Interview

Art Director

New Warcraft Poster Released, Trailer Coming Friday

If you're not a gamer, you're perhaps unaware of Blizzard Entertainment's hugely, hugely popular game World of Warcraft. This massive online multiplayer game had nearly 6 million subscribers as of this past June, and is currently the world's most subscribed MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), holding the Guinness World Record for most popular game. It's also the highest ...

By  |  November 3, 2015

Interview

Art Director

Awesome New Star Wars: The Force Awakens Poster, Plus Final Trailer Tomorrow

We were prepared for the news about the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer coming tomorrow, but this new poster was a welcome surprise. We can identify every character depicted on the poster save one—who’s the goggle wearing alien beneath Rey’s left hand? The poster was part of Lucasfilm’s announcement that the trailer for The Force Awakens will ...

By  |  October 18, 2015

Interview

Art Director

Killer Cars: Check out This Mad Max: Fury Road Infographic

Back in May, we introduced you to Jacinta Leong, art director on Mad Max: Fury Road and one of the people responsible for bringing you those beastly machines. Leong's task was huge, both literally and narratively, as without the machines, Mad Max: Fury Road can't exist. Fusing two Cadillacs bodies together, installing a massive engine and having the thing actually drive was ...

By  |  September 2, 2015

Interview

Art Director

Artist Drew Struzan Thinks The Force Awakens is Best Star Wars Film Ever

The ripple effects from Disney’s D23 Expo are still being felt—and now we have this: poster artist extraordinaire Drew Struzan, who has been with the franchise since the very beginning, thinks that J.J. Abrams Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be the best Star Wars yet. In a conversation with Movie-Weekly, Struzan and this to ...

By  |  August 20, 2015

Interview

Art Director

Check out Artist Marko Manev’s Noir Star Wars Print Series

Today at 12pm eastern, Bottleneck Gallery and Acme Archives are releasing Marko Manev's latest noir print series of the original Star Wars trilogy. Manev's Star Wars-inspired art is elegant, stripped down and haunting. They capture something ineffable about these characters—the loneliness of Vader juxtaposed with the camaraderie and loyalty of friends like Han Solo and Chewy and R2D2 and C3PO. The ...

By  |  August 14, 2015

Interview

Art Director

Comic-Con 2015: Art Directors From Fantastic Four, Batman v. Superman, Jurassic World, Terminator Genisys & More

Before the sets are designed and the stunts are mapped out, before the costumes are created and sometimes even before there is a script, there are the illustrators of the Art Directors Guild, who come in at the very beginning to literally sketch out what the movie will look like. Their panel’s title referred to ...

By  |  July 13, 2015

Interview

Animator Art Director Director Producer Production Designer Special/Visual Effects

Meet the Crew That Worked on Both Jurassic Park & Jurassic World

Universal's new Jurassic World is being heralded as a proper folllow-up to Steven Spielberg's 1993 classic Jurassic Park, the film that raised the bar for what CGI could accomplish and blew the minds of kids and adults alike. When director Colin Trevorrow took the helm of Jurassic World, the first film in the franchise in 14-years, both he and executive producer Steven ...

By  |  June 11, 2015

Interview

Art Director

10 Deadly Design Flaws in Jurassic World‘s Theme Park

Ever since the first park opened its' gates 22 years ago in Steven Spielberg's classic Jurassic Park, a part of the appeal of the series is predicting how the dinosaurs are going to break out of their enclosures. In the original, it was the hubris of park creator John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), a bad storm, and the ...

By  |  May 27, 2015

Interview

Art Director

Here’s How They Built the Beastly Machines for Mad Max: Fury Road

How do you fuse two Cadillac bodies together, install two huge engines, and actually make the thing not only drive, but serve as one of the main vehicles in a film that's essentially one long car chase? This was one of the many challenges facing Jacinta Leong, art director on Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the most kinetic, relentless ...

By  |  May 14, 2015

Interview

Art Director Props

From Home Builder to World Builder, Carpenter Jason Allard’s Life in the Movies

One of the most important and most highly skilled crew jobs in Hollywood is that of the carpenter, those men and women who create the scenery and props that plunge us into the physical world of the film. “It’s construction with a twist,” says Jason Allard, a man who knows how to turn a description ...

By  |  April 21, 2015

Interview

Art Director

Set Designer Ricardo Guillermo on Creating Meth Labs for Breaking Bad and More

Ricardo Guillermo helped create some of the most iconic sets in recent television history as a set designer on Breaking Bad. Guillermo used his considerable skills as a set designer to help fashion Walter White’s various meth labs, Saul Goodman’s ridiculous/awesome office, Walter, Skylar and Walt Jr.'s house and many other sets on that groundbreaking show. ...

By  |  April 20, 2015

Interview

Actor Art Director Costume Designer Director Stunt Coordinator/Stunt Person

A Q&A with James Dever, Military Advisor on American Sniper

James Dever was just following orders. In 1986, Clint Eastwood arrived at Camp Pendleton, the Southern California Marine Corps base, to direct, and star in, Heartbreak Ridge. Dever, a gunnery sergeant with more than 13 years in the Corps under his belt at the time, was assigned by his Colonel to work with Eastwood — ...

By  |  January 14, 2015

Interview

Art Director Cinematographer

Building the Sets of Middle-Earth for The Battle of the Five Armies

Peter Jackson and his crew shot The Hobbit trilogy concurrently over 266 days (the same total number of days it took to shoot The Lord of the Rings trilogy). Another 10 weeks was needed for cast and crew for pickup shooting for The Battle of the Five Armies on the performance capture stage, which ends ...

By  |  December 18, 2014

Interview

Art Director

54 World Premieres Highlight 71st Venice International Film Festival

The 71st Venice Film Festival officially opens the fall festival season on August 27, followed just two days later by the Telluride Film Festival and, six days after that, the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF). There’s been a bunch of press lately over the recent announcement by TIFF’s artistic director, Cameron Bailey, that from now on ...

By  |  August 22, 2014

Interview

Art Director

Watch Artists Hand Paint Murals for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

As we wrote back in May, not all advertisements are created equal. Colossal Media is responsible for the hand painted, photo realistic murals that you see scattered through New York City (and in cities across the country), that look more like art than ads. They are, in fact, as close to works of art as ...

By  |  August 7, 2014

Interview

Art Director

The Beautiful Art That Shapes & Sells Our Favorite Films & Shows

Sketches, illustrations, storyboards, concept art, posters, digital painting and even 'for your consideration' Emmy ads for print publications like Variety are just a few of the ways in which artists help filmmakers and television creators tell, and sell, their movies and shows. The artwork can be extremely visible to the public, as AMC's Mad Men has done so brilliantly ...

By  |  July 31, 2014

Interview

Actor Art Director Screenwriter

Celebrating the Unsung Maternal Heroes of the Silver Screen for Mother’s Day

Mothers’ Day is this Sunday, and it’s come to our attention that, strange as it may seem, celebrities have mothers too. Some of them even have celebrity mothers. Though really, if you consider all the time, industry knowledge and innate talent that it takes to succeed in Hollywood, it makes sense that we see so ...

By  |  May 9, 2014

Interview

Art Director

Sky High Murals With Colossal Media

If you've been to New York City, you've experienced the odd sensation of being the recipient of an endless stream of sales pitches. Whether you're waiting for the subway, walking down Houston street or sitting in a taxi, you're surrounded by advertising. Check out this upcoming show at Mercury Lounge! Buy this brand of flavored ...

By  |  May 6, 2014

Interview

Art Director

A Living, Dangerous Dorian Gray: For No Good Reason Celebrates England’s Wildest Cartoonist

Avey Tare gets Ralph Steadman. The Animal Collective frontman has made no official statements regarding Steadman’s art, but regarding psychedelia he says, “it's always been about the combination of moods and how fast a mood can change. I think combining humor alongside something extremely dark is always appealing in the world of psychedelia.” He could ...

By  |  April 28, 2014

Interview

Art Director

Painting a Renaissance Masterpiece From Scratch for The Grand Budapest Hotel

Renaissance painter Johannes van Hoytl the Younger (1613-1669) worked in solitude. Known for his use of light and shade, as well as his attraction to the lustrous and velvety, the painter was particularly un-prolific and a financial failure. Yet, van Hoytl nevertheless produced up to a dozen of the finest portraits the world has ever ...

By  |  April 2, 2014