Space Elevator
Space Elevator design for Ad Astra film.
This was my first time art directing a project (the ILM side that is). The whole team met James Grey during pre-production back when there was only a basic story treatment. We worked alongside the production designer Kevin Thompson to flesh out the look of this movie. Everything was meant to be utilitarian as we tried to capture the design look from NASA early missions (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo) so we didn't really want to design super high-end tech that didn't match that vision.
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Developed at the ILM Art Department
Ad Astra 2019 © 20th Century Fox
Originally the space elevator was to have a complex station at the top that would also serve as a counterweight.
In the end the top of the space elevator was composed only by deep space antennas.
The space elevator was composed of three columns and part of the task was figuring out how to merge these into one that could then extend to a counterweight.
Production gave us only the habitation modules to work around (middle left images). The top was designed by me and the base (ribbon) was done by Russell Story.
The director wanted as much sense as possible to what we were doing so these guide where your basis techno-babble to explain the structure. It doesn't make any sense but it was fun deep diving on how a space elevator is built.
Notice the three basic antennas that ended up being the top of the structure in the final version.
James Grey was highly inspired by NASA photography from the 70s and 80s so everything we did was trying to capture that retro feel.
The original counterweight was a simple dead weight structure.
Since the it was a basic shape, the director thought to increase the scale of this so as to make it more interesting. In the end we scratched it and tried other ideas.
At some point we even played with the idea of using an asteroid as counterweight at the top the elevator.
Space elevator ring early concept.
Space elevator ring early concept
Space elevator ring early concept (notice the spiral space elevator)
For a moment the director wanted a weird structure at the top that was built out throughout the years and had no sense or direction. Almost like "town" space station where people kept adding modules to expand it.
