“ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL” (2019)
Here is some of the work I did for Alita: Battle Angel film. For more art check out the cool art-book from Titan Books’ "Art of / Making of Alita: Battle Angel"
https://www.amazon.com/Alita-Battle-Angel-Making-Movie/dp/1785658085
Big thanks to Ben Procter and Dylan Cole for letting me be a part of an amazing team and for the opportunity to work on this iconic manga adaptation as well as to work with Steve Joyner(Production Designer), Robert Rodriguez, Jon Landau and of course the legendary James Cameron.
My contribution to the film was the concept art / 3D design work done for Alita’s 2 bodies: the initial, more fragile “doll” body and the later, more advanced, combat-ready Berserker body and also Alita’s heart. These were exciting and unique challenges in their own ways and a great learning opportunity for me both artistically and on technical level. Software-wise I used: ZBrush for initial sculpting(shape exploration), then Softimage XSI(for SUBD parts) and Moi3D(for CAD parts) for final surfaces/detailed work. Bodies rendered in Keyshot and the heart was rendered in Octane (I transitioned to Octane Render at the end of the project).
When I joined the project there was already plenty of various awesome art done for Alita by the super talented artists at Lightstorm. All that + the original manga + Ben’s direction + James Cameron’s, Jon Landau’s, Robert Rodrigez’s comments served as the strong foundation and starting point/inspiration for the work I did when creating the final designs. This is partially why I could just jump straight in-to a detailed high-poly design with confidence and not worrying too much that what I was doing would not be well received.
Shutout to all the teams over at Lightstorm, Weta Digital, Framestore and all the other talented VFX people involved in making the movie that I’m not aware of.
The head/face you see on these images is extracted from the 3D mesh that I received from Lightstorm and which I believe was generated from a 3D scan. It was used by me ONLY for scale/context reference. I did not work on Alita’s face/hair.
Even though the images you see here is what I delivered to the client it is also important to note that even after my designs were approved by the Lightstorm’s team, the Weta Digital continued working closely with Lightstorm and did the necessary changes/updates to make sure these designs work well in motion on the big screen. Film assets of such production quality that get this much screen time are inherently very complex (from conception stage to the final technical execution stage) and therefore the final result that is seen on the screen is always a huge team effort and in no way can be credited solely to just one person.
