As always, full credit must be given to notpicard who has been able to dig up some fantastic stuff over the past week or so. Late last week he directed me towards a couple of different sites he uncovered online, and while the style of the art from the two sites is quite different, they have one thing in common. Some bad ass G.I. Joe conceptual drawings and paintings!
First, I’d like to point out Indigo Studios, who were apparently the folks behind the Pursuit of Cobra paintings that served as backdrops for the slideshow at the G.I. Joe Convention in 2009. They may have been used elsewhere, but I’m not sure where. All I know is I am absolutely in love with these paintings, and I am fired up that there is now a place to see them in all of their medium res glory. They really capture the whole Pursuit of Cobra aesthetic pretty perfectly, I must say. I do find it a bit odd that the human characters don’t bare much resemblance to the Pursuit of Cobra characters we got, but the vehicles and environments make up for that. You can find Indigo Studios right here, and I’ve mirrored the fantastic images below.
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Next are some images from SoupGraphix.com, who appear to be a graphic design company much more animated in spirit, but equally cool. They appear to be behind some of the recent Convention logos, and apparently had some input into the G.I. Joe: Renegades logo, too. There are some pretty neat ideas below that we have not seen anywhere. Question is, are they unused logos from projects past, or potential clues about stuff still to come? Regardless, I’ve mirrored a few of the images below, hit up SoupGraphix.com to see the rest.
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I friggen love this stuff. Thanks again to notpicard for his eagle eye lookin’ out!
Jungle Assault cowboy better pay more attention to his target and less to mugging for the camera cause he’s about to blow his compatriot’s head off.
City Strike looks like G.I. Joe fighting themselves.
Those are the shots from the Rise of Cobra toyline – that led directly into The Pursuit of Cobra. Ben – “Jungle Assault Cowboy” is RECONDO!!!!! Recondo, Dusty, Snow Job, and Beach Head are leading jungle, desert, arctic, and urbans strikes against Cobra, respectively.
The arctic shot is the same one used on the Toys R Us Doc figure package. If the fans hadn’t been such A-holes, and enjoyed the toys more, these would have been scene in 2010.
Man, I wished they used these for the Pursuit of Cobra line! They remind me of the fun 1993, live action G.I. Joe commercial…love ’em…
I’m underwhelmed. These don’t show elite troops prosecuting objectives. They show mostly generic, indistinguishable troops milling around in front of SPECTRE lairs.
Save them and zoom in…the Cobra troops do look generic, because I think Hasbro really did want to go with variations on the classic Cobra troops. Like I said, look at the long 1993 live action commercial – the Cobra Troops are dressed in a similar way.
Fun stuff, reminds me of the old catalogue art with at least one guy Yo-Joe’ing the viewer.
I think that Urban assault guy on the left sees a trapped Kitten.
I expect Cobra troops to be fairly generic – they all cover their faces, after all. But one of the beauties of Joe is their individuality. I can figure out Recondo and Snow Job. The rest . . . who are they? I can’t make out which desert trooper is Dusty, and the urban guys could as easily include Shockwave as Beach Head, but I can’t tell them apart. And as for the Cobra installations – they look like something Mindbender would have come up with had he been an architect instead of an orthodontist, and was pitching mega projects for Dubai.
I think that part of the reason why the characters look so nondescript is because these images were likely created before PoC was fully designed. The locations appear to have been created to generate mood more than exact details that were likely not yet available.
Being drawn before the PoC was fully designed doesn’t change the fact that these aren’t strong images. The characters aren’t there, the backgrounds are not great (they’re all using the same template with paint-by-numbers terrain on each side, a generic villainous lair in the middle ‘V’, generic troops in the foreground, and a couple of vehicles). The vehicles are ok, but are mostly background material. There is some good art out there (Atkins, the Rise of Cobra stuff a couple of posts up, the backs of the PoC packages) – this isn’t in that category. Hold the artists to higher standards.
Hi Generalsjoes folks.
I do not know if this has been pointed out earlier, but those four initial pics are menu bars/ background images for the online games that can be found on Hasbro’s site.
http://www.hasbro.com/gijoe/en_US/play/details.cfm?R=F67459E2-19B9-F369-1035-1FCBA2B21018:en_US
I just thought I could point it out.. in case no one had already!
Ricardo.