The Artists of The Last Airbender: Warren Manser

On Thursday, the new M. Night Shyamalan film The Last Airbender will be released and I'll be featuring a profile on the two concept artists (Warren Manser and Dawn Brown) and storyboard artist Jim Magdaleno.

Warren Manser started out working for Sam Raimi on Army of Darkness, since then he has worked on great films like The Matrix, X-Men, Spider-Man, Minority Report, Serenity and is currently working on Transformers 3. "Primarily, my work has been for the film industry, but I've also had the opportunity to be involved with theme park design, video games, animation, and other industries. I'm originally from Detroit, Michigan where I studied Industrial Design at the Center for Creative Studies."

Here's what he told io9 about the difference between being a comic book versus a concept artist.
"Concept art differs from comic art and book illustration in many ways. It is extremely rare that a concept art piece is actually seen by the audience, whereas other forms of illustration display a faithful reproduction of the art piece itself.

Concept art depicts a set, scene, or object that will be built by carpenters, model makers, or digital artists, so the concept artist has to have some idea of the reality of the final product.
And, the concept art piece can be created to depict its subject in a cinematic manner. That is, in some instances a 2D piece that is illustrated, however beautifully, potentially depicts a scene that can not be shot with a camera."

This a profound statement. A concept artists job is to take a two-dimensional image and portray it in a way that allows those working on the film to see it in three-dimensions. That takes a lot of skill.

If you'd like to read more about him check out "The Art of the Matrix" and "Pearl Harbor: The Movie and the Moment." Also, check out his new book "Constellation Orion: The Immortal Hunter". It is beautiful.

I was hoping to get permission to feature some of his work on this blog, but, for now, just head over to the gallery on his website for more.