After posting my little memoir about working on Dune, a lot of people asked to see more of the pre-production art. I have a couple of hundred images, far more than I could post here, so I decided on a selection that showed how the look of the movie evolved from conception to completion.
In the beginning there were sketches...thousands of sketches... Almost all of these were done by the brilliant production designer Tony Masters. Most of my design work involved props and weapons (I've included two of those drawings).
These were eventually incorporated into the production paintings I created. Some showed scenes as they might appear in the finished film, others were renderings of props and spacecraft...
Many of the spacecraft were then turned into 3D models by my wife, Judith (who some of you may remember as Captain Judikha). Although all of these were made of paper, some had working parts. For instance, the wings of the Atreides 'thopter folded. These models were use by the drafting department as they drew up the blueprints for the effects modelers.
Here is another view of her prototype Navigator:
By the way, here is an unused concept for a mask to be worn by the first or second stage navigators (I forget which they were supposed to be). Sadly, I no longer remember who created this, though it may have been Carlo Rambaldi—
Judith also constructed models of many of the sets, especially the most complex ones, such as the gigantic set built for the scenes inside the seitch.
Everything eventually wound up in the drafting department, where beautiful plans were drawn up. Every set, spacecraft and prop had a detailed blueprint. Here is a section of the drawing for the Harkonnen 'thopter...
Once the blueprints were approved, things moved on to the special effects, prop makers and construction crews. Here is what the prop shop looked like, along with one of its products (a Fremen static electricity collector, in case you were about to ask)...
The model department was in charge of creating the spacecraft...
While the construction crews built and decorated the sets...
Bob Ringwood, the costume designer, had his own shop where he created everything from his own drawings. Here is Ringwood at work:
It was a lot of fun getting to try on some of the costumes. Sometimes this was in order to put on a show the film's financial backers, sometimes it was in order to test out a costume to see how it was working and sometimes it was just for fun. Here is Judith trying on a few things:
And one of the administrative assistants...
The only time I ever got involved in any of the costume work was in creating the art for the background stilsuits. These were nothing more than union suits with a black pattern printed on them. Here I am creating the prototype artwork...
onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A Gallery of Never-Before-Seen Concept Art from David Lynch's Dune