RAR Writes: series_AZchallenge2012

Home » Semua post berkategori series_AZchallenge2012

Showing posts with label series_AZchallenge2012. Show all posts

Monday, April 30, 2012

Feng Zhu's Dynamic Transformers Concept Art Is More Than Meets The Eye

Z is for Zhu, Feng

Some of the greatest concept artists in the industry have at least one Star Wars movies in their resume. Is it because George Lucas sought out the best or did LucasArts turn them into great artists? I'm still not sure.

One of the greatest of the artists is Singaporean-American Feng Zhu who worked on Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Nowhere in his resume or IMDb page does it list Transformers, but he has some Transformer robot designs and it's thought that he worked on Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen (2009).

Official Synopsis:
The battle for Earth continues in this action-packed blockbuster from director Michael Bay and executive producer Steven Spielberg. When college-bound Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) learns the truth about the ancient origins of the Transformers, he must join Optimus Prime and Bumblebee in their epic battle against the Decepticons?, who have returned with a plan to destroy our world.

Here are his Starscream and other concept designs.

Whether they're officially from the movies or not, they're great designs.

See more of Feng Zhu portfolio at artbyfeng.com. He went to Singapore to launch FZD School of Entertainment Design in April 2009.

What do you think of the Transformers designs?

This post was part of the month long "A-Z Challenge." For 27 days, I choose a letter from the alphabet and crafted a post around it. To read more of the posts in the series click here. To find out more about the challenge go here.

Hosts: Arlee Bird at Tossing it Out, Alex J. Cavanaugh, Stephen Tremp at Breakthrough Blogs, Jenny Pearson at Pearson Report, Matthew McNish at The QQQE, Tina Downey atLife is Good, Jeremy Hawkins at Retro-Zombie, DL Hammons at Cruising Altitude, Shannon Lawrence at The Warrior Muse, Elizabeth Mueller, Damyanti Biswas at Amlokiblogs, Karen Gowen at Coming Down the Mountain, and Konstanz Silverbow at No Thought 2 Small. Check the Facebook page and the Twitter hashtag is #AtoZChallenge.

Add Comment

Arek conceptart, Feng Zhu, Movie, series_AZchallenge2012, Transformers

Saturday, April 28, 2012

How Do You Design An Evil Underground Base For 'G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra'?

Y is for Yon, Morgon
Super-villains love underwater bases for some reason. James Bond villains like Stromburg and Largo had some. Doctor Octopus had one. Even Dr. Evil had a submarine base. Would you build one?

The movie G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra (2009) has some amazing action scenes in it. Director Stephen Sommers is known for huge set pieces and this film was no exception. Inspired by James Bond movies, he talked about his approach to the film in an interview with "Entertainment Weekly."

"Sommers adds that G.I. Joe, which also stars Dennis Quaid and features a cameo from his Mummy star Brendan Fraser, was partly inspired by the Sean Connery-era James Bond movies. 'I always loved the old Bonds," he says. "It's funny now how Bond wants to be Bourne. I loved Quantum of Solace, but it was like, man, this is a completely different movie to the Bonds I grew up with. In a very contemporary way, G.I. Joe is inspired by the memory of the kind of movies I saw when I was younger. I remember being in the theater for Thunderball and the big underwater battle at the end of that movie just blew my socks off. In G.I. Joe, there's an underwater battle under the polar icecap that's Thunderball times 10!'"

One of the many talented artists who worked on the film is Morgan Yon (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time , The Wolfman, Dorian Gray) who worked for The Moving Picture Company. Here are some concept illustrations of the designs for the underwater battle against the M.A.R.S. base Yon did. It's full of pipes, elevators and killer robot fish.

See more of Morgan Yon's portfolio at www.morgan-yon.com.

What do you think of the illustrations? What would you have in an evil underwater base?

This post is part of the month long "A-Z Challenge." For 27 days, I'll be choosing a letter from the alphabet and crafting a post around it. To read more of the posts in the series click here. To find out more about the challenge go here.

Hosts: Arlee Bird at Tossing it Out, Alex J. Cavanaugh, Stephen Tremp at Breakthrough Blogs, Jenny Pearson at Pearson Report, Matthew McNish at The QQQE, Tina Downey atLife is Good, Jeremy Hawkins at Retro-Zombie, DL Hammons at Cruising Altitude, Shannon Lawrence at The Warrior Muse, Elizabeth Mueller, Damyanti Biswas at Amlokiblogs, Karen Gowen at Coming Down the Mountain, and Konstanz Silverbow at No Thought 2 Small. Check the Facebook page and the Twitter hashtag is #AtoZChallenge.

Add Comment

Arek conceptart, G.I.Joe, Morgan Yon, Movie, series_AZchallenge2012

Monday, April 23, 2012

See The Robots You Didn't See In Procter's Unused 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen' Concept Art

T is for Transformers
There were a ton of Transformers in the second film, but there could have been a bunch more according to Ben Procter. Here are some of the designs that went unused in the final film.

The Transformers movies have some of the most exciting concept art. Michael Bay has a very dynamic style of film-making and the art captures that. The Art Director was Ben Procter (Avatar, Transformers, The Matrix Reloaded) who brought a real-life feel to the giant mechanical machines.

Here are some images from his portfolio for Transformers2: Revenge of the Fallen (2007) along with his descriptions of the illustrations.

Official synopsis

The battle for Earth has ended but the battle for the universe has just begun. After returning to Cybertron, Starscream assumes command of the Decepticons, and has decided to return to Earth with force. The Autobots believing that peace was possible finds out that Megatron's dead body has been stolen from the US Military by Skorpinox and revives him using his own spark. Now Megatron is back seeking revenge and with Starscream and more Decepticon reinforcements on the way, the Autobots with reinforcements of their own, may have more to deal with then meets the eye.

A mean quadruped Constructicon. Never used, but one of my favorite robot designs I've done.

My first sketches for the Reed Man infiltrator bot were too similar to my Frenzy from film 1, but this odd, praying-mantis-inspired version caught traction.

The big aircraft carrier destruction in TF2 was originally conceived as an attack by a submarine-derived Decepticon leviathan. This was an early rough.

Unused design for a Model T derived Autobot. We did a number "vintage Transformer" studies in response to early story ideas for the film, and I think it could have been really fun to see something along these lines onscreen. It was fun to use wood and leather in a robot design.

Autobot based on the Osprey aircraft. Not seen in the film because his transport capabilities were no longer needed once the SR71-bot was given teleportation powers in a later script.

Here are some more great concept paintings that did get into the film.

An enormous "wheel bot" based on the mighty O&K/Terex RH400 mining excavator. Michael was really pushing for new robot anatomies on the second film, and the wheel concept caught his fancy right away. The initial sketch had only one wheel but Michael asked for the second so the robot could do an end-over-end bashing motion as it rolled.

Vehicle form for the Twins during the initial Shanghai sequence. I would ultimately do detailed graphic and aging studies for the physical build. I even wrote several of the [bumper] stickers though I can't take credit for "Decepticons Can Suck My Popsicle".

You can see more of Ben Procter's portfolio at http://www.benprocter.com.

Via Concept Art World

What do you think of the illustrations?

This post is part of the month long "A-Z Challenge." For 27 days, I'll be choosing a letter from the alphabet and crafting a post around it. To read more of the posts in the series click here. To find out more about the challenge go here.

Hosts: Arlee Bird at Tossing it Out, Alex J. Cavanaugh, Stephen Tremp at Breakthrough Blogs, Jenny Pearson at Pearson Report, Matthew McNish at The QQQE, Tina Downey at Life is Good, Jeremy Hawkins at Retro-Zombie, DL Hammons at Cruising Altitude, Shannon Lawrence at The Warrior Muse, Elizabeth Mueller, Damyanti Biswas at Amlokiblogs, Karen Gowen at Coming Down the Mountain, and Konstanz Silverbow at No Thought 2 Small. Check the Facebook page and the Twitter hashtag is #AtoZChallenge.

Add Comment

Arek Ben-Procter, conceptart, Movie, series_AZchallenge2012, Transformers

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Gaze At The Wonder of Despretz' Explosive Unused Akira Storyboards

S is for Sylvain Despretz
The live-action film based on the classic anime film Akira (1988) is dead in development hell, but we can get a peek at the possibilities in storyboards.

Sylvain Despretz (Gladiator, Alien Resurrection) created some boards for director Ruairi Robinson.

Here's the unconfirmed synopsis of the live-action film:

Kaneda is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother, Tetsuo, is abducted by government agents led by The Colonel. Desperate to get his brother back, Kaneda agrees to join with Ky Reed and her underground movement who are intent on revealing to the world what truly happened to New York City thirty years ago when it was destroyed. Kaneda believes their theories to be ludicrous but, after finding his brother again, is shocked when he displays telekinetic powers. Ky believes Tetsuo is headed to release a young boy, Akira, who has taken control of Tetsuo’s mind. Kaneda clashes with The Colonel’s troops on his way to stop Tetsuo from releasing Akira but arrives too late. Akira soon emerges from his prison courtesy of Tetsuo as Kaneda races in to save his brother before Akira once again destroys Manhattan island, as he did thirty years ago.

I wouldn't even post these with all the stamps of "Do Not Distribute" and "Confidential" if every other blog in the Internet didn't already run it.

One thing I notice, is the bike is very similar to the anime version.

You can check out some of Sylvain Despretz work at http://www.hollywoodcomics.com/despretz.html

What do you think of the illustrations?

Via io9

Add Comment

Arek Akira, Movie, series_AZchallenge2012, StoryBoards, Sylvain Despretz

Friday, April 20, 2012

Rothery's 'Moon' (2009) Lunar Space Station Concept Art Is The Last Place You'd Ever Expect To Find Yourself

R is for Gavin Rothery
Gavin Rothery was the visual effects supervisor for Moon (2009) and his blog is fantastic. In it he chronicles a lot of details behind the designs for the film and the budget constraints they had.

The title of this blog post is based on the movie tagline "The last place you'd ever expect to find yourself."

In case you've never heard of it here's what Wikipedia says:

Moon is a 2009 British science fiction drama film directed by Duncan Jones. The film is about a man who experiences a personal crisis as he nears the end of a three-year solitary stint mining helium-3 on the far side of the Earth's moon. It was the feature debut of director Duncan Jones. Sam Rockwell stars as the employee Sam Bell, and Kevin Spacey voices his robot companion, GERTY.

The film is very well received and nominated for two BAFTA Awards, winning Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for Jones. It also won the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form and two British Independent Film Awards including Best British Independent Film (BIFA) winner of the 2009 award for the Best British Independent Film. It was nominated for the Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film and Best Actor for Rockwell.

I've included some of the concept art from his blog along with his quotes about it. Be forewarned there are some spoilers in the descriptions.

One of the most satisfying bits of work I did on Moon was designing the set. I had free reign to come up with a moon base concept that we were actually going to build in it's entirety, so it was an exciting prospect. Duncan and I had been chatting general moon base stuff whilst getting the script together so by the time I started the actual design process I'd already pretty much got it in my head. So I went straight to 3D and started boshing it out. The only thing Duncan really wanted was a main corridor that was kind of shaped like a key so I took this and incorporated a split-level roof. I knew I wanted to have the facility white and lit primarily with bounced light rather than direct light sources. The image below is the first render I did of the Sarang set.

I usually start a design with a key shape or detail and as I had the bulkhead pressure-seals in mind for the entire base it felt like a good place to start. I was lighting the CG set with real-world equivalent lights right from the beginning in an attempt to get a clear idea of what we might eventually end up with in the studio.

The ladder to the Monitor Room was originally supposed to be more of "an event" in the base design but as we ran out of money it ended up being a metal ladder painted orange with tennis racket grips wound round it. I remember when these grips were being applied; the art department was getting pretty down about how tight our resources were. It didn't help that I'd stolen their vacuum cleaner and plaited it orange for the Gerty hair-cutting scene. Everything was getting grabbed and pulled to pieces or being used to dress the set. You can see how with the ladder, I originally went for something much more substantial as I wanted there to be a bit of a climb that was very brightly lit. I liked the idea of this ladder sat in the darkness with a bright light beaming down and framing it in a kind of spotlight.

The nice thing about the design language of the corridor bulkheads are that they translate nicely into tasty-looking pressure doors that are clearly Science Fiction. I love the look of these sorts of things in Sci-Fi. This is the view of the rec room whilst it was just a white space. The main corridor was designed first, then the airlock, infirmary, sleeping quarters and finally the rec room. In the render above it's just a placeholder white box to give the impression of an illuminated space.

Originally I had the return vehicle as a series of silos in the floor that Gerty would use the big arm to load the canisters into. As the rail gun was underneath the base this made sense but when the script developed and Sam needed to get into the return vehicle this complicated things massively. So we changed it to more of a lift that he could load up his kit and lie down in. In the film we see Sam lift two modules out of the lift mechanism to make room for himself. These units each held two HE3 canisters and weighed an absolute ton. They were solid wood and barely liftable and everybody hated moving them around.

I always liked the look of the two big doors open next to each other. We got a couple of shots into the film with this framing and I always liked the way it ended up looking. Sci-Fi-doorey = good.

I originally had this design on the back wall of the infirmary. A big cross. Because he is in hospital...I get annoyed at myself when I do something that's very literal. I don't know why I didn't just make the whole base design look like a giant space-helmet...It's also a massive pharmacy sign. What the h**l was I thinking? Goodbye Forever!

Originally the greenhouse area where Sam grows his plants was going to be a disused airlock. I designed this into the base but we needed more room to film it and so we opened it out into a vague grey area walled with bread crates spray painted with some stickers on and lights behind them. That's movie magic!

Most of the base design changed very little from my original designs as I just sort of blurted it all out straight into 3D. In the images above we see the corridor to the "return vehicle" (clone-burning-box). This part of the set always used to annoy me as the sloped floor was made of wood and it used to flex and creak a bit as you walked up it. I tried to get it stabilized but as it would have meant ripping quite a bit of the set apart to get under it we just had to leave it. Always annoyed the s**t out of me though. If you look at the graphic on the floor right in front of the door on the set as it appears in the film, you'll see a grey shape which kind of looks like the Millennium Falcon. I painted this on there as a shout out to Ralph McQuarrie, one of the greatest Science Fiction artists that have ever lived. Ralph Rocks.

The diagram below is an outline of the base hi-lighting the Gerty rail apparatus. As you can see, there are areas of the station that he actually has no access to. We never see him in Sam’s' bedroom even though one of his jobs is to clean-up after the "removal" of an expired clone. Exactly how he achieves this is simply a space-mystery and definitely not because we forgot or overlooked anything.

Even though this was just a quick screen-grab of the 3D layout of the set, I ended up re-purposing it and using it as a lightbox graphic above the main terminal as the "Fire Control" graphic.

The animation below is a CG fly-through I did to give more of a sense of space and to show how everything is connected together (sorry about the file-size). These renders went down really well at meetings and the whole CG design sequence turned out to be incredibly useful as the construction department could take the 3D models and immediately start working with them. Also, when we came to pre-light the set we had of a blueprint for light placements and a decent idea of what it was supposed to look like as reference.

It was a weird thing designing this base and then having the thing built for real as walking around it was like being inside my own head, it was a real "Being John Malkovitch" experience for me. The design process took around a week when all said and done, with most of the work being done up front and then a few tweaks and "finishing off" being completed a couple of weeks later over a day or two. It was really nice getting to spend a few weeks in Sarang whilst we were filming and strange how I wasn't upset at all when I saw the set being smashed to pieces at the end of the shoot. I'm not sure exactly what this says about me or how knackered I was at the time but at the end of all the violent destruction it made a h**l of a big bonfire.

Here's the trailer to the moody Moon (2009).

See more of Rothery's work, along with some great production stories, at his site http://www.gavinrothery.com.

What do you think of the designs? How would you like to be stuck there for three years? If you saw Moon what did you think of it? Would you watch it?

Add Comment

Arek conceptart, Gavin Rothery, Moon, Movie, series_AZchallenge2012

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Peek At What The V' Could Have Looked Like

P is For Peek
If you were disappointed by, or delighted with the the reveal of the aliens in the 2009 reboot of V they could have looked very different.

V is an American science fiction television series that ran for two seasons on ABC, from November 3, 2009 to March 15, 2011. A remake of the 1983 miniseries created by Kenneth Johnson, the new series chronicles the arrival on Earth of a technologically advanced alien species which ostensibly comes in peace, but actually has sinister motives. V stars Morena Baccarin, Lourdes Benedicto, Morris Chestnut, Joel Gretsch, Logan Huffman, Charles Mesure, Elizabeth Mitchell, Laura Vandervoort and Scott Wolf, and was executive produced by Scott Rosenbaum, Yves Simoneau, Scott Peters, and Jace Hall. - Wikipedia

So, what would the aliens look like? We heard a lot about "skinning" Vs (the nickname for the aliens),and the anticipation was pretty high. In the final episode, after months of hints, peeks and skeletons we finally got a look at them in the season finale "Mother's Day." But, it could have looked very different.

John Gallagher's portfolio has a bunch of concept paintings of the aliens, ship and hybrid baby. When asked about his inspiration for the designs, here's what he said.

A fairly conservative marching order. Given that the series was a reboot of the Kenneth Johnson 80's series, it was clear from the outset that there was a creature under that harvested human suit. This wasn't a closely guarded secret or prestige reveal: they're green aliens. So the conceit in our minds had to evolve out of a no-surprise scenario. We played with multiple iterations, from reptilian to insectoidal to a protean mixed bag of looks. We wanted at least some cool creepy surprise. a visual hook. There were certain constraints however. The alien was required to be slightly slimmer and smaller than humans, bilaterally symmetrical, either appropriate for an actor in an effects suit or a CG counterpart. They were to share the same engineering as humans.

So from that we extrapolated some versions where they folded their legs up to their chest and cocooned, with the legs functioning as prosthetic appendages, others where the arms and legs were reversed, vestigial arms, two legged, four legged etc. All fell within the limits of the conversations and usually discarded through cost or time or just too outside the lines.

The inspirations were to create within those parameters and offer a fresh spin on what would amount to an updated version of the original Sleestak style creature. Conventional and interesting but we weren't jumping into the magical, esoteric, dark horror or wild spaces. It wasn't the type of show for that sort of exploration.

So we pushed around all sorts of variants until we arrived at what made it to screen which became the spirit of what we'd designed combined with television effects delivery schedule and budget.

Here are my favorite Visitor concept designs. First, what the V actually ended up looking like.