«
»

Possible Concept Art for Conan

It’s been quite a drought for Conan news over the past few weeks, so here’s an interesting little rumour for rumination.

Alex Tornberg was a concept artist for Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer at Funcom. Two character pictures at his portfolio have a distinctly familiar look to them. The two pictures bear the watermark “CONANâ„¢ and © 2010 Conan Properties International LLC”–not, say, Age of Conanâ„¢, which is watermarked in other images–and so it could be construed that this is concept art not for the game, but for the film.

The first picture, “Conan the Panther,” has a few touchstones of the current look for the character: what might be the waistband of the red skirt/kilt can be seen in the bottom, as well as the belt supporting it. The necklace is a bit different from the design Momoa’s sporting, but such elements go through many permutations by different artists before a final look is decided upon, so that isn’t too surprising. Conan’s stance and posture are rather surprisingly similar to that of the most recently released publicity still, if in a mirror image.

The second picture, “Conan Ambush,” is more interesting, as it shows not yet another image of the titular character, but of other characters in the film. Judging by the gloomy, glum colours and the barbaric accouterments of the figures, I’d wager this is an image of Cimmerians. The central figure may be Conan–in another nod to cross-media artistic homogeny, he is wearing a livery collar very similar to the one the king sports in Age of Conan–but given how much older the character depicted appears to be, I’d suggest this might be Corin, with the ambush in question being Khalar Zym’s. There’s a definite air of Vladimir Kulich in that image (I wonder if he was ever in talks for the job of Conan’s dad?)

It isn’t much, I know, but I feel worth reporting. If nothing else, there are some damn fine pictures to enjoy: not just the two possible Conan pictures, but a wealth from Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer and others. Hopefully this’ll tide us all over until more news comes up.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 8th, 2010 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Conan Movie Rumours. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Ylur

    The first concept art is very good. The second too.

    Thanks Taranaich.

    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Conan-the-Movie/112956242054096 is temporarily down.. It’s strange.

  • Ian

    Not bad

  • m

    @taranaich: it can’t be easy to find stuff during such a dry spell of news pertaining to this movie, I give you( and your predecessor) a ton of credit for taking this on.I see whenever I have tried to look up info for this movie on my own, alot of popular sites are getting their info from here. I like the both pics , I do like the first slightly better. As far as sonny landham as conan, he would’ve been a decent choice at one time, I tend to discard most (not all)ethnicity due to the fantasy aspect of conan, which is why I can accept momoa or sonny as a conan.I watched this chael sonnen/ anderson silva fight last night, and I’ll say this ( to probably to alot of disagreement) : If chael sonnen was about 30 lbs heavier maintaing his ripped physique and he happened become an actor, he could potentially make a great conan. We know he could put the weight on, his speed and power are incredible( and if he hadnt gotten caught in a triangle in the 5th he would’ve beaten silva whom I feel he embarrased anyway). He has the blue eyes the fighting mans features and strong jaw,howard often used as a description, look up a picture of him, give him a black mane akin to the first pic here,even put a horned helmet on him, and see if you can see what I’m seeing. Boxers ,workman,bullies, physical men of thews are what inspired alot of the aspects of howards barbaric heroes, and they exist right here today, I have always found watching boxing matches andnow mma bouts great foundations , watching the speed and power of these guys compared to an average guy. I stray from wrestling and bodybuilding ( i did think it worked for arnold cause in the first flick, he went for a more cardio based workout plan to look a little more natural, observe the difference in his physique in his two conan movies , Ray I think you know what i mean)except in some cases( again I’m sure I will be disagreed with) cause I think some of those guys are too big but would make great opposition. Just something to ponder on , obviously and ultimately we like what we like.

  • Antmanx68

    These pics look kind of like Tony Jaa from Ong Bak 2 to me. Something about them makes Conan have a “Little Kid” look (yes even with the scars, build and wrinkles in the 2nd one). Not really digging this artist’s particular take on the character, but the rendering is nice on both.

  • smith

    I ain’t care about no paintin’. Where are the pics of ms nichols?
    How is it possible that she left bulgaria without having her picture taken?

    I’m impressed with the secrecy of this production. A lot of people are bashing the movie already but don’t have a clue what’s going to be in it.

  • Fayric

    There is more than a clue to what is going to be in it. Actors, director, art direction, and what deserve the most bashing in my oppinion: casting directions and the early version of the script. Gone are the days when we had to wait for the actual movie before passing judgement;)
    What Im mostly curious about now is how much CGI they will use. “They” said it would not rely on heavy cgi, but that was early on and might have been wishfull thinking before the budget was cut back. I think our worst fear, apart from the script, is that this will be like clash of the titans or prince of persia. Wait, I think I wrote this a few times before…

    By the way, is professional cgi actually cheaper than real/mechanical effects, or is it just possible to do more/larger stuff?

  • Fayric

    Happy birthday Ian! Make a wish for some some pics of the rest of the cast;)

  • m

    enjoy your birthday bro!

  • Ralph Damiani

    Fayric, CGI is usually far less costly than actual practical effects. Building realistic and detailed miniatures and animatronics can be done with a smaller crew. Also, the need for specialized technicians is minimized. There’s no need for a stage, for a camera crew, for electricians, make up artists, everything can be handed over to a third-party studio already equipped for producing and rendering special effects footage.
    However, you still need a big budget in order to afford many different VFX studios. It’s very rare these days to see a single studio in the likes of Weta and ILM single-handedly taking over a project. For breakthrough effects it’s simply impossible to accommodate all the filmmaker’s demands within a short deadline. Since they only wrapped shooting recently, I suspect we’ll see something similar to Harry Potter in terms of CGI likeness, since they’re working with a similar schedule.
    We might see many different studios working on a combination of practical and post production effects with a heavy focus on color correction for atmosphere, a few CGI backdrops and a couple of CGI creatures along the way, some distinctively better looking than others.

  • Ralph Damiani

    That should read: “Building realistic and detailed animatronics can be done with a smaller crew if they’re replaced with CG counterparts, which may not look as convincing, but can be put together in a fraction of the time.”

    Overall, the best results are often a combination of both techniques, but it requires more time and budget and a more traditional approach from the direction.

  • Ian

    Haha!!

    Thank you very much guys :P
    Thought i’d get away with it but it seems not :P
    Hope everyone is well :)

    You know i am not overly impressed with them concept art pics above.
    Since Antmanx said he looks like a naughty boy in the first is hard to ignore,Plus the second image he looks like David Carradine or something with the armor from age of Conan.How original is that??
    They look weak!sorry but that’s my opinion.

    But again i hold my hat off to you taranaich.Well done mate for your hard work :)

  • Fayric

    I agree with taranaich that the second pic is probably corin, but it might even be a mercenary doing the titular ambush. I dont think its Conan.
    And thank you Ralph.

  • m

    Remember too, it may not be for the movie as well.Could those guys in pic two could be vanir as well as cimmerian? That could be an aged king conan, with slight muscle loss due to age.Is there anything im writing anywhere that this Tornberg guy is a concept artist for conan?

  • Ralph Damiani

    I disagree guys. I don’t think that’s Corin at all, that’s Conan. He might be looking older but his facial features are too similar in those two images. Corin, according to the set report, is bearded, like in most previous depictions. Those images were obviously painted just to capture the mood and lighting of those scenes, without particular attention spent on sculpting a character’s or actor’s likeness.

  • Fayric

    Agree those images is made to capture mood and lightning, but i dont see the resemblence between the two “main characters”. The man at the front has a slender build and some celtic style bling/armour (dont know about the lion head on his chest though, feels like an aquilonian symbol, but I know the lion was an animal imported to celtic imagery early on, so if you want to go realistic in interpretation and possibilities…) but the guys in the back are large and have much more bulky gear with fur and great beards (in a quite differnt style from the presumed Conan/Corin. So I think M might be right about them in the background perhaps being Vanir or something; and then it could just be a random pic from Conans youth adventures raiding with his northen neighbors, despite the older face. There is a certain calculated menace in the man at the front, making me think he is leading the ambush, not being ambushed. On the whole I really like it because it raise so many questions. I hope its just a random image named Ambush with no further purpose, because that dont just tell more than a thousand words, it speaks more than a thousand stories;)

  • Fayric

    Oh, the first sentence is about the two pictuers in comparison, and the rest is about the second picture. It looked strange when I saw what I had written;)

  • Ralph Damiani

    I think that’s actually a greek looking breastplate, which they used to create King Conan’s armor in Age of Conan:

    http://www.weaponsemporium.com/WE-Greek%20Armour%206071R.jpg

    http://lh6.ggpht.com/_QwlVuPHZqNc/SYnBN3k5rCI/AAAAAAAAALk/TE6bXqGVWfM/UNSET.png?imgmax=800

    If that’s an ambush and those are Vanir, they certainly don’t look alarmed enough. They seem to be supporting Conan as their captain, notice how they’re looking at the camera and not him, and Conan’s face is relaxed and confident (assuming he’s Conan, of course).

    Again, my guess is that it’s just an attempt to capture the mood for this film. The guy’s briefing could have been as simple as: Draw Conan and some cimmerians in a forest. The guy googled Conan and the first thing he saw was Funcom’s King Conan. Or maybe he once played that game and assumed that’s Conan’s actual battlegear. Remember not every concept artist needs to be a fan of Conan, concept artists are usually hired by individual artistic skills, not literary taste.

    The actual look for Conan would only be extensively researched in the case of a wardrobe concept. Even a storyboard can be drawn without any actual resemblance or knowledge of the character.

  • Ralph Damiani

    Bah, I posted a comment with a link but there’s something in the code there breaking up the lines. Feel free to edit it Taranaich. =)

  • http://deleted Stampfer

    A little bit of news, gossip-style: A few years ago australian bodybuilder, wrestler, author and actor Conan (!) Stevens auditioned for the role of Khal Drago in the upcoming pilot movie for Game of Thrones, HBO’s TV-adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s successful series of fantasy novels A Song Of Ice And Fire, but another actor got the part: Jason Momoa! On the other hand it wasn’t bad luck at all for Mr Stevens, because this year he was casted at last for another supporting role in GoT , a character named Ser Gregor Clegane. Stevens called him “the baddest knight in a realm full of bad asses”.
    Between the filming of the pilot movie in 2009 and the now greenlighted following episodes of GoT , Jason Momoa played Conan in Bulgaria. Now the actor is in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the production of GoT is based in the Paint Hall Studio. Additional filming locations included (or will include) old irish castles, Quarzazarte in Morocco (The Living Daylights, Gladiator) and the mediterranean island of Malta.

    A few days ago Stevens and Momoa run into each other during workout in a gym in Belfast and they trained together. Stevens wrote on his website about this meeting by coincidence and described Momoa as “a rather tall guy who was fairly well built, I noticed him as soon as I walked in. He was training hard and I was getting pumped having someone else in the gym making a serious effort.” That’s remarkable because Stevens himself is a giant man (7ft tall, 320lbs) and it’s not easy to impress him, I suppose. Stevens added that Momoa is a “really cool guy” .

    You should visit Conan Stevens’ very interesting and entertaining website. It seems that he’s really a great guy too.
    http://www*conanstevens*com/acting-movies-tv-film/tall-actor-blog/the-training-of-gregor-clegane*html
    (please tape a dot instead of the stars – perhaps Taranaich will change this link later)

    Game of Thrones, starring Sean Bean, Mark Addy, Lena Headey, Julian Glover and Charles Dance (to name just a few), is set to premiere on HBO sometime during Spring 2011.

    Born on August 01, 1979 Jason Momoa celebrated his 31st birthday recently. My belated congratulation and best wishes!

  • Ralph Damiani

    What’s going on with the links? I tried to post one and it’s pending approval?

    Nice catch Stampfer, I’m sure it’ll make a nice post for the front page.

  • Kortoso
  • http://deleted Stampfer

    Thanks for adding the effective link!

  • m

    taking a moment to give respect to all of you who continue with this:you havent given up and are true loyal barbarians, no matter your view on the flick or their producers!@taranaich: I occasionally check your blog that time forgot , I particularly liked your article on how to address robert e howard, it was whimsical.I recommend everyone check it out, espescially since there is no cimmerian anymore. If there is nothing going on here, please consider porting some of those articles over to pass time and make conversation.

  • Fayric

    Ralph, I saw your links above, now. Its obviously the exact same armour as King conan have in the game, and the artist, as I understand it, has his main occupation to do concept art for “age of Conan”. Indeed, that might be evidence that the picture is actually part of his “age of Conan” concept art. And your point on the men in the back not being alarmed and rather folloving the man at the front, is about what I thought when I said it looked like Conan was leading the ambush (be the guys in the back vanir or cimmerians or whatever).
    So, my conclusion now that I have seen the picture of the armour, is that it is indeed Conan (the king, no less) and that he is leading an ambush for some reason with a bunch of sturdy barbarians. Perhaps the reason its not marked with an “age of conan” logo, is that it didnt fit with the story they were going for.

  • Fayric

    As to what kind of armour king Conan ought to have is a compleatly different discussion. I think the greek/roman style fit good with the hinted culture (names and stuff) of aquilonia, but the actual descriptions of armour in Hour of the dragon for example, is medieval knights armour. I think that medieval style feels out of place in Hyborea, but if Howard wrote it like that, they ought to respect it. Or am I talking compleat nonsense again?

    By the way, really looking forward to “a game of thrones”. Not because Ive read the books, but because we really deserve a serious quality fantasy tv series. I trust HBO to really give us a treat on this.

  • Ralph Damiani

    Oh, I didn’t notice his Age of Conan artwork, that explains alot. Very good stuff. I agree it’s probably not movie related.

  • scott wheeler

    There is no connection between these images and any of the film’s content. Sorry.

  • Taranaich

    Care to elaborate, Scott?

  • scott wheeler

    Not sure how to elaborate. Those images were not used in any way in the making of the new Conan movie. They do not depict, represent or bare any substantial likeness to anything that was shot for the new movie. Hope that helps clarify things.

  • Fayric

    Scott, if you have any facts or evidence to say these actually dont belong to conan the movie, please share. I agree it seems improbable that the movie team should hire someone that worked on the game, but at the same time its just that kind of unimaginative stuff we have come to expect from this production. Dont know if these perhaps was used by the movie team, but even if they were not, they look very much like the kind of light/mood Nispel has used earlier. So I guess its another win for streamlined pop culture, either way. I think its odd that these pictures look like they are based on Conans youth (exept for the royal armour in the “ambush” pic); I dont know if you get to see any flashbacks of conans youth in the game, but I thought you didnt get that close to the king. (I admit I dont have a clue to what you get to kow of conan in those games, so please ccorrect me if you know)

  • Stampfer

    Scott Wheeler’s statements should be enough evidence, provided that he is identical with the artist of the same name who is responsible for the special Make-up department of the new Conan movie. In this particular case Mr Wheeler is an important member of the film’s crew and can tell us something about authentic concept art, that’s for sure.
    Any new information is welcome. Maybe he’ll show us the real stuff in the near future ;)
    I want to add that I’ve also thought that the artworks shown above were made for the movie.

    Other well known movies in Scott Wheeler’s filmography are 300, Star Trek: First Contact and Tim Burton’s Big Fish.

  • Ray

    Hey Scott….wazzup? ;)

  • scott wheeler

    Hey Ray. Stuck in Puerto Rico doin 2nd unit on the fast and the Furios 5 to get my union hours.

    Folks I’d love to share all kinds of things with you but the publicity dept wants to keep things hush hush. It doesn’t mean anything that they want to take this tactic. It’s pretty common these days. Just look at anything JJ Abrams does. I don’t agree with it personally. We were constantly letting out images while shooting 300. Didn’t seem to hurt the box office then. I’m sure everyone involved in Conan would be pretty happy if it did half the box office of 300. But I gotta respect the wishes of the folks who call those shots. Sorry.

    Don’t be calling me important. It might go to my head.

  • Ylur
  • Alex Tornberg

    Hey guys, I’m the guy who created these pictures. They’re just artwork that never was used for Age of Conan. I had to put the copyright stuff on them because Conan Inc. owns the rights to the art created for that game.

    Sorry

  • Ralph Damiani

    Well that settles it. Outstanding concepts Alex, the excellent art direction is definetly the major appeal of Age of Conan. And good to hear from someone working on the film, I hope some of the constructive criticism expressed in this blog has influenced some of the post production decisions. And to answer Fayric, you actually get to meet Conan in Age of Conan, later on as the main plot unfolds.

  • Ylur
  • Finn

    haha, it looks like Katarzyna Wolejnio has blonde hair normally. But for the Valeria role she is a brunette, because that is more logical.

  • Ralph Damiani

    Ehm, those pictures are quite revealing! Regardless of the film’s reception, I’m willing to bet Momoa had quite a ride…

  • m

    I’m tellin ya,it’s conan by way of caligula!!!men, women and donkeys are all invited!!I think ( and not to be a nitpicker btw) it was stupid to name this chick valeria. Maybe they told her that to make her feel like an important part of this movie to get her to take her clothes off and bang conan. My theory is Momoa taps every chick cast in this!!As he damn well should!!( please note the general lack of seriousness in any of these inane statements) had a bad week and needed to release somewhere!!

  • niono

    hey, this pics must have a page just for them.

    this way you can show that tit’s will be on the move and that more people can see that and stop fucking with this movie

  • Steve Dilks

    Hopefully that Valeria chick when she introduces herself will have her line left on the cutting room floor in homage to the first Conan movie. As for the tits…cheap,very cheap.
    Watched the second series of “Rome” and did not find one reference to Milius’ King Conan screenplay. Although I enjoyed it immensely I did not find it quite as good as the first series. James Purefoy as Mark Anthony is amazing as in fact are most of the cast. What I found annoying in the second series was the dull contrived story lines concerning the witless Titus Pullo and the hapless Lucieus Varenus to tie events together. Other than that a brilliant well crafted series. Really felt for Brutus at the end.

  • Antmanx

    Even aside from the boobs those pictures are pretty sweet I think. I like the lighting and the overall feel. Kind of looks like a mix of the Milius film and a Frazetta painting. I dig it.

  • mikoza

    Considering CGI…Will iconic characters of Frost Giants and Yag Kosha from youngest period of Conan life be included in movie? I mean, if not, that will be like LOTR without Balrog or Sheloba :( … and this is definitely very, very BAD decision for CPI/Paradox :( .

    Sorry for my bad English.

  • mikoza

    I think you can say that much…don’t you, Mr. Scott Wheeler ;-) ?
    Thanks in advance for your answer!

  • mikoza

    Just simple Yes or No, will be fine…please Mr. Wheeler :-) . Great number of fans wait for your answer anxiously ;-) .

  • Ralph Damiani

    I doubt it mikoza, cast and crew members can really get in trouble for divulging absolutely anything before the marketing department. No interviews, no comments, even family and friends should be addressed with caution because we all know how words spread from mouth to mouth. This kind of “leak” is taken very seriously by the studios.

  • mikoza

    Ok then, Ralph. I will keep on waiting…anxiously…

  • niono

    I like those pictures too. then put them in they o link, i’m begging you.
    Sorry for my english(2)

  • Pingback: mr nice guy

Conan The Movie Blog is proudly powered by WordPress | WPD
Beiträge (RSS) und Comments (RSS)