District 9 Mothership Concept Art

images©wingnut film

Here's the first piece of my District 9 concept art released on the internet.
This image was printed as a limited edition (150 prints) piece and signed by Peter Jackson.

I'll be showing more in future, but this one is out there on the internet so I thought I might as well put it on my blog too.

The next concept art to be made public will be through UK magazines ImagineFX (a concept art magazine) and sister mag, 3D World.
ImagineFX will feature several pieces from myself, Leri greer and David Meng and hopefully reveal a little of the design process and thinking behind the film.
3D World are doing a feature with Embassy VFX and Weta Digital about their build of the D9 Dropship which will feature my original concept pieces.

Oh yeah, the blurred out part of the image is Chistian Pearces face! It must have been blurred to protect his identity... not now!
In this iteration of the design (which was adjusted for the final build - more booster pods instead of three, a reduced mid section, based on an earlier version of the design etc..) I had advertising hoardings and some grafitti littering the sides of the ship, the idea being that the Mothership has been there for twenty plus years. I thought that not only would MNU have been up to scavenge and salvage, but private firms and individuals would have made their way up and over the course of time, graffitit'd it and added billboards etc..
I really liked the idea that this astounding object could become mundane over time.
This idea didn't make it into the final build for various reasons.

Another subsequent version had the big, graphic patterns on the side. I think this version was the second or third to last iteration.

From a design perspective, I painted this from a pretty tight set of Neill's ideas. He had established by this point of the design phase that it was a classic saucer, something iconic and instantly recognisable - a shorthand. He also wanted it to be slightly de-constructed by MNU's salvaging and to feel like a refinery or mining vessel.
While the forms are all my own, the ideas are for the most part, very specifically Neill's.

For the final model, I think it was Embassy VFX who built the actual model, but Weta Digital added a great deal of detail and texture as they managed the majority of 'ship' effects shots.

You can hopefully read a lot more on this in the upcoming ImagineFX feature.