Concept
Last fall at a coffee house my friend Jeremy Hughes (of Elevate Pictures) and I were talking about doing a fun joint project, something short yet challenging and interesting. On the spot we wrote up a 1 page treatment which we quickly turned into a script. The story was simple enough, an alien craft lands in a rural area surprising a farmer and his wife.

Designing
Our challenge was to design otherworldly technologies that were both familiar and unique. Almost immediately we brought Doug McGuire into the mix, to do concept design and storyboards.

Though the concept for how the the alien craft would look and work was hit upon very quickly, we spent months refining and reworking almost every part of the design. Doug’s initial concept is clearly visible throughout all the modifications, a true testament to his ingenious vision and design.

Similar work and time went into designing the creature and it’s armor and weapons systems. The final concept chosen was sketched showing the alien in a variety of states for the 3D modelers. A very early creature concept can be seen in the thumbnails below along with a sketch of how the weapon will function.

Next Steps
We will post follow up entries covering the rest of preproduction, production (shooting RED) and post workflows (distributed teams, 3D and compositing).

All of the concept art on this page, including the banner image, was created by Doug McGuire.