The website of Industrial Light & Magic, the design and effects team made famous by the original Star Wars, has shared a massive art dump from The Force Awakens, containing images from throughout the film’s development.
http://kotaku.com/cutting-open-t…
Which is probably more exciting than the art itself! I mean yes, it’s nice seeing some near-final artwork here, showing characters and locations which would be copied almost exactly for the movie, but you’ll also notice some pieces from very early on in The Force Awakens’ development, where many things — evil castles, old Stormtrooper helmets, weird folding TIE Fighters, two-man X-Wings, what looks like a male Jedi star — look wildly different than the ones which ended up on screen.
Below are some highlights, but the whole dump is available to view on ILM’s site.
(thanks Vesa Lehtimäki & John!)
To see the larger pics in all their glory (or, if they’re big enough, so you can save them as wallpaper), click on the “expand” button in the top-left corner.
Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of both their professional and personal portfolios. If you’re in the business and have some concept, environment, promotional or character art you’d like to share, drop us a line!
Comments
22 responses to “The Force Awakens’ Concept Art Had Some Cool Ideas”
Holy shit, they have some amazing artists.
You know, seeing Finn watching Poe get tortured could have really helped believing him suddenly switching sides.
Because shooting up a village is nothing?
Oh yeah, because this one time they were being dicks somehow changed years and years of indoctrinating.
There’s far more to it than that. The sad part is you have to read the extended stuff to find out about it. 🙁
Just further proof that Abrams really did put too much story threads into his movie. Doesn’t help that a lot of it was removed for pointless original movie references.
I felt there was enough story, in line with how much there was in episode 4 as such. The OT, the story only truly opened up in Episodes 5 and 6 when you go back and watch them. Everythings kind of closed off until then. I expect that to happen here too.
Either way, I enjoyed the hell out of the movie myself, so did my kid, that’s all that matters to me. Felt more like a Star Wars movies than those insipid prequels that’s for sure.
I felt the movie was rushed with no time for real character development. Especially for Rey.
Funny you say your kids happiness is all that’s important because it was all that was important for George Lucas ;P
I’d rather see a child be happy with a Star Wars movie than listen to adults wax lyrical about how it destroyed their childhood, listen to adults over analyse it to death, going overly anal about it endlessly as if it were something bigger than it really were. Something that people seem to lose these days is the ability to simply enjoy something, everything has to be *overly analysed to hell*. I guess that’s the thing, I’d rather enjoy something than worry if it delivers me the meaning of life or not. So yeah, my kids happiness is what’s important to me when it comes to something like this, not the anal retentiveness of some bottomfeeding group of narcissistic adults who lost the ability to enjoy the simple things in life 😛
The prequels didn’t ruin my childhood. Fucking polio did.
Talking about being against over analyzing nerds, what’s your thoughts on Halo 4? ;P
I didn’t like it 😛
Yeah, but why didn’t you like it? There has to be a reason, lest we repeat history!
I didn’t find it fun myself *shrug*. A game is different to a movie, you’re talking direct control there, play mechanics, direct input 😛
But yeah I know what you mean. In the sense of Halo 4, it didn’t hold the fun for me that previous Halos like the original and Halo Reach did. There was something missing with it. Wish I could say exactly what it was, but it almost felt like a ‘direct to dvd’ sequel lol
It’s like going to an autopsy. You know it’s dead, and nothing’s going to change that. But you gotta do an autopsy to find out what killed it… or who killed it
But if you are interested in finding the truth then check out my Halo retrospective commentary review series that will lead up to Halo 4 😛
But…. can Truth and Reconciliation fuel melt halo beams????
Love Ryan Church’s work
I may sound optimistic or even naieve but i get the feeling that a lot of plot holes in movies are purely due to editing and the need to keep the duration of the film from blowing out to 3-4 hrs. Prometheus really had that feeling too. Im sure the writers and ideas guys have thought of all this stuff but every process the production goes through it loses a bit more of the minutia and connective tissue between the big set pieces. Probably why there are so many good tv series coming out where these same writers can get a bit more room to flesh things out.
Love the folding TIE Fighter design. If there was one thing I hated about The Force Awakens, it was the designs of the new ships (not the re-hashed X-Wing and TIE Fighters), they were the definition of dull and uninspired and whoever designed and approved them needs to be slapped with a copy of “The Art of Star Wars”.
Kind if ironic really given a few of the ship designs harkened back to the original Ralph Mcquarrie designs from the first movie such as the Xwings themselves. But I still prefer the original grey look of the TIE’s, the black look was nice, but can’t go past a classic 😀
The “old Han Solo” concept art is really cool, but it’s not Star Wars, it’s clearly Blade Runner by way of Star Wars. Would have felt super out of place in TFA.
Shame none of the good ideas made it into the movie…
Some really great stuff there