out of society, and spent all of his free time creating the short, working only enough to support himself and his project. He later remarked that he "had no life", and would sometimes hide under his desk in a fetal position, feeling tempted to give up on his project. He modeled the tone and visuals of the short on the cinematography in The Third Man, and based the look of the robots featured in the short on those in the Superman cartoon The Mechanical Monsters. The short took four years to complete. When finished, it was entitled Sky Captain and the Flying Legion In: The World of Tomorrow - Chapter One: The Mechanical Monsters, but it is usually referred to merely as The World of Tomorrow. Kevin Conran invited Marsha Oglesby, a movie producer and friend of his wife, to look at the short. She was impressed by the scope and ambition of the short, especially as it was made entirely in Kerry Conran's apartment. She referred the Conran brothers to producer Jon Avnet, who agreed to help the Conran brothers make a feature-length film, and found funding for the project. Kerry Conran wrote and directed the feature-length film, entitled Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Kevin Conran served as the concept artist, production designer, and costume designer, and his younger sister Kirsten served as art director. At first, Kerry Conran intended for the film to be a seven-part black and white serial, but Jon Avnet convinced him to make it without chapters, and in color. As a result, Kerry Conran and visual effects supervisor Darin Hollings developed a color style based on two-strip and three-strip Technicolor. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was filmed, for the most part, entirely on blue-screen, with backgrounds, lighting, and other effects added in post-production. However, due to time and budget constraints, one set was partially built, and another was fully built. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was released in 2004, by Paramount Pictures. It was given fairly favorable reviews by critics, but did not do well at the box office. Afterwards, Conran was slated to direct John Carter of Mars, an adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel A Princess of Mars, after having initially turned it down twice. Before production could commence, Sherry Lansing stepped down from Paramount and the studio had lost interest in the project. Conran,