More Beautiful Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Concept Art [Updated]

By Peter Sciretta/July 31, 2014 11:30 am EST

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Updated: We have added more concept art at the end of this post, which originally appeared on July 14th 2014.

I love looking at concept art. Often the art created to inspire the movies is more incredible than the films themselves (for example, look at some of the beautiful concept art created for the Star Wars prequels). The Aaron Sims Company were hired to create some concept art for Matt Reeves' Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and have put some of their work online for all to admire.

ASC worked closely with Weta on both films to design all of the main and ancillary ape characters from the ground up. In the Rise of the Planet of the Apes, they sculpted a bust for Caesar to ensure a hyper-realistic feel. In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, ASC worked on aging the apes and creating the apes' ceremonial look, which includes face paint and other ornamentation taken from nature.

While the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes concept art features some shots of the Apes living and hunting in the wild, I was more taken by the portrait work focusing on the faces of Koba, Caesar, Cornelia, and Maurice. One big revelation is that the Apes almost wore primitive clothing. Check out the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes concept art after the jump.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Concept Art

Caesar's eyes:

Caesar with war face paint:

Koba:

Cornelia with face paint and head-dress:

Ceremony Painted Male Ape:

Apes wearing primitive clothing:

Apes hunting in the muir woods:

Thanks to ConceptArtWorld for posting the images. You can see more work from Aaron Sims Company visual effects at asc-vfx.com – they also have some of their work from Rise of the Planet of the Apes in their online portfolio.

Justin Field's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Concept Art

Update: Here is some more Dawn of the Planet of the Apes concept art by Justin Fields of IRONKLAD STUDIOS:

And here is a piece of art by: Jerad S Marantz

More Dawn of the Planet of the Apes concept art appeared on IMGr. I must warn you, some of this concept art (the more clean and colorful images) appear to be from the first film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, although its also possible that the film was developed with flashbacks:

If you're interested in seeing more concept artwork from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and the earlier film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a hardcover book was just released titled Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of Planet of the Apes: The Art of the Films. You can buy it now on amazon for around $26.