Ant-Man And Yellowjacket Concept Art By Paolo Giandoso
During pre-production, Trixter concept artist Paolo Giandoso -- who helped visualize Scarlet Witch [...]
Ant-Man Test Shot
What was your first involvement with Ant-Man?
Paolo Giandoso: The first work I did related to the Ant-Man project was early on when Edgar Wright was still at the direction of the movie. I storyboarded and provided art direction for a test shot Trixter Film did to show Marvel that the company was suitable for working on the movie. Test shots like these are a common procedure and, at the same time, extremely cool because there is a lot of freedom in what to show. The test shot was very well received and it allowed us to jump on the project later on.


Yellowjacket Sizzle Reel
What was your approach to the sizzle reel?
Paolo Giandoso: Director Peyton Reed wanted to use the sizzle-reel to underline the fact that the Yellowjacket suit was not yet complete. Therefore, instead of a hyper-realistic style, I thought of a world where everything that is not the Yellowjacket is made entirely of a glossy obsidian-like material (the dark purple would make the yellow of the costume stand out in every moment) and color and motion graphics were used at specific points to gather the attention of the audience. A point cloud effect would be also used in conjunction to create a feeling of virtuality. I chose a shot (the bridge assassination) and prepared something like forty wedges showing the full range of how these materials and point clouds could be balanced together, and Marvel creatives selected their favorite one to be the style guide for the rest of the reel. The following step was creating a color script for the clip and creating concepts for each location in the reel. In this task, I worked in pair with the talented artist Thomas von Kummant -- who developed the nuclear plant control room and the microchip interior.





Yellowjacket Sizzle Reel
What changes were made to the sizzle reel?
Paolo Giandoso: There were some changes made to the storyboard, as the voice acting had changed and new scenes were added to the script. Marvel's creatives were very focused on keeping the reel plausible and giving a global feeling to it. Therefore, I replaced the combat-drones attacking the Yellowjacket with three Apache helicopters and moved the assassination from the Golden Gate to a more generic bridge. At the same time, it became very important that none of the victims could be identified as coming from a specific nation. So what at the beginning was a Russian secret agent (the first man with the suitcase) and an Italian politician (the man in the car) became more generic figures.



