New Books - Art of District 9 and White Cloud Worlds

Two new books featuring my work, as well as that of many others from Weta Workshop are nearing release.

The Art of District 9 which was put together by Weta's Daniel Falconer is out soon. This weekend in fact.

I, along with Leri Greer, David Meng, Daniel and Richard Taylor will be presenting a short talk this Friday about the making of the movie at Wellingtons Embassy Theater as part of a launch event for the book, and following that a few of us will be signing copies at the Wetacave.

If you're in Wellington, come along and say hi.

It's a pretty stunning book if I do say so, and showcases a massive chunk of the work we did on the film. You'll get to see plenty of art that's never been seen before, like Christian Pearce's early concepts that didn't make it into the film, but formed a bedrock for us to work from, as well as some of my production art featuring much earlier iterations of the final designs.

Following that, White Cloud Worlds is due out, which is an anthology of New Zealand fantasy and sci-fi art.

It's the result of the earnest efforts of my good friends and fellow Wetites, Paul Tobin and Kate Jorgenson.

I'm super proud to be part of it as I've always sought after books of this type my whole life - compendiums of fantastical art - and now I get to be in one of the best.

I hope you enjoy them!

Update - link to limited edition version White Cloud Worlds at WetaNZ
link to White Cloud Worlds Official Website

Interview with Sci-Fi Universe

While I was in Switzerland for the NIFFF and Imaging the Future Symposium, I did a few interviews, this one was with Romain Basset from SciFi Universe.com

It was mainly about District 9 but they will be following up shortly with another focusing on my science fiction world, Dr. Grordbort's.

Oh yeah, the article is in French, but the video interview is in Freddie Mercury's English.

Link

Neuchâtel Fantastic Film Festival and Imaging the Future

I'll be attending this years Neuchâtel Fantastic Film Festival in Switzerland and giving a talk at the 'Imaging the Future' symposium.

I'll be talking about designing District 9 and the creation of the world of Dr. Grordbort's.

Come along and say hi if you're in the neighbourhood.


links

NIFFF

Imaging the Future

District 9 Concept Art - Dropship

The Dropship from District 9 was developed very quickly. Just a few concept drawings, all of the same design and it was on it's way into the film.

That's a pretty rare occurrence in film design.

Above you can see one of the early sketches that nailed down the silhouette and angular form, followed by a paint-over from a later stage of an in-production film model.

This quick concept sketch shows concepts like the modular slave hold, mimicking an insectile abdomen at the rear of the ship.
The idea was that the Dropship would carry various modular containers and in this case held a prison like container for the worker aliens.

images©wingnut film

The Embassy VFX created the first model from my super basic, quasi-retarded Sketchup mess, but I needed to do this paint-over to illustrated details and construction that weren't evident in the first concept drawings.

In the end, Weta Digital handled most of the Mothership and Dropship scenes in the film and added even further detail so that it held up when the camera got very close.

District 9 Gun Replicas

Behold, as I unleash my inner company shill!

At long last, we finally have things in place to release the District 9 guns as collectible replicas.
These are both made from the original masters that I designed and oversaw the construction of during the production of the film.

They're about as close to the actual movie props as you could ask for.
If you wanted to go hog wild, you could buy one of these US$560 (approx) limited edition babies (I think we're making only 200 of each), and cover em' in rubbish, slime and maybe a few handfuls of fecal matter to make them even closer to how they were treated on set by Joe Dunckley and Sarah Rubano.

But that's your prerogative.

So far, we have the Arc Generator and the Gas Thrower, but keep your eyes on the WetaNZ site for more collectibles in the coming months.

Head on over to WetaNZ to check them out in detail

-A big thanks to Tim Launder at WetaNZ for all his hard work making these happen.

UPDATE - The Arc Generator has sold out .

District 9 Exo Suit Concept Art - part 2

images©wingnut film

In this weeks instalment, we see two more of the Exo suit concept pieces - it's like a sequel you see.

The head close up was done for Weta Digital and Embassy VFX to aid the modelling and texturing of the final model. It shows the mandibles that were there to reflect the alien physiology externally. I figured if the aliens had the equivalent of a 'hand' on their face (the complex crab like feeders as well as tentacles) they would use them for communication - a more complex, maybe pictographic version of our facial expressions.
If that was the case, then this would be integral to them and it would be necessary to make an analogue on the robotic suit too.
It also makes it look 'mean as' and also 'muy alarmante'.

The second illustration was a simple frontal plan view - very quick and dirty but showed the frontal proportions for the modelling process.

There were also side on views, internal views and diagrams showing how the chest opened and the internal system extended out to take in the pilot.
But you can't see those here because I have pasted them in using invisible pixels.

Tune in next time when more pictures of things are accompanied by hyper-nerdy descriptions.

District 9 Concept Art - Some Guns...

images©wingnut film

Guns! I like to design guns. What a sad human being I am.
They're pretend guns so that makes ok though eh? Hello?....

These three designs were all based on a phrase or concept that Neill threw out to me:
An electric 'lightening' gun (the Arc Generator), a Gas Thrower- something that would project out gas or liquid like a flame thrower, but unlit - perhaps some destructive, corrosive gel or gas (it ended up just blowing shit up in the film - corroding humans costs a lot of effects budget...) and an Assault Rifle.
The Assault rifle has all these little tubes down the side - the idea being that each tube discharges an explosive burst of gas one after the other down the length of the barrel behind the projectile - a linear accelerator gun, like a rail gun but without the magnets. Of course it would fire these all rapidly to get a high rate of fire.

That shit is nerdy.

We went through a few colour schemes - the arc generator was originally black with red accents (we tried a few colours) and Neill sent back a tweaked version to me (hence me crediting him on the design, and the leftover watermark).

There were also versions of the Arc Generator and the Assault Rifle adjusted to go on the Exo suit.

ImagineFX Isssue 50 - District 9

Issue 50 of ImagineFX mag is out soon (now?) and has a feature on the conceptual design we did at Weta Workshop for District 9.
There's a good compliment of our concept art included as well as interviews from David Meng, Leri Greer and myself.
There's some really nice photos of David Meng's incredible Prawn sculptures and a lot of Leris' preparatory work for the graphic design of the alien language.

District 9 Concept Art -MNU

images©wingnut film

More District 9 concept work.

We built two armoured Hilux's at Weta Workshop and both got pretty messed up on set (as you may remember from the film, one crashed into the Exo suit, and one ended up on it's roof).
Neill provided me with the render of the model which he had added bullbars and guns to, and as a starting point I referred to one of Christian Pearce's very early sketches - that's why I put all three names down as signatures.

I don't tend to work over renders or photographs for the bulk of my work, and almost never for personal work. For a design job like this though, I was adding to an existing vehicle, so I worked into the render adding photographic elements like lights and guns and illustrating the armour panels and anything I couldn't find.

For the final build, we had to lose the MG's and mounts due to cost but everything else stayed exactly the same.

The MNU armour was a lot of fun. This full armour set was intended to be the heaviest version available - some guys would have less, some none.
The idea was to have this armour reflect some of the alien tech, a hint that perhaps MNU had learnt something, however little from the Alien technology over the 25 years or so since arrival.

The logos ( and all the graphic design for the Aliens and MNU) are by Leri Greer - every time I added his logos it brought the designs to life.

District 9 Exo Suit Concept Art - part 1

images©wingnut film

I can finally start showing a little of the concept art that I did for District 9 - these two images along with a few others are up on WetaNZ.com promoting the work on the film we did at Weta Workshop.
I also talked on a Weta podcast a little while back if you want to know more about the process we went through working on D9.

These two images are two of maybe fifteen or so illustrations that I did on this particular design.
I probably did forty or more on earlier designs. (as I mentioned earlier, we actually built a full scale prop of one of the earlier versions but we changed to this design after principal photography was finished)

This version became the final design and went through a few iterations but really didn't change much from the first pass.
It started out as predominately white/grey with black extremities and orange markings. Neill asked that I make it black near the end of the design phase.
Definitely looks more menacing in black, but I kinda liked the mainly white version.
The very first version also had little external arms that Wikus's (or in it's intended form, an alien's) arms would slot into and you can kinda make those out from the back view.

Now that I think about it, I probably did a lot more than fifteen illustrations of this design....
I'll show a few more soon as well as a few other designs.

I've seen some really cool home made models of the Exo Suit now, some in Lego that are particularly good.
This one is great, and this one is proportionately the most accurate.
Pretty impressive considering the lack of decent reference.

More soon.

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.

District 9

So District 9 is out at last and the reception has been amazing. I've really only heard good things from people and nothing but compliments for all our work on the film at Weta Workshop.
I saw the film in San Diego while I was over for Comic Con, and I gotta admit, I was nervous. Surrounded by journalists, it's hard to be objective with something you've worked so intently on for so long.

Those nerves disappeared pretty quick once the film got started though - Neill's vision came through so clearly and powerfully, and between that and Sharlto's incredible performance, I was just dragged along for the ride. I even got a little weepy in bits! What a sissy.

Plus I got kinda buzzed when I saw my Exo Suit design running around at the end fucking annihilating everything!
The modellers at Weta Digital and the painters and animators at Embassey VFX just nailed everything I imagined it to be and added so much more.
I can tell you, there's a really powerful childlike thrill that you get when you see something you've drawn and designed come to life like that. It is truly nerdy.
Oh yeah, plus all my guns turning dudes to mist! Ha ha! Fuck, I must be a frikkin' psychopath or something.... I swear, I'm actually a vegetarian!

I'll post concept art from the film as and when I get approval.

District 9 Trailer up

The trailer for Neill Blomkamps District 9 is up and I am smiling.
This is the only film I've taken time away from Dr. Grordbort's to work on at Weta over the last couple years, and it's finally nearing completion.
It's personally very exciting for me to finally see this trailer. I consider the design work I've done one this film to be my best so far, and it's incredibly gratifying to see a glimpse of it finally made public.
Check it out here.