I have another exclusive interview with concept artist Craig Shoji, and he talks about "geeking out" with Marvel, working with producer Bo Welch designing the world of Asgard and bringing Jack Kirby's comic book designs to life.

You've seen a lot of Craig Shoji's work without knowing it. A freelance artist living in California, he blew us away on The Golden Compass (2007), Avatar (2009) , Alice in Wonderland (2010). Now he's done it again with breath-taking visuals of Asgard for Thor (2011).

Q: How did you decide to become a concept illustrator versus other types of art?
It took a long time to even figure out what a concept illustrator was! When I was at UCLA I thought it was either graphic design for web, print or video, or new media (a la John Maeda and the MIT Media Lab). It wasn't until I took some foundation classes at Pasadena City College that I learned about Product Design and Entertainment Design. I began my Art Center education studying Industrial Design but soon realized that I enjoyed drawing fantastical things and realizing worlds that could only exist on a screen, than worrying too much about manufacturing and tolerances.

Q: What's your background as an artist?
(Image: Craig circa 1983)
I've always enjoyed drawing as a kid, but I was more a tinkerer than a painter. I liked to take things apart to see how they worked then attempt to put them back together again.

I got a degree in design at the University of California - Los Angeles, but it was a very general education and not too trade-oriented. So I continued my education in Pasadena at the Community College there as well as the private Art Center. It was here that I learned about entertainment arts and was able to network and refine my craft to do what I'm doing today.

Q: What was it like working on "Thor?"
(Image: Thor exterior Odin's Asgard tower)
It was both daunting and fun at the same time. There was a large team when I first came on (maybe 4 or 5 illustrators) but the production got pushed about 5 months and everyone but myself was let go. So for a long time it was just me and Bo Welch (the production designer) working on Odin's tower and Asgard which was a lot of early responsibility.

As I settled into my role and began resolving a lot of the design details, the production started ramping up again and I was joined by some more amazing talent. This is always great as an illustrator cause you have people that you're bouncing ideas off of and constantly being inspired by.

So it was a breath of fresh air to have a handful of creative people to share an office with again.

The whole department was incredibly fun to work and hang out with, so I really enjoyed my time there. It was also nice geeking out with the Marvel execs as they came by because I feel like we've all grown up with the same love for comics. And it was effortless to get excited about how these worlds we've come to know and love would be realized in the film.



Q: Do you work with traditional mediums or do you favor digital art?
(Image: Alice in Wonderland Courtyard sketches)
I love pen sketching on paper. I'm a big fan of ball point pens, brush pens, hitec-c pens, etc! The list goes on and on! A lot of my early ideas are established in a sketchbook as a doodle or preliminary sketch. Then I'll either redraw it on the computer, or build it out in 3d and paint in photoshop on top of it.

The digital medium has allowed for so much more flexibility as well as photorealism in such a timely fashion that the analog can't compete. In a film production setting, it's crucial to get the best result in the least amount of time, so unfortunately it's no longer practical to work solely in analog.

In my free time I like to pry myself away from the computer and pick up some gouache paints and illustration board. It's much more rewarding when you have to look, think, then place down the brush stroke, than scribble scribble, ctrl-z, ctrl-z, scribble, cut, paste, scribble, unsharp mask. :)


Q: While everything you have done has its own rewards is there one project that you're particularly proud of?
(Image: Thor Asgard courtyard painting)
I'm actually very proud of my work on THOR over any of my other past films. I feel like it gave myself (and the other artists) an opportunity to translate the original intent of Jack Kirby's Asgard in an updated fashion that was still tasteful and respectful. It seemed everyone had a take on what that vision was, all the way through post production, and it was great to see it evolve until the end result on screen. I'm proud knowing that I was part of the creation of that world, and that it was well received by the fans.




Q: Who influences your artistic style the most?
(Image: Avatar Pandora fruit)
I'm creatively influenced by so many people and so many things, but as far as style... I'm probably more influenced by the world around me.

I love photography, and trying to best understand light and how it bounces, reflects, absorbs, and blankets everything around us. I also love looking at master matte painting works and seeing how those guys resolved 'photoreal' illusions with a few brush strokes. Al Whitlock, Michael Pangrazio, Syd Dutton as well as my contemporaries: Robert Stromberg, Dylan Cole, Steve Messing, Yannick Dusso, Brian Flora, Yusei Uesugi...

There are a lot of people out there that I admire whom truly inspire me. Being lucky enough to have worked with, learned from and befriended is the icing on the cake.

You can check out more of his incredible work on Alice and other designs at pensketch.com. Also, follow him on twitter (pensketch) for updates.

Thanks for the interview Craig!

To read some of my other interviews with artists check out the full list here.

What do you think of Craig Shoji's work?

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In this storyboard from Season 6 Episode 2 of Doctor Who 'Day of the Moon' a homeless man meets a sick child in an alley. What happens next surprises him.

Go behind-the-scenes and watch a powerful clip from Episode 2, "Day of the Moon" alongside the storyboards drawn for it by James Iles. - BBC America

Excellent layout designs by James Iles. While not all of it is exact to the final scene, the final shot is amazing and I'm glad it made it in-tact.

Iles is a freelance artist from Wales. His website http://www.coroflot.com/jamesiles has a lot more of his quirky stunning work.

BBC America is really stepping up with the pre-production material lately.

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The most shocking part of The Dark Knight (2008) was the Joker's bizarre facial scarring, but it could have been even creepier.

 Synopsis: The Dark Knight reunites director Christopher Nolan with star Christian Bale, who returns to continue Batman’s war on crime. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Batman sets out to destroy organized crime in Gotham for good. The triumvirate proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a rising criminal mastermind known as the Joker (Heath Ledger), who thrusts Gotham into anarchy and forces the Dark Knight ever closer to crossing the fine line between hero and vigilante. - Warner Bros

In the book The Dark Knight: Featuring Production Art and Full Shooting Script they have some of the other ideas behind his slashed face. The scars are a lot more extreme with flapping skin and deep gashes.

First, a look at what Heath Ledger looked like in the film.



Now a look at some early designs

Joker by Rob Bliss

Production design by Nathan Crowley. Concept artists were Jamie Rama, Dan Walker, Matthew Savage and Mark Taylor.

Rob Bliss's portfolio is at robbliss.com

Do you wanna know how he got those scars?

Via SlashFilm

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Spielberg's science-fiction show Terra Nova debutes in the fall and "Entertainment Weekly" got some exclusive concept art of the show's "time tunnel."

Previously, the studio has posted the "concept-art-turned-logo" shown below.

IMDB lists Richard S. Lee (Sucker Punch, The Last Airbender, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) as the concept artist for the pilot, so we have him to thank for this work.

Watch the trailer below. What's funny is that they hired Stephen Lang to play the leader of the crew and he plays the exact same character as he did in Avatar as Colonel Quaritch.

What do you think of Terra Nova? Does it look like a winner?

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Early this week a concept poster for the Alexandre Aja directed live-action film adaptation Cobra: the Space Pirate (2013) was released and it shows a man with a gun for a hand smoking a cigarette.

The film, based on the popular manga cartoon show Space Pirate Cobra is described this way:

The film follows the eponymous rogue space pirate, a man who has surgically altered his face and erases his own memory to hide from his enemies. Cobra gradually regains his memories and unites with his old partner Lady Armaroid and his ship Tortuga. Together, the two set off on an adventure to recover a lost treasure on Mars - Coming Soon

If you're wondering what's with the gun-hand Wikipedia explains it:

Cobra's signature weapon, the "Psycho-gun", is a cybernetic arm-laser which connects directly to his brain. The Psycho-gun can target putative enemies without having a line-of-sight.

You can watch the cool Manga opening below and while I know nothing about the show you can bet I'll be following it with interest. IMDB lists virtually nothing, so I can't give any details till it gets updated.

It's set to be released 2013.

How sweet looking is this poster? Have you heard of this show before?

Via Examiner

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Update 2: Just to clarify, the artist who produced this illustration is the talented Nebezial and he's not affiliated with RainingCrow Designs or the film production. It's just really cool.

Update: I checked with the creators of this artwork (Rainingcrow Designs) and they confirmed this is NOT art for the film. It was produced for the concept art division. Still awesome though.
Michael Bay's live action reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) sounds like a major change according to alleged concept art.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was a popular comic book during the ninja craze of the 1980s. Four turtles are exposed to radiation, become mutants and are taught martial arts by a mutant rat. The characters have been adapted into live-action and animated movies and a cartoon series.

A "very credible" source for Nerd Reactor saw some concept art and described it this way:

"Our source says that the turtles were far more realistic and had hard-packed abs in the front rather than the bottom side of the turtle shell. They were also far more skinnier than we have seen in the past.

One of the big noticeable differences in the turtles was that one of the them was holding a gun. The gun didn’t look like any specific model but it was a little futuristic, and the turtle even had a Bandolier wrapped around him."

Its no surprise. Michael Bay demands blazing gunfire and massive slow motion explosions in any movie he makes. He'd have a gun battle in "Pride and Predudice" if he could.

It's just sad that each adaptation of the comic book series seems to get farther and farther away from the source material.

Via Nerd Reactor
 
[Image Source Stjepan Sejic]

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Fans have complained about the designs of the superhero movie Thor costumes for since the first pics and Ryan Meinerding explains why the costumes look so high tech.

The concept art book Thor: The Art of Thor the Movie is being released about the movie this week and Marvel has an interview with one of the Visual Development Supervisor Ryan Meinerding and a couple of pics from the book.

On the designs being less "Nordic" than the traditional comic book "Thor" costumes
The design direction that Charlie and I each started from was trying to take some sense from the iconic costumes, and then applying some sense of Norse things to them. Not in a traditional sense, but so that there's overlapping and weaving and trying to find something that felt like, but was not as readily identifiable as, Norse. I think Charlie [Wen] was the one who really found that balance with the Thor costume, and once he found that, it really [was a matter of] overlapping and changing angles with metal around the disks or whatever we needed to be on the chest plates, and finding different ways of doing that with all the different characters.

On fitting the costumes in with the past and upcoming Marvel films
There’s definitely a sense of trying to make all of these characters come together for “Avengers,” [but] I think first and foremost all of these movies have to stand on their own. I think that the tones need to be similar enough to be in the Marvel Universe, but I think we were really conscious of designing the costume for “Avengers” to come together a little bit more, as opposed to back when you’re working on the Thor movie you’re just trying to make the best movie you can.

In the end we’re people executing the ideas or the design direction that we get from Marvel and the directors. So when you look at the direction that was coming in, I think the reason they chose not to do the more traditional Viking thing was probably because it would be harder to see a Viking standing next to Iron Man than it would a man in a more high tech looking chest plate. There are some really base level conceptual directions that we are given that are probably aimed towards those ends.

There is a lot of good information about his work on Thor as well as Iron Man, so head over to Marvel.com to read the rest of the interview.

Synopsis: Directed by Kenneth Branagh, the epic adventure "Thor" spans the Marvel Universe from present day Earth to the realm of Asgard. At the center of the story is The Mighty Thor (Chris Helmsworth), a powerful but arrogant warrior whose reckless actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as punishment Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dangerous villain of his world sends the darkest forces of Asgard to invade Earth.

Here's a partial list of the artists involved:

Production Designer
Bo Welch

Concept Artists
Charles Wen
James Carson
Vance Kovacs
Ron Mendell
Raj Rihal
Craig Shoji
Tully Summers
Simon Webber
Daphne Yap

Set Designers
Tex Kadonaga
Kevin Loo
Jeff Markwith
Anne Porter
Andrew Reeder
Rich Romig
Marco Rubeo

Storyboard Artist
Timothy Burgard

Darrin Denlinger
Thomas A. Nelson
Joel Venti
Via ComicBookMovie

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