Via Starwars.com:
IN A SPECIAL EVENT AT GNOMON GALLERY, THE ARTISTS REVEAL HOW THEY BROUGHT SHIPS, CHARACTERS, AND MOMENTS TO LIFE IN THE LATEST STAR WARS FILM.
When it comes to movie making, some of the first people to see what the movie might look like are the folks who turn story ideas into pictures: the concept artists. For Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a team of concept artists was assembled and put to work even before J.J. Abrams was selected to direct the film. Under production designer Rick Carter, this team started turning ideas into images for characters, worlds, and more, and helped to shape where a new Star Wars movie could go. As the story became more developed, an art director continued the process of conceptualizing the look of key elements of the film, as well as developing how to bring that element into the film: as a set on a studio stage, or as a prop, or miniature, or computer-rendered object. Recently, two of the key artists of The Force Awakens, VFX art director James Clyne and veteran Star Wars concept artist Iain McCaig shared their experiences working on the concept designs of the film to an eager audience at Gnomon, a visual effects school in Hollywood, at the opening of a gallery exhibit showcasing their concept designs for the most recent episode of the saga.
Both Clyne and McCaig gave dynamic presentations, showcasing their roles in contributing to the making of The Force Awakens. Clyne, who joined ILM in 2013 after working on films such as Star Trek Into Darkness, Avatar, and Minority Report, was first introduced to the world of concept art by the Joe Johnston drawings in the 1980 The Empire Strikes Back Sketchbook. Much of the early discussion for the art design team on The Force Awakens focused on how to refine the design style in a galaxy a generation after the events of the original trilogy. “Eventually it would always come back around to needing to feel like Star Wars. Very simple shapes, with a little tech off the side,” Clyne explained as he showed a design for a round adobe structure to be used in the Jakku village at the film’s opening. Later as Clyne moved into preproduction, he moved into designing some of the most important and exciting locations of the film: the hallways. He recounted spending about six months on designs for various hallways and corridors, trying to make them visually appealing, since so much of the film’s action and dialogue takes place in these interior locations. “You want the sets to reflect the mood,” Clyne mentioned, as he described how the design of the interrogation rooms was built around the tension of the scenes, with sharp geometry making the walls and ceiling seem to close in on the subject.
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