Tag Archives: Tim Flattery

Holy grand slam, Batman! Batmobiles times four on display at Car Classic

1966 Batman TV Series Batmobile designed by George Barris

1966 Batman TV Series Batmobile designed by George Barris

Four authentic, full-scale Batmobiles will roll onto the field at Art Center’s Street to Screen: Car Classic 2014 event this Sunday. Exploring the impact transportation and entertainment design has had on Hollywood and the entertainment industry—on camera, on the road and behind the scenes—this year’s Bat-tastic concours confab will host a critical mass of the caped crusader’s legendary vehicles.

Art Center’s ties to the Dark Knight extend well beyond transportation. Entertainment Design Chair Tim Flattery designed the Batmobile Val Kilmer used in the 1994 film Batman Forever. Alumnus Harald Belker (BS Transportation Design 90) created the 1997 Batmobile George Clooney drove in Batman and Robin and Illustration Chair Ann Field worked on character design for Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy in that same movie. Alumnus Zack Snyder (BFA Film 89) has added the great detective to his latest Superman epic, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, scheduled to be released in 2016. And who owns Batman/DC Comics? None other than Warner Bros., led by Trustee Greg Silverman, who reigns as its President, Creative Development and Worldwide Production.

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Captain America soars at the box office, thanks in part to Tim Flattery’s Helicarrier and Quinjet designs

Tim Flattery Captain America 6 of 7

Art by Tim Flattery for “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”

Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier flexed and flaunted its superpowers at the box office during its opening weekend, earning more than $300 million worldwide. With those kind of numbers, it clearly wasn’t just fanboys (and girls) vying for an early glimpse at Hollywood’s latest super-sized comic book adaptation.

This widespread embrace was particularly gratifying to Art Center Entertainment Design Chair (and resident alpha fan), Tim Flattery, who collaborated with production designer Peter Wenham on designs for the movie’s spectacular Helicarrier (yes, an airborne aircraft carrier) and the Quinjet. “I love working on comic book movies,” Flattery said.  “I’ve always been a fan and read comics as a kid.” Continue reading →

Armory Center for the Arts to Showcase Entertainment Design Department’s “Fantastic Scenarios”

Detail of a painting by Entertainment Design student Annis Naeem.

“I plan on bringing a little bit of Hollywood into this department,” Tim Flattery told us last year after he was named chair of Art Center College of Design’s Entertainment Design Department. “Rather than just having companies come in to look at student’s artwork, we’re also going to showcase the students and the College.”

And now it’s not just the entertainment industry getting a new level of exposure to the work created by Entertainment Design students, but the general public as well, as the exhibition Fantastic Scenarios debuts at the Armory Center for the Arts this Saturday night with an opening reception from 7:00-9:00 p.m. The exhibition, which was organized by Flattery and runs through May 13, features work created by current Entertainment Design undergraduate students.

From the Armory’s website:

Designing new worlds, characters, and objects that have never before been seen requires great imagination as well as an understanding of how things are built — and how to communicate with the people who will build these new worlds. Art Center’s Entertainment Design curriculum helps students develop the skills and creative focus required of concept designers in the entertainment industry.

For more information on the Entertainment Design Department, visit Art Center’s website.

Students Preparing for “Idea to Pitch” this Sunday [UPDATE]

A group of Art Center students have spent the past 13 weeks preparing and rehearsing for this Sunday’s Idea to Pitch, a red carpet Hollywood-style event that marks the culmination of the Entertainment Design Department’s first course to integrate written story development with concept art.

Hosted by Idea to Pitch instructor Nick Pugh, the event will feature 11 upper-term students–eight from Entertainment Design, two from Illustration and one from Film–pitching original intellectual property created during the course to an invited audience of Hollywood studio heads, producers, talent agents and development executives, including individuals from Dreamworks, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures and Creative Artists Agency.

The concept behind the experimental Idea to Pitch course is to empower Entertainment Design students by showing them they can shift from being a work-for-hire concept artist to a content owner. How is this accomplished? By teaching them how to wed their original film treatments with dramatic concept art to effectively sell their ideas.

And what better way to teach this concept than to have the students actually pitch to real decision-makers in Hollywood?

“These students have been practicing their pitches every week since week one of this term,” said Pugh, who says the course eschewed traditional critiques and instead had each student revise and refine their pitch each week. “As an instructor, I’ve tried my very best to cultivate ideas that are original, unique and very sellable. I want the students to understand what it means to make something that has real value.”

“The goal of the course is to teach students how to own their intellectual property, how to pitch it and how to become an overall conceptualist,” added Tim Flattery, Chair of the Entertainment Design Department, while emphasizing that the real-world element at play at the event will make the proceeding all the more dramatic. “If somebody at this event is interested in optioning their story? Well, that’s all the better.”

Idea to Pitch takes place this Sunday, December 11 at noon. Creative individuals in the entertainment industry interested in attending can RSVP to maritza.herrera@artcenter.edu or 626.396.2464.

UPDATE 12/16/11:

Hollywood producers, writers, development executives and other invited individuals filled the LA Times Auditorium this past weekend for the inaugural Idea to Pitch, where they were treated to 11 full-length motion picture pitches that ranged from a sci-fi thriller to a children’s fantasy to to an absurdist action comedy. Feedback from the audience–which included individuals from RGH Entertainment, Bad Robot, Ziskin Productions, Digital Ranch, Paramount Pictures and Blacklight–was both positive and constructive, with one producer commenting that the pitches were substantially better than what more than 90% of professional writers come into his office to pitch. That comment drew both a laugh from the audience and a feigned outrage of one nearby writer who cried, “Hey, I’m sitting right here!”

Students received tips on everything from how to adjust their pitches to match specific budgets to how to keep their cool during a high-pressure presentation. One producer in the audience asked the students, “Out of curiosity, how many of you are so passionate and excited about your project that you want to turn it into a script?” To which every student in the class raised their hands.

“I’ve always pitched this class as a pipeline to real projects,” said instructor Nick Pugh, responding to the question. “This not a theoretical class. This class, with its focus on property creation and property ownership, is not just about getting a good job. It’s about heading out into the industry with a property that’s worth something.”

Turns out the student’s properties may already be worth something. According to Pugh, individuals invited to the event expressed interest in three of the projects, with one receiving multiple inquiries.

Keepin’ It “Real Steel” with Tim Flattery’s Robots

Tim Flattery's Midas robot in Dreamworks' "Real Steel."

With all the negative attention that concussions in boxing, football and hockey have been getting lately, the scenario presented in Dreamworks’ film Real Steel, out in theaters today, doesn’t seem too far-fetched: In the year 2020, eight-feet-tall, 2,000 lb. robots have replaced humans as the pugilists du jour.

The film tells the story of a washed-up-boxer-turned-small-time-promoter (X-Men’s Hugh Jackman) who teams up with his estranged son (Resurrecting the Champ’s Dakota Goyo) to build and train a World Robot Boxing championship contender.

Tim Flattery, the chair of Art Center’s Entertainment Design program whom we interviewed in the most recent issue of Dot, designed several of the robotic brawlers featured in the film–Spitfire, Albino, Axelrod, Twin Cities and Midas.

“These aren’t your typical robots,” said Flattery of the characters he designed while working in close collaboration with Tom Meyer, the film’s production designer, and three other concept artists, including fellow Art Center faculty member Daren Dochterman. “They’re all very stylized and ridiculous, yet somehow, in the world of the movie they make sense.”

Head past the break for the trailer and an exclusive slideshow of designs by Flattery.

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Flattery Named Chair of Entertainment Design

Concept artist, designer and educator Tim Flattery has been named Chair of Art Center’s Entertainment Design Department.

Flattery

Most think of Entertainment Design as how films come to look the way they do. Yet today, the field is much greater, encompassing any project in which storytelling is important—themed environments, exhibitions, gaming and learning institutions such as museums and libraries.

“For 24 years, I’ve worked in the entertainment industry and have been fortunate enough to have realized my dreams,” Flattery says. “As Chair of Entertainment Design at Art Center, I hope my passion and expertise will influence the next generation of talented designers so that they, too, can realize their dreams.”

Flattery is a multi-talented creative concept artist and designer with expertise in concept development, design and fabrication. In a career spanning more than two decades, he has worked on some of the biggest films for some of the most famous directors in the world. Among the number of highly anticipated projects he has worked on are Green Lantern, Real Steel, Creature from the Black Lagoon and Mission: Impossible IV.

He has overseen the full-size construction of custom vehicles, which he designed for films such as the Fantasticar for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the Batmobile for Batman Forever, and the Amphibicopter and other vehicles for A.I. Artificial Intelligence. He has raised the creative bar with acclaimed design work on award-winning and blockbuster films, including Terminator Salvation, The Incredible Hulk, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Spider-Man II, Saving Private Ryan, Men in Black and many others. Beyond his career as a concept artist and illustrator in the film industry, Flattery has done creative work for Walt Disney Imagineering and Chimera Design in the area of theme parks and resorts. He has also done worked independently for Entertainment Arts and the EA Games Label.

This appointment represents a homecoming of sorts for Flattery, who taught visual communication at Art Center to industrial design students in the early ’90s. He received a Teacher of the Year award from the College in 1994. Flattery graduated from College for Creative Studies with a bachelor’s degree in Transportation Design.