More Tron Legacy...

Looks like I've got another concept in the latest batch of illos released by Disney. Check out my early design for the Siren at io9.com. Click on the image on their site for ultra-hi-res.

I hope to post more stuff as it gets released.

New Tron Legacy Art...

Finally something from Tron Legacy that I worked on has been released so that I can post it. This just appeared on helloflynn.com:


I wish I could claim credit for the design of this, but it passed through a lot of hands before I got to do the final image. This is basically a photoshop paint-over and composite taken from several Digital Domain renders of their model made from Joe Hiura's Solidworks model of Ben Procter's design interpretation of Production Designer Darren Gilford's re-design of the original Tron Recognizer. See how it works in the movie world? When they say that film is a collaborative medium, they're not kidding!! At least I got to do the fun final touches. This image was created as a guideline to the visual effects department for lighting, texture and additional details.

I did a ton of work on this movie in both the costume and art departments over about 10 months. Looking forward to posting more work when the movie comes out.

Iron Man Concept Toys

Never one to let anything go to waste, Marvel and Hasbro have put out the Iron Man 2 Concept Series of 4" Action figures. What does "Concept Series" mean, you ask? Well, dear reader, it means some of them are based on my UNUSED concepts from Iron Man 1. Click on the links for the original renderings these are based on.

The first is based on my Stealth Suit concept, and is known as the Hypervelocity armor.The second is the Deep Dive armor... And the last is one of my first attempts at War Machine (back when it was to be additional snap-on armor for the MK 3 & worn by Stark) now dubbed the Power Assault armor. As shown in the original sketch here:


Kudos to the artists at Hasbro, who translated the designs remarkably faithfully for such small action figures, and even filled in the back details (which I never addressed) with a great eye to maintaining the form vocabulary. Bravo!
All at your local toy store...

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN???

Yes, I know, I am the world's worst blogger.
So I just finished up on COWBOYS & ALIENS, Jon Favreau's new movie. Looks like it's going to be a lot of fun, you know, like a Peanut Butter Cup. Two great tastes that... you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I was responsible for designing the signature alien vehicle (oops! hope that's not a spoiler! There are...ALIENS in the movie! And they have some sort of... VEHICLE! I think I hear the Dreamworks police knocking as we speak! That's all you're going to get out of me though.)
Before that I finished up Tron Legacy, which I know everybody out there is madly anticipating. Tough to wait till December though. And that means there's a year's worth of work I have to wait to post!!
So in the mean time, I'm reaching way back to some work I did for the ill-fated Marvel theme park in Dubai. Why ill-fated, you ask? Well as soon as people started abandoning their Bentleys in the airport parking lot in their rush to escape from debtor's prison, the writing was on the wall that the economy just wasn't there for the worlds largest entertainment complex.

So here are a couple of pieces for some early ride concepts that didn't make the cut...


The first was a dark-ride in the vein of the Raider's ride at Disney, themed to Marvel's villains. Depicted is our tour vehicle in the wrong place at the wrong time as Electro escapes from his containment...

Above is one of the many versions of an Iron Man ride, this one a "people-mover' style dark-ride shooting gallery using video projections. Much fun! Ironically I noticed that the final presentation version sent to Dubai had the woman cropped from the image and replaced with the man. I guess I should have expected that...

Anyway, more from this on another post!

Phil.

Hot Wheels the Movie

Yeah, I know how it sounds... Indeed there is a new movie genre out there, and it's the two-hour toy commercial. And with Transformers 2 & GI-Joe coming soon, don't expect it to die a quick death. I sure hope not, it's job security for people like me. Bring it on!

This one was fun though, basically a retelling of the Wizard of Oz, but with an orange plastic road rather than a yellow brick one. No flying monkeys, but hot-pantsed Snap-On Tools calendar girls instead. This is another one that didn't make it out of development (like much of what I work on.) The greenlight review happened the weekend that Stealth opened, so I don't think there's much doubt why Sony gave it the axe.

Anyway, much fun to be had with McG and his crew. He has a well-earned reputation as the industry's biggest cheerleader. Everything is positive with him, even the stuff he doesn't like is Awesome! Makes for a good time. I'm rooting for Terminator Salvation. After We are Marshall, I think he's redeemed himself from Charlies Angels 2. Maybe.

So here's the ultimate road movie...


I really loved this idea, the Snake Pit, our villain's lair. Looks like a strip mine as you approach, but as you get closer you realize that it's a junkyard hundreds of feet deep with nothing but the most desireable classic, exotic custom and rare cars. Look for some surprises among the Snake's "collection."



I did promise you calendar girls, didn't I?


The Emerald, er, Motor City, the end of the Orange Plastic Road. Some earlier versions of this by James Clyne and Mark Goerner were really cool, featuring transforming, automotive-formed architecture, but McG wanted a more grounded, 20th century americana take on the world, just as if someone went crazy with cloverleaf offramps.


One of my favorite shots, a bonding moment between son and dad. I think this image really captures what McG was trying to make out of this movie. Could have been fun.


More later, with storyboards...

Superman "Flyby"

Here's a random image from the ill-fated Brett Ratner-directed, JJ Abrams-written version of Superman. I was on the show for about 4 months, of which I think about 3 months was without a director. I overlapped BR for about two weeks before he left, and I think about 2 weeks before I left to get married McG took over the show. This is about as un-dynamic a composition as you can come up with, but Production Designer Owen Patterson wanted a straight one-point perspective view of Superman facing off against the Rouser (a Japa... er, Kryptonian Battle Pod, don't ask) so you could compare scale. I had fun designing the Rouser, though.

More John Carter

Here are a few more images from John Carter of Mars.

These are a couple of designs for the "enemy" city of Zodanga. It's supposed to be a very militarized industrial city. My thought for the design was that they would have built within a pair of overlapping meteor craters. Barsoom (Mars) in the stories is metal-poor, so my hypothesis was that the main source of mined metals would be nickel-iron meteors. Zodanga then is built within a deep mine at the center of the craters, while the debris walls would form an effective natural battlement.

This first shot features John's escape from Zodanga riding a stolen Zodangan flyer (beautifully designed by Ryan Church.)



John, Deja and company escape from the Warhoons on their Thoats, with Woola guarding the flank.

The ruined city of Thark. I loved the idea of erosion happening from below, rather than above, and I played with it throughout the various cities. Buildings would be glassy fused sand, so the thought of a kind of coastal erosion look from the eventual decay of the bonding agent and the constant sandstorms seemed natural. I also love the gravity-defying quality, since Mars' low gravity is such a major plot point in the story.


The City of Helium. I wanted a much softer look for this city, and more modern. To keep a consistent look though, I thought that it would be cool to have the Barsoomian architects adopt the look of erosion from their ancient cities as a deliberate design statement. I thought it could be like the way we artificially age materials, or grow ivy on walls, something that lends an artificial air of authenticity to relatively new architecture.

I also played with the idea of flared bases that were then undercut to emphasise the gravity-defying quality of Barsoomian architecture.

Jon Favreau also wanted to hint at an allusion to the Twin Towers in the twin towers of Helium, so topped them off with a bit of the WTC fluting.