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Jeremy Hanna, a conceptual artist at Weta Workshop, has the priviledge of working on Paramount Pictures, Dream Works Pictures, and Reliance Entertainment's live-action adaptation of Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell. He has now released a collection of his artwork, featuring alternate designs for Kuze (Michael Pitt), a design for an unused character named 'Samurai Arms,' as well as designs for an echo-box splitter and a first pass on Hanka Robotics' security droid.
According to Hanna, Kuze was originally supposed to be The Laughing Man — the J.D. Salinger-obsessed cyberterrorist antagonist from the first story arc of the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex television series — but the character went through a lot of changes once Pitt was hired to portray him.
"This was the approved look for Kuze for several months. Michael Pitt's subsequent casting led to a number of redesigns as he became more involved with the character," Hanna wrote on his ArtStation page. "The idea here was that his synthetic body is failing him, each component slowly losing cohesion with the whole due to his unsuccessful shelling procedure. The only original 'skin' he managed to keep is on his upper face, while the rest of his body is either patchworked from the skin of scavenged droids, stripped away to reveal the pale 'smart dermis', or dismantled further exposing the musculoskeletal system he shares with the Major. White 'circuitry' fluid would leak from the splitting panels - mimicking tears or unhealed wounds."
The echo-box splitter is a device that Major uses to do a "deep-dive" into the geisha-bot to learn more about the terrorist that programmed it to attack a Hanka business conference. "I thought it'd be cool to see those blue switches popping like fuses as the dive is compromised," Hanna shared.
The 'Samurai Arms' character "was originally going to fight Batou during the" shoot-out at the Yakuza nightclub. "This was a continuation of some ideas my friends Adam Middleton and Greg Tozer had been looking at," Hanna explained. "Adam had done a bunch of cool prosthetic designs for the face, and Greg had come up with this wicked idea where some gang members would adorn themselves with pearlescent, armour-like tattoos."
And what was Hanna's approach to the Hanka security droid? "I thought it would be interesting if they looked human from a distance, but closer inspection revealed these rigid, plasticky faces. Their blank, pupilless eyes with would make eye contact impossible and the subject of their gaze indefinite, and an electronic voice box would project commands through unmoving lips."
In the near future, Major (Scarlett Johansson) is the first of her kind: A human saved from a terrible crash, who is cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world's most dangerous criminals. When terrorism reaches a new level that includes the ability to hack into people's minds and control them, Major is uniquely qualified to stop it. As she prepares to face a new enemy, Major discovers that she has been lied to: her life was not saved, it was stolen. She will stop at nothing to recover her past, find out who did this to her and stop them before they do it to others.
The cast also includes Beat Takeshi Kitano as Daisuke Aramaki, Juliette Binoche as Dr. Ouelet, Michael Pitt as Kuze, Pilou Asbæk as Batou, and Kaori Momoi. The members of Section 9 are played by Chin Han, Danusia Samal, Lasarus Ratuere, Yutaka Izumihara and Tuwanda Manyimo.
Snow White and the Huntsman helmer, Rupert Sanders, is directing — based on a screenplay by Jamie Moss and William Wheeler and Ehren Kruger.