee-Swan.


Grammy Norma shows Ted’s Mom (JENNY SLATE) and Ted a Truffula Tree seedling.

behind it. As he makes the harrowing journey to the Lerkim (and the Street of the Lifted Lorax), he realizes that what Grammy Norma has been telling him is all true. There is another world beyond the borders of his perfect town. Reflects Cheney: “When we introduce the audience to the real version of the world behind the wall, all of the color has been pulled out of that world. We have these cool blues and deep purples….it’s deeper and it’s darker. When the audience discovers Truffula Valley, however, it’s a beautiful green place with blue skies.”

Truffula Valley
“The Lorax” gave the design team a wealth of source material for Truffula Valley. They were able to take advantage of the book’s colors, shapes and all the animals, as well as the Truffula Trees and the rolling green hills. Their big challenge was to take what was 2D and make a full three-dimensional world in which one could walk around and smell the flowers and play among the Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans and Humming-Fish.

Producer Healy reflects on the process of translating from page to screen: “There were a lot of technical difficulties in making Truffula Valley feel distinctive but also look like nature and maintain Dr. Seuss’ style. Luckily, we have great artists at every level—from the concept design team to the execution and modeling and surfacing teams. Every step of the way added so much. We set-dressed every shot to make sure that the characters stood out against the trees.”

One of the most signature looks in Truffula Valley are the stunning Truffula Trees, ultimately used by the young Once-ler to make his Thneeds. The production designer found the Truffula Trees to be quite complex to create. He offers: “One of the design problems that we had to solve was the shape of the Truffula tuft itself, because it is a pinwheel shape but only looks right from one angle. You turn it on its side and it’s a bunch of tuft shapes coming at you, and it loses its shape altogether.

“We had to compose shots with trees, and we had artists that would take the tufts and turn them very subtly toward the camera to get that Truffula pinwheel-tuft shape that you know from the book,” he continues. “It took a lot of development to get that to work in a three dimensional space. Some of the shots when the Once-ler arrives in the valley for the first time include thousands of these trees, and they’re all blowing in the wind and feel lighter than air. It’s a remarkable accomplishment technically and artistically.”

As Truffula Valley is destroyed by the Once-ler and his family, the valley becomes impossible for the creatures to inhabit. “The book also contains lots of illustrations of the devastated version of the Truffula Valley that show the land without trees,” adds Cheney. “The sky isn’t blue anymore. It’s filled with purple and blue clouds, and those are the visual cues that we took for the devastated version of the valley and Thneedville. Because the sky was gone, the trees were gone and the color was gone. We built a world around that.”

The Lerkim
When Ted goes outside of town to search for the Onceler in the Lerkim, it’s a big moment in the movie and one of the most iconic from the book. The audience sees for the first time that Thneedville is not what it’s cracked up to be. Explains Renaud: “He witnesses what is essentially a wasteland. The town is encircled with a giant wall, and nobody goes outside of town. Again, we were very much thinking of Las Vegas—cities that are in a desert. Ted can’t believe it; he’s never seen it before, and he journeys out amongst the tree stumps and the acrid creeks.”

Production designer Cheney shares a fact that careful moviegoers will recall from the book. He notes: “If you look closely in some of the factory scenes, you’ll see the Lerkim is actually part of the old factory. It’s all that is left from the Once-ler’s Thneed-making days. It’s an excellent example of where we have taken one of the Dr. Seuss designs from the book and made a dimensional version of that.”

Source: The Lorax Movie | Official Site for the The Lorax Film