Ready Player One concepts... even more!

More Ready Player One Art

Continuing with the cleared Ready Player One art, here's a look at more vehicles I worked on for the film. Some made it into the film as is, others (like the hover bike and Thundertank) were victims of time and budget.
   First off are some paint variations on a generic Indy car to fill the Pole Position-like racers in the New York race sequence. These variations were chosen to add a pop of color amongst the sea of gray and black IOI cars. Not all of these were seen in the final sequence.

Next up is some early concepts for the Race sequence. These were based on some early rough story boards and Adam wanted to see what fun gaming aspects we could add including playing with gravity, folding the city adding ramps, traps, barriers and even King Kong to show that it's not so much player vs player, but player vs the track!

The Thundertank from Thundercats was one of the first things Adam gave me as design treat. The goal was to imagine the thunder tank as if it was designed by Lamborghini. It was cut early on as the story beat it was featured in changed. The IOI Hover Bike was initially designed by Ryan Church, but Adam wanted a smaller, more streamlined version to match our current IOI corporate theme. Using the basis of Ryan's design I revamped the bike to a much smaller and more speederbike-like complete with air brakes and directional thrusters. Spielberg loved this design and even commented he want to make a toy out of it! But it too was victim to a beat change to the end sequence and it was dropped. :(

Of course there's Art3mis's bike from Akira. This main design was based on a sketch by artists from Framestore and then fleshed out by myself and ILM and then spent countless versions on decals and placements to get the right balance and fulfill the licensors and Adam and Spielberg's desires.

Fully Charged Live 2020 in Austin TX

Years ago I started following a one man youtube channel called FullyCharged, it was British Actor Robert Llewellyn from Red Dwarf. He started it to share his experience switching from a gas car (a VW R32) to an electric car. It grew, and grew until 2 years ago Jonny Smith from FithGear joined him in presenting on the show, and now has 2 live shows completed, one in the UK and one that just happened in the US,  just 4 hours from me in Austin. So my son Venice and I jumped in the Model 3 and headed south for the weekend. Here's a quick edit of our experience! Enjoy! And if you have any questions about EV's or Tesla please let me know. And if you are in the market for a Tesla, you can use my referral link and get 1,000 free supercharger miles!

     

2020 Update! And 25 YEARS @ ILM!!!

Sorry for the looooong absence here. It's been a crazy couple of years but all good :)
Besides finishing up 5 months in London finishing up Ready Player One, I then continued on to a few other projects including Bumblebee. Since then we've moved to Dallas TX, while still working remotely for ILM.
     Speaking of ILM, as of Today I have been with ILM for 25 years!  Yeah.... I've been working at ILM longer than I haven't....

     So in honor of that I'll share some more stories here of my 25 years.
Some of the basics I've already shared here, but I'll start with what I remember about my first day. I started at ILM back in Feb 1995, just over a month after graduating from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh with studies in Industrial design and animation, and 2 years at Detroit's Center for Creative Studies where I majored in Transportation Design. I showed up at ILM and nervously knocked on the  heavily tinted business door marked "Kerner Optical". Inside that door was a simple front desk with a stormtrooper art triptych that I believe was done by Ty Ruben Elingson (a member of the ILM Art Department)
        I was met by Jeff Olson, modelshop manager, who ushered me through several hallways lined with posters, past a motion control stage, out into a parking lot and back through another building called 'cookie bay' (it used to house a cookie company at one point) and out again to arrive at "G" building. G building was an L shaped office strip mall type building, one wing was the Model Shop the other wing was the Art Department. I started out in the model shop. I was brought into the building past a messy (and obviously male centric) bathroom into the workshop, which was basically an open more gutted warehouse type section. There were noises of saws, Dremels whirring like a nightmare dental visit sounds, the smell of fresh cut wood, fiberglass resin and wet paint. I was quickly introduced to several model shop members like, John Goodson, Don Bies, Kim Smith, Ira Keeler, Giovani Donanvan and Nelson Hall, Randy Otenberg, Brian Gernand,  Steve Gawley and others. I was told I would be working on a movie called Congo, I would be helping build a miniature jungle set by making foam trees and vines. I sat with Nelson who showed me what we were doing, carving grooves into long foam tubes like pool noodles. Then wrapping the tubes in a latex skin with a tree bark texture on them. Lunch was a quick jaunt over to Picante, an iffy Mexican restaurant behind G building. After a stomach sized gut bomb burrito we walked over to 'C' building where the big miniature set was going to come together. This was ILM's biggest indoor stage space complete with ceiling grid and giant roll-up door. This picture below is a composite of live action FG and our miniature set in the BG.

Another job I did on Congo was make a miniature arm speach band for a miniature Amy the Gorilla with modelshop sculptor Richard Miller. Overall it was a mind blowing experience, little did I know it was the first day in a 25 year + journey that would lead me around the world, meeting legendary artists, directors and actors. With work on nearly all of the biggest VFX films in recent history... all with the same company... Industrial Light + Magic.

Ready Player One Art!

After a lot of legal clearance, I finally got permission to post some of my work from my 3 years on Ready Player One. I played a new role on this film as I was working for the Studio (WB and Amblin) as "Virtual Production Concept Design Supervisor". What that means is I was working directly with Adam Stockhausen the award winning Production Designer to help manage and design the world of RPO and mainly the Oasis. In that role I served as a supervisor of the Virtual Art Department which mainly consisted of artists from Digital Domain who ran the virtual sets and motion capture, and ILM and other freelance concept artists to visualize the extensive worlds in detail before any actors arrived on set. I continued on as VFX art director along with Steve Tappin on the ILM side to see through to final completion of all the 90 minutes of full CG Oasis scenes by ILM.
       For a microscopic taste of this, I'll start with vehicles, which was one of the first jobs assigned to me by Adam. Although I did many, many vehicles for this film, due to 3rd party license issues I can only show what I got cleared. But the other vehicles you can see in the film I can't show right now are: The Mach 5, I did a modern upgrade to this icon as a personal vehicle for Daito and what I would've preferred the Mach 5 looked like in a modern film. The Mad Max interceptor, also mild upgrade including hidden thrusters in the rear gas tanks. And of course Aech's main ride the Bigfoot monster truck, also customized to his/her tastes and size. Below are the final illustrations for the IOI stock car racer. Based on NASCAR, but given a bit of a plain, but menacing corporate branding and armor to fit with IOI's over all aesthetic in the film.
enjoy!
-Alx

READY PLAYER ONE!

See what I've been up to for the last 3 years! As Concept Design Director, I served in many roles from the very start as a concept artist, to virtual production art director to ILM visual effects art director. Check it out March 29th!

http://readyplayeronemovie.com

JAEGERTECH Stormtrooper Helmet in new SW Stormtrooper book!

After years or touring around the world some of the Star Wars Legion mini Stormtrooper helmets have come to be featured in a new Star Wars book all about Stormtroopers. I was flipping through this book at Costco and came across this page featuring my JAEGERTECH Racing Helemet! Grateful to see that out of the hundreds of artists that made some incredible versions that mine made it into a book all about Stormtroopers :) Sadly the rest of the book doesn't feature any of my many, many actual Stormtrooper art. Although final versions of my designs are present.
Enjoy!

My trip to the Top Gear test track!!

So for 4 months this past summer, I was working in the UK, While there we did several cool things on the weekends, one of which, thanks to my lovely wife, was going to the Top Gear test track in Dunsfold Park! Here's a little video I edited together from that trip, enjoy!
-Alx

and to view the entire lap session click below. We had to wait for a while to do the first lap, but it gives you a better idea of what it was like.

Guess who's an Academy Member now!?

It's an honor to be chosen to be one of the 'class of 2015' to the Academy of Motion Pictures! And last Monday night was a event to toast all the new members, including many actors, directors, producers and even a few of us Visual Effects folks. Fellow ILM'ers David Nakabayashi, Wayne Billhimer and Carry Philips, along with actors Elizabeth Banks and Jason Siegel among others. It was a great evening to hang out and meet the fellow new members as well as the esteemed staff and leaders. I would like to thank the Academy. :)

New Blog for Electric Vehicle stuff

check out VOLTZWAGEN, my new-ish blog about life with the VW E-Golf!