Astounding PACIFIC RIM Concept Art and Interview by Stephen Schirle

Check out concept art for Pacific Rim by Stephen Schirle!

Pacific Rim got pummeled at the box office by Grown Ups 2 (ugh), taking in a respectable $38.3 million. It's not bad, but far below the $190 million budget. Still, who doesn't love giant robots and monsters?

So let's all revel in the beauty of this Pacific Rim concept art by one of the artists: Stephen Schirle.

Stephen is a professional concept artist and matte painter who's worked on Oz the Great and Powerful (2013).

Check out the rest of the images after the jump, including a fetal baby Knifehead, and click to enlarge.


Maurice Mitchell: How did you start working on Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim?
Stephen Schirle: I was brought on to visualize some of the concepts Francisco Ruiz Velasco, and Wayne Barlowe had sketched out. My first assignments were the Jaeger pilot suit, and a creature called "Knifehead".

Later I did everything from environment paintings, to Kaiju guts and organs.

MM: All very talented artists and it must have been fun to work with them. What else did you spend your time on?
SS: I was assigned to illustrate an entire trailer sequence they had storyboarded out to use as a presentation to show the producers and actors to get them to buy off on the film. I had one month, 70+ images to do.

MM: That is insane. Did you get a peek inside Guillermo del Toro's sketchbook?

Guillermo

SS: I only saw one or two sketches from GDT, one included the very first thumbnail of the knifehead kaiju.

MM: Sweet! I'd love to see that one. What's next for Stephen Schirle?
SS: I will have work in a new movie coming out this weekend called R.I.P.D. in which I did creature concepts, visual effects concepts, modelling, and matte painting.

See more of Stephen Schirle's work, including some gorgeous personal work, at http://www.stephenschirle.com and http://portfolio.seriks.com.

What do you think of the illustrations? 

Official PACIFIC RIM Synopsis
When legions of monstrous creatures, known as Kaiju, started rising from the sea, a war began that would take millions of lives and consume humanity’s resources for years on end. To combat the giant Kaiju, a special type of weapon was devised: massive robots, called Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge. But even the Jaegers are proving nearly defenseless in the face of the relentless Kaiju. On the verge of defeat, the forces defending mankind have no choice but to turn to two unlikely heroes-a washed up former pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and an untested trainee (Rinko Kikuchi)-who are teamed to drive a legendary but seemingly obsolete Jaeger from the past. Together, they stand as mankind’s last hope against the mounting apocalypse.

Directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, Clifton Collins, Jr., Burn Gorman, Larry Joe Campbell, Brad William Henke, Diego Klattenhoff 
Cinematography by Guillermo Navarro
Production Design by Andrew Neskoromny, Carol Spier

Official Site: http://www.pacificrimmovie.com

Release date: July 11, 2013

© 2013 Copyright Legendary Pictures