Image source: Conceptartworld.com
Trying to come up with clever digital art ideas? Instead of giving you general art tips, today I thought I’d hand you over to the masters and let them show you how it’s done. There’s nothing better than looking over professional concept art from some of the biggest summer blockbusters.
Despicable Me 2 recently hit theaters, earning an impressive 87% favorable rating from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes. Despicable Me 2 concept art lives up to the franchise’s impressive track record!
What I love so much about these next two pictures is that they do an incredible job of highlighting contrast. The first picture draws a stark contrast between the woman, who’s thin, feminine, and cheerful, with the men, who are hulking, brooding, and wear dark tones. This draws attention to the movie’s tongue-in-cheek subject matter, where a cold, ruthless super villain was won over by a couple of adorable little girls.
Image source: Theconceptartblog.com
The next picture sends out the same message, albeit in a slight different way. Nothing steals the menace away from a super villain more than a pink fairy costume!
Image source: Theconceptartblog.com
This concept art was extremely stylized, so from here we’ll move on to a realistic portrayal of fantastic subject matter. Illustrator and concept artist Allen Williams recently posted these pictures that he created for Pacific Rim (if you haven’t seen that movie yet, go watch it! It’s like a visual feast for digital effects artists). These drawings take a walk on the wild side with bizarre alien creatures destined to meet their grisly fate at the hands of a 30-story robot.
Image source: Conceptartworld.com
I’ve seen the movie and I can say with absolutely certainty that none of these monsters made an appearance in the movie. Still, it’s clear that Williams’ artwork helped to shape Guillermo Del Toro’s vision of the hideous kaiju. The monsters in the movie all had a basic body shape that was somewhat familiar. Otachi, for example, is shaped kind of like a bat and Leatherback kind of has a gorilla build. That’s a clear deviation from Williams’ vision, but Guillermo Del Toro obviously kept Williams’ iconic head design. Every single kaiju (both the ones created by Williams and the ones in the movie) have a unique thing on their head such as bony plates or horns.
Image source: Conceptartworld.com
But what about the robots!? Don’t you worry your little head. I also managed to track down some concept art of Toro’s mechanical monstrosities. The picture below was probably in the early stages of the design process. The three jaegers (giant robots) depicted are visually reminiscent of the jaegers in the movie, but there’s a noticeable deviation between the concept art and the final product. The jaeger on the left never showed up in the movie. The one in the middle, Crimson Typhoon, is leaner and has a more pronounced head in the movie. Striker Eureka on the right earned a much more human-like build in the movie, ditching the backwards-set knees in favor of normal human legs.
Image source: Conceptartworld.com
I’m curious what you think about the concept art. How do you think the concept art compares to the finished product? Did the filmmakers improve upon the concept artists’ initial designs, or do you think that the concept artists nailed it the first time?