Meet James Clyne, Conceptual Designer Extraordinaire

Do you still remember all those neat vessels, buildings and scenery's from the the following movies - War of the Worlds, A.I., 2012, Transformers and even the recent Star Trek with a young Captain Kirk and crew? I'm sure many of you are impressed as I was, and most of what you saw came about from the creative mind of one very talented and creative artist. His work inspired all those iconic scenes via his imagination, and those neat looking vehicles, they're so inspiring that many are screaming for model kits to be made.  

Meet James Clyne, another conceptual artist you want to take note of. Taken from his interview, James was born in San Francisco, studied fine art and painting at the University of California at Santa Barbara as well as industrial design at Art Center College of Design, where he focused on transportation design, product design and entertainment design.

He began his professional career designing environments and developing characters for Sega, Activision, and Pulse Entertainment. Since 1998, Clyne has been working in feature films; his early work in film began with Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. Since then he worked with companies such as ILM, Warner Brothers, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Sony, and Dreamworks Studios, including films like Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”, “Minority Report”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “War of the Worlds”, “Star Trek (XI)”, “Transformers”, and Roland Emmerich’s new “2012”. Today Clyne works as a conceptual illustrator for the film industry, but once in a while tends to deviate into industrial design and fine art

In case you're not aware, concept illustrations are mainly used to convey how a movie scene is suppose to look, based from feedback from the movie director and mostly from the production team. Once a concept is formed and approved, they are then given to the design team to make them happen.

To be a concept illustrator, besides having a talent for drawing, you will need to have an imagination that can captivate audiences. Looking at James' work, he truly possesses a rare talent that not only show off his unique gift, but also his ability in creating an alternate universe. Just check out some of his random work.

 

And here are some more of his work categorised by their movie titles:

Concept Art for Star Trek

To know more about how this man work, check out the interview with James HERE as he explains how he gain his inspiration in realising his fantasies into reality. More about James Clyne can be found HERE. Looking at his work, this guy is just really amazing, mixing architectural concepts and blending them to their storyline. When you see most of his images, you can see a lot of them were represented in their respective movies. And his art form is clean, sharp and invigorating.

More after the jump.

Concept Art for War of the World

Concept Art for "2012"

Concept Art for Transformers

Concept Art for "Minority Report"

Concept Art for "The Fountain"

 

Concept Art for A.I.

So if you are planning to make a movie and looking for an illustrator, maybe you want to give James some serious consideration. This guy is really good at what he does. And he's also talented with mechanical art. Wish I had an ounce of his talent.