Monday, November 27, 2006

Dave Gibbons Designs For Watchmen Movie

[EDIT: Stick with this to the very bottom]

It's at times like this I wish we all head Tivo in our heads, or at least camera-eyes. That would have made for some very nice pictures for this post.

This weekend, I received a very trustworthy report that Dave Gibbons is contributing design work to Zack Snyder's Watchmen movie. How did my snoop know? Simply put, they saw art work in his recognisable style and with Gibbons' signature on it. I have e-mailed Dave Gibbons for comment, so far with no reply. As a result, treat this as rumour if you will, even though I have 100% faith in this particular source - they've been good to me this way before. There's an off chance that these are old works of Gibbons', perhaps dating back to the original comic's production, and are simply being used as design bible verses, as it were, but my money is on Gibbons being busy with new pieces for the movie, for the FX, costume and production design teams.

David Lloyd became a kind of ersatz Alan Moore for the V for Vendetta promotional circus, creating a sense of 'creator's approval' that was otherwise not only missing but sharply contradicted. I wouldn't be surprised to see Gibbons used in the same way for Watchmen.

[EDIT: Superhero Hype announce that the costumes for the film are being designed by Adam Hughes, presumably from Dave Gibbons' sketches]

[EDIT AGAIN: A certain comics maven has shared a quote from Dave Gibbons with me. This is verifiably from the horse's mouth, so take it as the final word. Dave Gibbons said "I have spoken to Zack Snyder about visual aspects of the proposed movie, but I certainly haven't created any new designs" - which is to say, he's onboard, for sure, but the images of his being used are the old designs, original sketches. I guess this demonstrates that the new look is in fact the old look, and everything will look pretty much as it did in Gibbons' pages. Good news?]

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I heard Adam Hughes was on the job, re: costume designs. I can see no reason why Snyder can't be as faithful to Gibbons' work as he was to Frank Miller's on 300. Certainly, more people have read WATCHMEN and feel already invested in that world.

Anonymous said...

that link at the bottom there (comics maven) don't take me abywhere. should it take me to rich?

Anonymous said...

in all liklihood the link should take you to comic book resource

Anonymous said...

i work with Adam Hughes, in his studio. I can say with 100% confidence that Adam has recieved NO sketches from Dave Gibbons. He does however own a copy of Watchmen, and has been reading and re-reading it... Does that count?

Brendon said...

My source, re: Gibbons is actually an FX one... but it stands to reason that a Gibbons look in one department is going to be matched by a Gibbons look in another.

I wonder how Dave feels about Adam doing these designs?