Awesome Deadpool Concept Art By Joshua James Shaw

Conceptual artist, Joshua James Shaw (X-Men: Days of Future Past, Daredevil), has shared concept art he illustrated for the film adaptation of Marvel’s Deadpool.

In 2011, Joshua James Shaw created artwork that director Tim Miller used to pitch his plans to 20th Century Fox for a comic book faithful Deadpool movie. “I was thinking about how enraging that Wolverine [X-Men Origins: Wolverine] movie was and I thought it would be funny to paint over one of their promo photos,” wrote Shaw. “I believe Tim used this in one of his initial pitch packages.”

After Miller was hired to direct Deadpool, he then had to focus on making the infamous test footage. To begin, Miller personally requested Shaw to put his artistic talents to use designing the costume. “I started by gathering as many of my favorite Deadpool images as I could find and put them into a ridiculously large jpeg for reference,” he said. “There wasn’t much time for the design process and they needed to get the CG model (created by Alessandro Baldasseroni) started as soon as possible, I miraculously only ended up doing one design!”

Surprisingly, Miller went with Shaw’s final design for the film. Though, there were some slight alterations made to suit its star, Ryan Reynolds. “The difference between this final design and our test footage design were mainly proportional. We made sure the torso and shoulders were a little more in line with Ryan’s proportions,” he explained. “Also, you can see the details on the boots and shin pads are more flush with his legs. That was something Ryan specifically requested.”

See Shaw’s concept art and Baldasseroni’s CG models in our gallery at the bottom of the page.