A highly overdue Facebook has been created that celebrates the work of concept artist Ralph McQuarrie.

McQuarrie is most famous for his production designs for the original Star Wars films. However, he also did work for television and many other films.

What's great about this Facebook page is the creator's managed to find some high resolution images of concept art I've never seen or has only been in low-res. You've got to check it out.

Head over to the Facebook page and make sure you "Like" it. The page desrves more than fifty likes. I predict we'll see a lot more of this page in the near future.

Here are some of my favorites so far:

Star Wars Through the Death Star Valley

Battlestar Galactica Early Cylon Design

Star Wars Death Star Hanger

Battlestar Galactica

Star Wars Attack on the Death Star

Are you going to check out the Facebook page?

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African science-fiction is a rarity and films based on African science-fiction are even rarer which makes the image to the right even more beautiful.

Based on the Nnedi Okorafor science-fiction book "Who Fears Death" the concept art by Kenyan Yvonne Muinde is for the film adaptation.

Okorafor on her blog describes it this way: "Onyesonwu and her companions' first encounter with The Red People. The sandstorm parts and the next phase of the journey begins."
Official synopsis:

In a post-apocalyptic Africa, the world has changed in many ways, yet in one region genocide between tribes still bloodies the land. After years of enslaving the Okeke people, the Nuru tribe has decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke tribe for good. An Okeke woman who has survived the annihilation of her village and a terrible rape by an enemy gen-eral wanders into the desert hoping to die. Instead, she gives birth to an angry baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand. Gripped by the certainty that her daughter is different - special - she names her child Onyesonwu, which means "Who Fears Death?" in an ancient tongue.

She has a fascinating site at YvonneMuinde.com. There's not much concept art featured, but her photographs are very thought-provoking.

Keep up on the progress of the film, directed by Wanuri Kahiu (Pumzi) via the Facebook page.

Read the first two chapters of the novel here
What do you think of the concept art?

Via Indiewire

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Syd Mead did a lot of amazing illustrations for the film Tron (1982). Specifically, Sark’s carrier and camp, the tanks, the CPU, various scenic sets and graphics; title graphic and alpha numeric “TRON” typeface. Those designs would help shape the imagery of films and television for decades.

An industrial designer by trade he was one of three concept artists called in to help bring Steven Lisberger's vision to life. I'll feature more concept art from Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) and Peter Lloyd later on.

Costume Designs

Tron circuit costume design

Yori's costume

Vehicle Designs

Light Cycles 

Interestingly, Syd Mead's original vision of seeing the rider of the cycle would only be realized by the sequel Tron: Legacy (2011)

Interior and Set Designs

Interior of Recognizer

Interior of Clu's Light Tank

Find out more about the legendary futurist at his website SydMead.com

This post wouldn't have been possible with material from several sites like Tron-Sector.

What do you think about Syd Mead's Tron work? What did it inspire?

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Turned out the 'bots of Real Steel don't just fight robots since the first illustration shows a robot about to knock the lights out of a bull.

The movie Real Steel starring Hugh Jackman opened on Friday and one of the concept artists, Jamie Rama has posted some amazing illustrations from the film.

Official Synopsis: A gritty, white-knuckle, action ride set in the near future [the year 2020], where the sport of boxing has gone hi-tech, “Real Steel” stars Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a washed-up fighter who lost his chance at a title when 2000-pound, 8-foot-tall steel robots took over the ring. Now nothing but a small-time promoter, Charlie earns just enough money piecing together low-end bots from scrap metal to get from one underground boxing venue to the next. When Charlie hits rock bottom, he reluctantly teams up with his estranged son Max (Goyo) to build and train a championship contender. As the stakes in the brutal, no-holds-barred arena are raised, Charlie and Max, against all odds, get one last shot at a comeback.

 

Crash Palace. An underground robot fight club.

I always love Jamie's rich use of colors in his illustrations. These are just a handful, see more concept art from the film at JamieRama.com

Read my interview with Jamie Rama here

What do you think of the concept art?

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Real Steel (2011)
These are some of the artists that helped to create the block-buster film Real Steel accoring to IMDb.

Directed by Shawn Levy

Synopsis: A gritty, white-knuckle, action ride set in the near future [the year 2020], where the sport of boxing has gone hi-tech, “Real Steel” stars Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a washed-up fighter who lost his chance at a title when 2000-pound, 8-foot-tall steel robots took over the ring. Now nothing but a small-time promoter, Charlie earns just enough money piecing together low-end bots from scrap metal to get from one underground boxing venue to the next. When Charlie hits rock bottom, he reluctantly teams up with his estranged son Max (Goyo) to build and train a championship contender. As the stakes in the brutal, no-holds-barred arena are raised, Charlie and Max, against all odds, get one last shot at a comeback.

Production Design by Tom Meyer

Concept Illustrator

• Daren Dochterman
• Tim Flattery
• Victor James Martinez
• Miles Teves
• Andrew H. Leung
• Jamie Rama

Storyboard Artist

• Trevor Goring
• Michael Anthony Jackson
• Joel Venti

Graphic Designer

• Megan Greydanus
• Mike Maher

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UPDATE: An inside source from the production confirms this is NOT concept art from the film. You owe me a million. ;)

Concept art has popped up online claiming to be concept art from the Zack Snyder reboot Man of Steel (2013) and I can guarantee you its another fan creation. Very cool, but not legit.

On the Facebook page it says the artist is Apriyadi Kusbiantoro, a comic book artist.

It's pretty close to the images of Jor-El's costume worn by Russell Crowe, but it just looks a little too perfect.  So, it's probably fan art created from seeing the behind-the-scenes images.

Maybe I'm wrong. We'll wait and see.

Do you think this is legitimate concept art for Man of Steel?
Via Comic Book Movie

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Overall, if you don't have access to any other concept art books, this is a great resource. If you do have the books or have special edition DVDs I wouldn't get this set for the concept art.

Star Wars concept art is the gold standard of concept art. All the greatest concept illustrators worked on the Star Wars films starting with Ralph McQuarrie. I was especially eager to dig into it and see what was offered.

The Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Episodes I-VI) [Blu-ray] set comes with nine disks. The six movie disks and three bonus disks. The first one has all the deleted, extended and alternate scenes; prop, maquette and costume turnarounds; matte paintings and concept art; supplementary interviews with cast and crew.

This is the one I focused on. The interface is fascinating. Using beautifully animated key scenes from the movie you are taken into the world of each film. The disks then organize all the material by planet and each planet has a section for concept art. Its kind of confusing in a way. Suppose you want to see concept art from Coruscant? Is it under Episode I, II or III? It takes some getting used to.

Each planet has an average of ten pieces of concept art. So, if you do the math its over 90 images. Nice.

The images are amazing and really give insight into the creation of different characters and their history. Nice little touches are the mentions of concept art for the prequels that became part of Star Wars: Clone Wars and the fantastic savagery of the Wookie Kashyyyk warriors.

Like I said, Star Wars concept art is always amazing to look at. These disks are loaded with the best concept art from the films.

Here's the downside. One problem I have with almost all concept art in DVDs is you can't zoom in to get a better look. It has a single image formatted to take up the top and bottom of the screen and that's it. Some art is so rich in detail its frustrating not to be able to check it out.

On the plus side, they're not cropped or modified, so you get the full effect. There's a slide show feature which is nice for cruising through the images one at a time, but you can also jump to any of the images.

Another notable, but common omission, is the credits for the images. As per usual, the art is shown with no indication who drew them. Some of the paintings have signatures like Doug Chiang, but most are anonymous.
Considering how important artists are to visualizing the Star Wars films, I was surprised that there wasn't a single interview with any of the artists. Not even veteran artists like Ralph McQuarrie. That was disappointing. Especially since the other DVDs had full featurettes on the concept artists and it wouldn't have been hard to add them.

The Star Wars Blu-Ray set is a must have for lovers of the films, but disappointing to lovers of concept art.

What did you think of the disks? Would you buy or recommend them?

Below are links to the Blu-Ray disk and a selection of my favorite "Art of Star Wars" books.

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