Guy Davis's Blog

Back in 2014 I was brought in by The Coalition to work on some visual development and creature concept for the upcoming GEARS OF WAR 4 Xbox One game. I started with a series of early explorations for the games new creatures, The Swarm.

Early designs played off new body shapes and details to set them off from the games original Locust characters. These head passes above were starting to go in the right direction with the plated armor on the face and body.

The next head pass I did introduced a couple design elements that would carry over to the final design, including the forehead / double nasal cavity and plated segmented jaw.

After more iterations working with the studio art director, this was my final pass for the Locust based Swarm. I also did some exploration for other creatures in the game too, below is an early unused concept for the “Pouncer”.

It was a wonderful project and team to get to be part of (not to mention a great fun game to play!) You can see a couple other of my early concepts along with the final designs for the entire game by The Coalition Studios amazing team in the new Art of Gears 4 book!

A couple worked up designs from my MARQUIS: INFERNO graphic novel for the masque devil, Gut-Wig! These were done as part of a pitch package from 2013 for a Marquis film project that unfortunately didn’t pan out~  (who doesn’t want violent, grotesque, anti-religious 18th century devil hunting adventures in this day and age!!?)

The “masque devil” originally appeared in chapter 2 of The Marquis: Danse Macabre storyline, possessing the guise of the Ministries iron punishment mask to confront the Marquis. He later turned up in the Hell scenes as a trio of torturers who gut their victims to make wonderful wigs for themselves.

For the rework of the design, I kept the base form but added details that wouldn’t be as clear in the comic, the added fun part for me was also designing a bunch of variations of 18th century wigs made out of guts!

I’ll post more Marquis designs from the pitch in future posts!~ the 3rd printing of THE MARQUIS: INFERNO is out of print, but available digitally through Dark Horse Digital and Comixology!

In the new “Buddy’s Book” episode of Rebecca Sugar’s wonderful Cartoon Network show, STEVEN UNIVERSE~ I got a surprise to see my early concept designs for the Crystal Gems temple pop up in the background as Steven and Connie visit the library! 

Below are the original concepts I did back in 2012 during early pre-production of the show~ and you can see more of the designs over at the Steven Crewniverse tumblr too!

In 2012, I worked on series development, doing a variety of conceptual design for Guillermo del Toro’s THE STRAIN tv series on FX Network. One of the first concepts I was given to do was the Master’s huge coffin, including the medieval graphics for all the carved sides. Below is a detail to the coffins front and bottom panels.

The wonderful and horrific Master was designed and sculpted by the wonderful (and not horrific at all in real life) Simon Lee with Guillermo, while I worked on the concept and redesign for the Strigoi’s stinger (the Master version of the stinger below).

And the final stinger prop as it appeared in the show~

You can see more of my Strain work and behind the scenes from the whole Strain team in the upcoming Art of The Strain book from InSight Editions! (available June 28th)

Along with working on concept for Guillermo del Toro’s PACIFIC RIM (you can read about my kaiju designs for Otachi and Slattern here) and some prop work, I also worked on storyboarding the film with Rob McCallum, Francisco Ruiz Velasco and Raúl Monge. Below are a few sample pages to some of the sequences did.

After we were done with most of the concept work, Francisco Ruiz Velasco and myself stayed on to help storyboard artist Rob McCallum with the final sequence to the film and rework changes to earlier sequences after Rob left.

For the breach sequence at the film’s finale, I did tighter color boards to also work out the concept of the “Throat” which led to the Anteverse. More Pacific Rim storyboards in a future post!

In honor of Mother’s Day~ here’s some concepts I did for Edith’s mother from Guillermo del Toro’s film, Crimson Peak! Originally she was only labeled as “Black Ghost” to set her concepts apart from the other red clay designs we were working on. Since the ghost of Edith’s mother was more costume based, early on I worked with the incredible costume designer Kate Hawley on different types of layering and forms to work out an iconic shape. Below are the initial concepts as they progressed.

The shape of headdress above inspired the direction of the final series of concepts I did~

And final concept below~

From there the final look was created from a collaboration between Kate and Guillermo himself. The mother’s horrific face designed and created by the incredible makeup effects house of DDT (David Martí and Montse Ribé) with Guillermo and brought to haunting life by the wonderful actor, Doug Jones!

So Happy Mother’s Day, Doug!~ and bewaaaare Crimson Peak! 

You can see more concepts and illustrations in the CRIMSON PEAK: The Art of Darkness filmbook!

A few more of the ghost concepts I worked on for Guillermo del Toro’s CRIMSON PEAK. The first job I had on the film was creating forms for the different ghosts with Guillermo before some of the designs would go to sculptor David Meng and the incredible makeup effects department of DDT. These were done early in the production before the final script, so all were given more descriptive code names to identify them.

Once the rough sketches were approved I would do a tighter pass on all~ at the start the crimson coloring to the ghosts was a huge secret even within the production, so I also did a grey toned version of each design that could be presented to all the departments during review.

One of the first ideas was for the “Worm Ghost”, whose upper body was encased in the crimson clay and had to push herself along with only her feet and who would later become the clawing Pamela ghost in the film. 

More CRIMSON PEAK ghosts and concepts in an upcoming post~ and you can see more concepts and illustrations in the CRIMSON PEAK: The Art of Darkness filmbook!

One of the first concept jobs I had was for Laika’s wonderful stop-animation film, ParaNorman. Back in 2008 I was contacted by writer/director Chris Butler to work on some early character development for the project. Below are a few of the designs I did based on the original script for some of the various zombie characters~ like the villainous Judge!

Along with some other Puritan zombies like the towns Pastor and wife~ and some sketches of the the undeads living selves (including the Sheriff and the town gossip).

And some early sketches for a very clean cut Norman himself, which might be the scariest of all! More ParaNorman in an upcoming post!

Beware and return to Crimson Peak! Guillermo del Toro’s wonderfully haunting film, CRIMSON PEAK is released today on HD Digital! I’ll post more in the coming months, but below is some various concept work I did for the film!

Above one of the early ghost concepts I did that later became Margaret in the film~ and below is the bathroom set design for Allerdale Hall

And how it appeared in the final film!

Be sure to also check out Crimson Peak on Blu-Ray and DVD on Feb 9th for hours of extra behind the scenes content too!

Happy Holidays and yuletide cheers to haunted Victorian spirits everywhere! Along with working on concept for the ghosts in Crimson Peak and some set and prop design, I also got to work on a few murals seen in the film! Below is the illustration I did for the nursery at Allerdale Hall (separate images like the figures and trees were done in pencil and then combined and painted digitally). Guillermo asked for it do be done in a Arthur Rackham-esque style, with the center insect as a nod to Pan’s Labyrinth. Like other aspects in the film, the word “fear” was also hidden in different parts of the illustration too! 

The final illustration was then used as a guide for the set artists to paint as a full sized mural that was distressed on the walls to the crumbling nursery. Below is a shot of the nursery mural from the final film.

You can see more concepts and illustrations in the Crimson Peak: The Art of Darkness filmbook!