Film Focus: Avatar

"For years to come it will define what movies can achieve"

Richard Corliss, The Times

In 2009 James Cameron’s Avatar was released and soon became one of the most popular sci-fi/fantasy films to hit the big screen. Showing in 3452 screens in its opening week it earned $77,025,481 in the USA alone, and by November 2011 had grossed $2,782,275,172 worldwide (IMDB).

The art department itself won countless awards, in 2010 alone they won:

Oscar
                Best Achievement in Art Direction

                Best Achievement in Cinematography
                Best Achievement in Visual Effects

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA, Saturn Award
                Best Director
                Best Music
                Best Production Design
                Best Science Fiction Film
                Best Special Effects

Art Directors Guild, Excelence in Production Design Award

BAFTA Film Award

                Best Production Design
                Best Special Visual Effects

Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, Critics Choice Award

                Best Action Movie
                Best Art Direction
                Best Cinematography
                Best Editing
                Best Visual Effects

...and the list goes on (IMDB).

With a budget of $237,000,000 (estimate) (IMDB) the designers behind this movie phenomenon created an entire ecosystem including plants, fungus, animals, humanoids, geology, weather systems etc to enable Cameron’s vision to become a reality.


I’ve been reading through two books:

Fitzpatrick L, Jackson P, Landau J, Cameron J (2009) The Art of Avatar: James Cameron’s Epic Adventure. Abrams

Wilhelm M, Mathison D (2009) Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide. HarperCollins


Together they make an excellent guide to the world of Pandora and Avatar. The books are filled with beautiful concept art, visual references and insider information about the entire world of Pandora. Avatar is an excellent visual reference for my own project because of the amount of detail into the planets flora and fauna that the art department carried out. The activist’s survival guide has pages and pages on all the different plants and animals that were created for Pandora and how they work and what their purpose is within the ecosystem.

The following are some images used in The Art of Avatar book:

Floating rocks of the Hallelujia Mountains

Examples of plants created to populate the Pandoran echosystem

Example of how the Na'vi may use plants to produce clothing

Visuals of Pandora

Concept sketches of the Tree of Souls

Sketch of plantlife on Pandora

I can use these images as examples of how an art department develop the look of a film in the Pre-production stage using concept sketches, illustrations, detailing and 3D modeling.

If I can produce images of a similar quality I will be very pleased!!