Michael Kutsche Talks About Designing 'Thor's' Wonderful Eight Legged Horses For the Love of Art

The award-winning artist Michael Kutsche's unique style, bright colors and creative designs have made him a bright star in the concept artist industry and I got an exclusive interview with him about his Nordic inspired designs for Odin on Thor (2011), his favorite tool besides a paintbrush and the most important trait an artist should have.

I first ran into Michael Kutsche's work when his designs for Odin and his horse Slepnir exploded onto the Internet from CG Portfolio.

A self-taught freelance German artist, he started out doing illustrations for video games before becoming one of the character designers for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010) before designing memorable characters like Frost Giant King Laufey for Thor.

Scorching Hot Emma Frost and Groovy Cool Hellfire Club in New 'X-Men: First Class' Concept Art

Marvel and 20th Century Fox released some concept art from the new X-Men prequel X-Men: First Class (2011) and has mind-blowing costume designs for the sexy Emma Frost, shots of the interior and exterior of the Sabastian Shaw's (Kevin Bacon) Hellfire Club and the Kremlin War Room and a revealing picture of Angel's fly wings.

IGN had a quote from January Jones, who plays telepathic mutant Emma Frost, on her character design:

Craig Shoji Talks About Creating the Breath-Taking World of 'Thor'

I have another exclusive interview with concept artist Craig Shoji, and he talks about "geeking out" with Marvel, working with producer Bo Welch designing the world of Asgard and bringing Jack Kirby's comic book designs to life.

You've seen a lot of Craig Shoji's work without knowing it. A freelance artist living in California, he blew us away on The Golden Compass (2007), Avatar (2009) , Alice in Wonderland (2010). Now he's done it again with breath-taking visuals of Asgard for Thor (2011).

Q: How did you decide to become a concept illustrator versus other types of art?
It took a long time to even figure out what a concept illustrator was! When I was at UCLA I thought it was either graphic design for web, print or video, or new media (a la John Maeda and the MIT Media Lab). It wasn't until I took some foundation classes at Pasadena City College that I learned about Product Design and Entertainment Design. I began my Art Center education studying Industrial Design but soon realized that I enjoyed drawing fantastical things and realizing worlds that could only exist on a screen, than worrying too much about manufacturing and tolerances.

Orphaned Waif Regenerates in Stunning 'Doctor Who' 'Day of the Moon' Film to Storyboard Comparison

In this storyboard from Season 6 Episode 2 of Doctor Who 'Day of the Moon' a homeless man meets a sick child in an alley. What happens next surprises him.

Go behind-the-scenes and watch a powerful clip from Episode 2, "Day of the Moon" alongside the storyboards drawn for it by James Iles. - BBC America

Excellent layout designs by James Iles. While not all of it is exact to the final scene, the final shot is amazing and I'm glad it made it in-tact.

Iles is a freelance artist from Wales. His website http://www.coroflot.com/jamesiles has a lot more of his quirky stunning work.

BBC America is really stepping up with the pre-production material lately.

'The Dark Knight' Joker Concept Art Creepier Than Final Version

The most shocking part of The Dark Knight (2008) was the Joker's bizarre facial scarring, but it could have been even creepier.

 Synopsis: The Dark Knight reunites director Christopher Nolan with star Christian Bale, who returns to continue Batman’s war on crime. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Batman sets out to destroy organized crime in Gotham for good. The triumvirate proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a rising criminal mastermind known as the Joker (Heath Ledger), who thrusts Gotham into anarchy and forces the Dark Knight ever closer to crossing the fine line between hero and vigilante. - Warner Bros

In the book The Dark Knight: Featuring Production Art and Full Shooting Script they have some of the other ideas behind his slashed face. The scars are a lot more extreme with flapping skin and deep gashes.

First, a look at what Heath Ledger looked like in the film.



Now a look at some early designs

Joker by Rob Bliss

Production design by Nathan Crowley. Concept artists were Jamie Rama, Dan Walker, Matthew Savage and Mark Taylor.

Rob Bliss's portfolio is at robbliss.com

Do you wanna know how he got those scars?

Via SlashFilm

You Are Not in Kansas Anymore You're in Speilberg's 'Terra Nova'

Spielberg's science-fiction show Terra Nova debutes in the fall and "Entertainment Weekly" got some exclusive concept art of the show's "time tunnel."

Previously, the studio has posted the "concept-art-turned-logo" shown below.

IMDB lists Richard S. Lee (Sucker Punch, The Last Airbender, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) as the concept artist for the pilot, so we have him to thank for this work.

Watch the trailer below. What's funny is that they hired Stephen Lang to play the leader of the crew and he plays the exact same character as he did in Avatar as Colonel Quaritch.

What do you think of Terra Nova? Does it look like a winner?

Amazing 'Cobra: the Space Pirate' Poster Shows Man With Gun Hand

Early this week a concept poster for the Alexandre Aja directed live-action film adaptation Cobra: the Space Pirate (2013) was released and it shows a man with a gun for a hand smoking a cigarette.

The film, based on the popular manga cartoon show Space Pirate Cobra is described this way:

The film follows the eponymous rogue space pirate, a man who has surgically altered his face and erases his own memory to hide from his enemies. Cobra gradually regains his memories and unites with his old partner Lady Armaroid and his ship Tortuga. Together, the two set off on an adventure to recover a lost treasure on Mars - Coming Soon

If you're wondering what's with the gun-hand Wikipedia explains it:

Cobra's signature weapon, the "Psycho-gun", is a cybernetic arm-laser which connects directly to his brain. The Psycho-gun can target putative enemies without having a line-of-sight.

You can watch the cool Manga opening below and while I know nothing about the show you can bet I'll be following it with interest. IMDB lists virtually nothing, so I can't give any details till it gets updated.

It's set to be released 2013.

How sweet looking is this poster? Have you heard of this show before?

Via Examiner

UPDATED: Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles May Be Skinny Gun-toting Heroes In A Half-Shell

Update 2: Just to clarify, the artist who produced this illustration is the talented Nebezial and he's not affiliated with RainingCrow Designs or the film production. It's just really cool.

Update: I checked with the creators of this artwork (Rainingcrow Designs) and they confirmed this is NOT art for the film. It was produced for the concept art division. Still awesome though.
Michael Bay's live action reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) sounds like a major change according to alleged concept art.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was a popular comic book during the ninja craze of the 1980s. Four turtles are exposed to radiation, become mutants and are taught martial arts by a mutant rat. The characters have been adapted into live-action and animated movies and a cartoon series.

A "very credible" source for Nerd Reactor saw some concept art and described it this way:

"Our source says that the turtles were far more realistic and had hard-packed abs in the front rather than the bottom side of the turtle shell. They were also far more skinnier than we have seen in the past.

One of the big noticeable differences in the turtles was that one of the them was holding a gun. The gun didn’t look like any specific model but it was a little futuristic, and the turtle even had a Bandolier wrapped around him."

Its no surprise. Michael Bay demands blazing gunfire and massive slow motion explosions in any movie he makes. He'd have a gun battle in "Pride and Predudice" if he could.

It's just sad that each adaptation of the comic book series seems to get farther and farther away from the source material.

Via Nerd Reactor
 
[Image Source Stjepan Sejic]

Ryan Meinerding Explains Why Thor Looks More Spaceman Than Viking

Fans have complained about the designs of the superhero movie Thor costumes for since the first pics and Ryan Meinerding explains why the costumes look so high tech.

The concept art book Thor: The Art of Thor the Movie is being released about the movie this week and Marvel has an interview with one of the Visual Development Supervisor Ryan Meinerding and a couple of pics from the book.

On the designs being less "Nordic" than the traditional comic book "Thor" costumes
The design direction that Charlie and I each started from was trying to take some sense from the iconic costumes, and then applying some sense of Norse things to them. Not in a traditional sense, but so that there's overlapping and weaving and trying to find something that felt like, but was not as readily identifiable as, Norse. I think Charlie [Wen] was the one who really found that balance with the Thor costume, and once he found that, it really [was a matter of] overlapping and changing angles with metal around the disks or whatever we needed to be on the chest plates, and finding different ways of doing that with all the different characters.

On fitting the costumes in with the past and upcoming Marvel films
There’s definitely a sense of trying to make all of these characters come together for “Avengers,” [but] I think first and foremost all of these movies have to stand on their own. I think that the tones need to be similar enough to be in the Marvel Universe, but I think we were really conscious of designing the costume for “Avengers” to come together a little bit more, as opposed to back when you’re working on the Thor movie you’re just trying to make the best movie you can.

In the end we’re people executing the ideas or the design direction that we get from Marvel and the directors. So when you look at the direction that was coming in, I think the reason they chose not to do the more traditional Viking thing was probably because it would be harder to see a Viking standing next to Iron Man than it would a man in a more high tech looking chest plate. There are some really base level conceptual directions that we are given that are probably aimed towards those ends.

There is a lot of good information about his work on Thor as well as Iron Man, so head over to Marvel.com to read the rest of the interview.

Synopsis: Directed by Kenneth Branagh, the epic adventure "Thor" spans the Marvel Universe from present day Earth to the realm of Asgard. At the center of the story is The Mighty Thor (Chris Helmsworth), a powerful but arrogant warrior whose reckless actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as punishment Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dangerous villain of his world sends the darkest forces of Asgard to invade Earth.

Here's a partial list of the artists involved:

Production Designer
Bo Welch

Concept Artists
Charles Wen
James Carson
Vance Kovacs
Ron Mendell
Raj Rihal
Craig Shoji
Tully Summers
Simon Webber
Daphne Yap

Set Designers
Tex Kadonaga
Kevin Loo
Jeff Markwith
Anne Porter
Andrew Reeder
Rich Romig
Marco Rubeo

Storyboard Artist
Timothy Burgard

Darrin Denlinger
Thomas A. Nelson
Joel Venti
Via ComicBookMovie