Showing posts with label Conceptual Designer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conceptual Designer. Show all posts

Thursday, August 11, 2011

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.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

The Art of Ralph McQuarrie

Ralph who? First time hearing this name?




According to wikipedia, Ralph McQuarrie (born June 13, 1929) is a conceptual designer and illustrator who designed Star Wars (all of the original trilogy), the original Battlestar Galactica (TV), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Cocoon, for which he won an Academy Award.

Some of his designs, especially his original X-Wing, Cylon Raider and an earlier concept Refit USS Enterprise, fascinated fans so much they did make it as kits in the Garage Kit scenes.

The first time I heard of Mr. McQuarrie was when I was 18 years old. I bought some stuff from England after writing to them (can't remember the shop's name now but it is in Chiswick, London) . I saw their add for their shop in a Fine Scale Modeller magazine, and they had the complete ERTL Star Trek Kits then.

What that shop did was they sent me a very nice black and white catalogue with lots of schematic pictures, and in it, I saw in a limited edition section,  "The Art of Ralph McQuarrie - Star Wars". I didn't know what it was but the description made it irresistible, so I ordered them anyway. When the package came (then it was by sea, and it took over 2 months to be shipped), I was pleasantly surprised to see a portfolio case consisting of several poster size artworks of initial designs for Star Wars. I remember owning more of his works later (Return of the Jedi) but that was 25 years ago.  They are now lost, I'm guessing stolen since I can't find any of them anywhere.

Then I also heard he did the artwork for Battlestar Galactica, but I couldn't get those. The shop in England didn't carry it and I didn't know where else I could get them. Now, thanks to the Internet, I have them.

This post is to pay homage the one of 20th Century's amazing conceptual designer.

Star Wars





















The Empire Strikes Back


















Return of the Jedi






















Battlestar Galactica


























Here are kits made by fans based on McQuarrie's designs

Concept Movie Refit USS Enterprise









Concept X Wing Fighter






Concept Cylon Raider









And this is not McQuarrie's work, but something of a little bonus - a nostalgic trip down memory lane with "MAD's" version of Battlestar Galactica the original series