See what the Red Skull could have looked like in Captain America: The First Avenger, plus Thor Frost Giants from Thor and Whiplash and armor designs from Iron Man 2.

Ian Joyner is a professional character designer, illustrator and conceptual artist who's worked on films like The Hunger Games, Real Steel and Avatar. He's currently Lead Character Designer at Legacy Effects (formerly Stan Winston Studios)

Check out the rest of the pictures after the jump and click to enlarge


CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
"Legacy did not officially work on Captain America, but we had a small amount of time to pitch some ideas to show we wanted to work on the film. I got to take a few passes at Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull, which was fun. Not sure why I had such a love for that cataract eye since ‘the Blind Skull’ does not sound as scary…more like a bad death metal band name…"

IRON MAN 2
"My first full-time project at Legacy was Iron Man 2. Working with the team at Marvel, mostly the awesome Ryan Meinerding, I was tasked with bringing the 2d artwork from Iron Man, War Machine and the Drones to the 3rd dimension. I supervised the drone team and got to do all the digital modeling of the suits by myself. It was hectic and painful but definitely fun!

"Below is some work in progress models, maquettes, final suit shots, Sideshow Collectibles statues and one lone concept for an alternate ending they played around with…dark!"

THOR
"We did some design work on the Frost Giants for Marvel Studio’s Thor. Marvel knew they wanted them fairly human so these test designs were for how far the makeup should go from monsterous to human.
For this project, I mostly handled making the armor and got to do a few passes on the giants. The Destroyer doesn’t really fit here, as it is a print done for Sideshow Toys, based off a model provided by Marvel."

See more of Ian Joyner's portfolio at IanJoyner.com

Click on the links if you want to see more of XXX work and YYYY.



R is for Red Skull
This post is part of the month long "A-Z Challenge." For 26 days, I'll be choosing a letter from the alphabet and featuring one favorite arts or properties. To read more of the posts in the series click here. To find out more about the challenge go here. Check the Facebook page and follow on Twitterusing the hashtag #AtoZChallenge.

Hosted by The Madlab Post (Nicole Ayers), Tossing it Out(Arlee Bird), Amlokiblogs (Damyanti Biswas), Alex J. Cavanaugh (Alex J. Cavanaugh), Life is Good (Tina Downey), Cruising Altitude 2.0 (DL Hammons), Retro-Zombie(Jeremy Hawkins), The Warrior Muse (Shannon Lawrence), The QQQE (Matthew MacNish), Leave it to Livia(Livia Peterson), No Thought 2 Small (Konstanz Silverbow), Breakthrough Blogs (Stephen Tremp) and Spunk on a Stick (L. Diane Wolfe)

@ Copyright 2009 Marvel Studios, ARTIST, All rights reserved

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Watch the train attack storyboards by artist Federico D'Alessandro. One of the most exciting scenes in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) was the attack on the Hydra train.

Born in Uruguay and raised in Littleton, Colorado, Federico D'Alessandro is the head storyboard artist and Animatics Supervisor at Marvel Studios, and has worked on films like Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers.

The boards have a lot of action. An interesting difference between the storyboards and the movie is James "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Shaw) loses his arm during the fight. This is very significant in Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014), but I guess they cut it.

Check after the jump to see all of the boards and feel the adventure!



Here's the scene as it was filmed.

Here are the storyboards


See more of Federico D'Alessandro's work at thefilmartist.com.

Official Synopsis:
Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige will produce CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER. Alan Fine, Stan Lee, David Maisel and Louis D’Esposito will executive produce. The film will be released in the US on July 22, 2011 and distributed by Paramount Pictures.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER will focus on the early days of the Marvel Universe when Steve Rogers volunteers to participate in an experimental program that turns him into the Super Soldier known as Captain America.

Born during the Great Depression, Steve Rogers grew up a frail youth in a poor family. Horrified by the newsreel footage of the Nazis in Europe, Rogers was inspired to enlist in the army. However, because of his frailty and sickness, he was rejected. Overhearing the boy’s earnest plea, General Chester Phillips offered Rogers the opportunity to take part in a special experiment… Operation: Rebirth. After weeks of tests, Rogers was at last administered the Super-Solider Serum and bombarded by “vita-rays.” Steve Rogers emerged from the treatment with a body as perfect as a body can be and still be human. Rogers was then put through an intensive physical and tactical training program. Three months later, he was given his first assignment as Captain America. Armed with his indestructible shield and battle savvy, Captain America has continued his war against evil both as a sentinel of liberty and as leader of the Avengers.
 Director: Joe Johnston
Writers: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Stars: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayley Atwell

D is for D'Alessandro, Federico
This post is part of the month long "A-Z Challenge." For 26 days, I'll be choosing a letter from the alphabet and focusing on an artist or film to showcase. To read more of the posts in the series click here. To find out more about the challenge go here. Check the Facebook page and follow on Twitterusing the hashtag #AtoZChallenge.

Hosted by The Madlab Post (Nicole Ayers), Tossing it Out(Arlee Bird), Amlokiblogs (Damyanti Biswas), Alex J. Cavanaugh (Alex J. Cavanaugh), Life is Good (Tina Downey), Cruising Altitude 2.0 (DL Hammons), Retro-Zombie(Jeremy Hawkins), The Warrior Muse (Shannon Lawrence), The QQQE (Matthew MacNish), Leave it to Livia(Livia Peterson), No Thought 2 Small (Konstanz Silverbow), Breakthrough Blogs (Stephen Tremp) and Spunk on a Stick (L. Diane Wolfe)

What do you think of the illustrations?
 
@ Copyright 2011 Paramount Pictures, Marvel Entertainment, Marvel Studios. All rights reserved

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"Previs is invaluable to get everyone on the same page." - Joss Whedon said about Marvel's The Avengers.

Previsualization (also known as "previs") is like having digital storyboards and the team at "The Third Floor" has been doing work for blockbuster films like Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005).

 Here's your chance to see previs samples from Thor, X-Men: First Class, Captain America: The First Avenger, I Am Number Four, War Horse, Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man 2, Avatar and more.

Check out the video after the jump...



See more of previs work and services from "The Third Floor" at http://thethirdfloorinc.com

What do you think of the illustrations?
 
@ Copyright 2013 The Third Floor Inc. All rights reserved

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Captain America: The First Avenger has no concept art gallery. I was going to drop my rating because of it, but then I watched the gorgeous featurettes and stopped complaining.


Product Details

• Actors: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan
• Directors: Joe Johnston
• Writers: Christopher Markus, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Stephen McFeely
• Producers: Alan Fine, Amir Madani, Dan Masciarelli
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English, Spanish
• Subtitles: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish
• Region: Region A/1 (Read more about DVD/Blu-ray formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Paramount Studios
• DVD Release Date: October 25, 2011
• Run Time: 124 minutes

Special Features

• Includes Digital Copy
• Deleted Scenes
• Behind-The-Scenes Featurettes
• Marvel One Shot: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer -- Go deeper inside the Marvel Universe and unveil secret plans to assemble the ultimate superhero team, the Avengers. 
• And more!

Here are some of the featurettes I found interesting along, with some admittedly poor screen caps from the disk. I just couldn't resist putting some of these on the site.

Featurette Review
Designing the Costume
The director and producer talk about the challenge of designing a faithful comic book costume while making out realistic. Some concept art with interviews with lead concept artist Ryan Meinerding and some brief, but beautiful pan and scans of the illustrations.

Heightened Technology 
The producers and actors talk about the desire to bring advanced technology to WWII without looking out-of-place. We get a few shots of concept art on boards during production and some beautiful images of Daniel Simons' vehicle designs. He's the star of the featurette since he talks extensively about his design principles.

The Transformation 
A great explanation of how the creators got Chris Evans to look skinny and why they did it the way they did. There are only two illustrations, but the focus is on the technology.

Behind the Skull 
This feature talks about how they brought the character of the Red Skull to life. Artists Ryan Meinerding and Charlie Wen take about the challenge of balancing the anatomical effect of a man with his face burned off while maintaining the classic image of the comic book character. Here are some really nice illustrations in this video. The best on the disk really.

Overall, it's a really good set of disks. The concept art for the Marvel films are some of the best in the business and, besides the lack of a gallery, it's still a good disk to own.




Charlie Wen's website is http://charliewen.typepad.com/ and Ryan Meinerding's is http://boyrobot.com/. Both guy's are pretty busy, so Wen's site hasn't been updated since 2010 and Meinerding's blog domain has lapsed. Just go to Marvel.com to see their stuff.

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Storyboards from Captain America: The First Avenger show how cool Cap's bike really is.

As always, after a movie release concept art and storyboards are up from the artists. Captain America is no exception.

I was checking out the artists and came across these storyboards from Rodolfo Damaggio.

The sequence is called "Bike Chase." He's heading through the woods to the base of the evil H.Y.D.R.A. The scene right before this one has him using his motorcycle gadets to get rid of some agents chasing him.

Here's what he said about them:

Here are some the storyboards I did for Captain America, the "Kruger Chase" and the Bike chase sequence. Joe [Johnston] thumb nailed the Bike chase entirely.

For comparison, check out the video clip below. It's a shame it cuts off right when it gets interesting. I would have loved to see him backflip off his bike onto the sheild. Guess we'll have to check out the movie. ;)

Check out the rest of his storyboards from the movie and his other amazing art work at Damaggio.com.

Do these storyboards make him look cooler than ever?

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The film Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) opens tomorrow and, to recognize the artists involved, I'm reprinting the IMDb list of artists from the film with notes. If I learn about any more I'll update it as appropriate.

Director: Joe Johnston

Production Design
An artist responsible for designing the overall visual appearance of a movie.

• Rick Heinrichs

Art Directors

The person who oversees the artists and craftspeople who build the sets. See also production designer, set designer, set director, leadman, and swing gang.

• Neal Callow
• Dean Clegg
• John Dexter
• Jason Knox-Johnston
• Chris Lowe
• Andy Nicholson
• Phil Sims
• Clint Wallace

Concept Artists

• James Carson (concept artist)
• Rodolfo Damaggio (concept artist)
• Dan Walker (concept artist)
• Andy Park (concept illustrator)
• Henrik Tamm (conceptual illustrator)
• Kathy Heaser (graphic artist)
• Anita Dhillon (graphic designer)
• Ted Haigh (graphic designer)
• Mauro Borrelli (illustrator)
• Nathan Schroeder (illustrator)
• Daniel Simon (lead vehicle designer)
• Jim Barr (set designer)
• Mike Stassi (set designer)
• Douglas Ingram (sketch artist)

Storyboard Artists

• Brent Boates
• Federico D'Alessandro
• Darrin Denlinger
• James Doh

Updated list

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John Thiago on the Brazlian website Mundo Hype posted some concept art for production designer Rick Heinrichs' Captain America: The First Avenger.

The blog says the following about the concept art:

"For starters I must emphasize that not confirm the veracity of this news. But you may have some leaked concept art look of the Red Skull in the film of Captain America , which debuts next year. The style of conceptual art match those that leaked months ago of Captain America and Thor. Furthermore, the skull showed up holding the Cosmic Cube, which was confirmed in the film. However, there is no trace of actor Hugo Weaving in art." [Translated by Google Translate]

Most concept art is done before casting, so its no surprise it doesn't look like the actor. What confirms these as legit is that they look exactly like the official movie costumes.

We don't know who did these, but, the concept artists for Captain America are James Carson, Rodolfo Damaggio, Dan Walker, Andy Park and Henrik Tamm.

Captain America: The First Avenger is directed by Joe Johnston and stars Chris Evans. After being deemed unfit for military service, Steve Rogers volunteers for a top secret research project that turns him into Captain America, a superhero dedicated to defending America's ideals.

Via Mania and Splashpage more »

We get our first official look at Chris Evans in the amazing Captain America costume thanks to the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. It looks pretty spot on with the concept art.Of course, we don't see the controversial helmet, but it looks awesome.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
After being deemed unfit for military service, Steve Rogers volunteers for a top secret research project that turns him into Captain America, a superhero dedicated to defending America's ideals.
Release Date: July 22, 2011
-IMDB

So, what's different? The colors match and the pattern on his tunic around the star looks the same. The only difference is the straps on his shoulders have more straps and buckles.

Overall, its as functional as you're going to get for a superhero costume. The director, Joe Johnston, said he wanted it to look accidental as a costume and he got his wish.

I'm really looking forward to it. I had my doubts when they cast Evans, but it looks like he's really filling into the character.

Here's some more concept art from the film.

What do you think of the Captain America costume?
Source: Ain't it cool news, EW via firstshowing.net more »

Ryan Meinerding's Captain America battlescene makes Cap fit right into WWII.

Charlie Wen's Thor vs. Loki fight looks epic.

Marvel is releasing some concept posters at Comic-Con this weekend and we have a sneak peek thanks to Yahoo. Action packed and colorful, its a good sign of things to come. Neither of the two artists - Ryan Meinerding and Charlie Wen - are listed in IMDB for these films, so it makes me rethink my research path.
What do you think? more »