Movie Archive - Sci-Fi-O-Rama

Feb 1st, 2009 | Categories: Concept Art | Illustration | Movie | Sci-Fi

Harry Lange - 2001 Concept Art

I thought I’d add a quick post as an addendum to previous 2001 Space Odyssey post’s I featured late last year – http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/2008/12/10/2001-a-space-odyssey-1/ & http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/2008/12/11/2001-a-space-odyssey-2/
basically here’s a collection of further reading / Cool stuff.

First up some links regarding the late Harry Lange a former NASA Illustrator whom Kubrick employed due to his extensive astronautical design experience. Harry helped to produce authentic prop and set designs, a sample of his concept art is above.

Read about Harry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Lange_(film_designer) and via his official site here: http://www.harry-lange.org.uk/index.html which has a page dedicated to all the major book’s on Kubrick’s masterpiece http://www.harry-lange.org.uk/products/products.html

Also of major interest and extremely cool: Joe Mackenzie’s nicely designed tribute site http://www.halproject.com/ which includes the chance to download your very own Hal-9000 screen saver! basically whilst running it will show random samplings of the HAL 9000 monitor animations, very authentic and strangely calming… it’s available for Mac or PC and it’s completely Free!

And finally… I came across these well rendered 2001 Desktop Icon’s at zyotism.com… So you can now have one of the Discovery’s Pod’s as your Hard Drive Icon! http://www.zyotism.com/aesthetics/iconsets/2001/index.html

Update: April 2009 - More Resources / Interest at http://www.simonatkinsoncreativearts.com/ – Thanks for the tip Simon!

Les Maîtres du temps

Jan 17th, 2009 | Categories: Moebius | Movie | Sci-Fi

Les Maîtres du temps

These spindly and fragile looking spacecraft are still’s taken from the 1982 French Animated Film ‘Les Maîtres du temps’ (The Masters of Time, a.k.a. Time Masters) directed by René Laloux and designed by Moebius. I have to admit that I’d never actually heard of this until I saw it featured over on Eric Carl’s excellent Blog.Sans-Concept.

Full post here: http://blog.sans-concept.com/?p=293 and check the full stills set at: http://flickr.com/photos/mr_carl/sets/72157612581774973/

In my opinion, pretty much any French Sci-Fi automatically qualifies as extremely interesting, and ‘Les Maîtres du temps’ certainley fit’s the bill! Also worthy of more reading; the career of Animator & Director René Laloux (July 13, 1929–March 13, 2004) most famous for ‘La Planète Sauvage,’ (Fantastic Planet 1973). Check his wonderfully bizarre 1965 Short film ‘Les Escargots’ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiXn6d13YC0 a parable of Nuclear Holocaust?

Aliens Storyboards (1)

Dec 19th, 2008 | Categories: Concept Art | Movie | Sci-Fi | Storyboard

[Show as slideshow]

Before I start I’d like to point out all material is sourced via this amazing Aliens tribute site: http://aliensarchive.tripod.com/home.html. Though it doesn’t appear to have been updated for a some time it’s still extremely extensive, with script revisions, FX info and costume design and detailing – a must read!

So with regards to this post… here we have a small selection of storyboard frames from everybody’s favourite “Vietnam in Space” movie: Aliens – (Directed James Cameron, 1986). Theses samples are taken from across several drafts I believe and were illustrated by artists Roger Dear, Maciek Piotrowski and Denis Rich, apparently these scan’s are taken from the films Laser Disc Release, although full versions (copies?) of the storyboard do crop occasionally on ebay. The first thing you notice is just how close to the final film print they actually are, you can almost hear them! I’ve tried to arrange them in chronological order from top left and across - I’m not sure the final “fueling” thumbnail (bottom row) made it into the film.

As for the film itself, well I think there’s a fair chance that if your reading this you’ve probably seen it more than once. Better than Ridley Scott’s original? well it’s hardly worth arguing over as both will forever be tagged as visionary film making. As for the sequels? Alien 3 nullifies the events of it’s predecessor and ultimately pails into insignificance, though Fincher’s effort does have it’s merits including some great sets and very nifty camera work. Ressurection as with 3 is best enjoyed when you remove all thought’s of the first two movies, it’s watchable nonsense which is more than can be said for you know what….

Here’s a funny clip giving you a insight into James Cameron’s thoughts on that which is unmentionable: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aKnS7CGWNmU

Ridley Scott’s Storyboard for Alien is here: http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/2008/08/26/alien-storyboards/

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