(electronic music)
- Hi my name is Michael Eppinette,
I am 18 years old and I am from Conroe, Texas.
I've loved concept design, creatures, monsters, the works.
And, I draw what's in my head, put it down on paper.
I've really been drawing ever since I could hold a pencil.
I really got serious about it though
probably around seventh grade.
That's when I really stopped just drawing something
and actually taking the time to design it.
First I would start with thumbnails, small drawings,
kinda sketch a bit, then once I know what I'm looking at
I'd go to a real drawing and actually lay it out.
Granted on 8 1/2 by 11 copy paper.
Just what looks good, really, what looks natural,
using lots of reference instead of just
straight from your head cause really
the best reference is photos.
Out in the world there you can really see the forms
and as I started to get an idea
of these three dimensional forms,
the concepts started maturing.
Once I knew what a jaw muscle is
and how it anchors to the back of the head and how,
how they work and the more creatures I saw in movies
and the more inspiration I drew from real life,
the more mature the designs got.
This is something I made when I was
around 13 years old, this is a tortugaran.
This is something I created when I was ten years old,
this is the five-eyed bear dog.
And this is a commission I got my junior year of high school
and he said make a Viking and then I drew this cool Viking
and he was like, wait a second,
this could use a giant serpent monster.
And I really wanted to mess with some texture qualities
and wrinkles and I love the white pencil technique
of some of the concept artists I like, so,
I don't know I drew this thing,
I guess it's kinda chupacabra-y.
This guy is a concept for a short film idea I had
my junior year of high school.
He's, uh, The Alien Astronaut.
The Goblinoid, I was on an orc kick,
kinda Lord of the Rings type stuff.
This guy's got a bit of a story.
Taking a vacation to Chicago, and I only brought
one sketch book with me, and I realized
that I only had one clean sheet of paper left.
So I spent the vacation just really working on one drawing
so this guy's just a big wrinkly demon.
This is one of my concepts when
I was on a Greek mythology phase.
And that was one of the dark characters that I
had come up with in this film I wanna make called Orpheus.
This is Xaga.
This is the kaiju that I made for the
Stan Winston School kaiju design contest.
This is one of my biggest design efforts I've had.
There was a really long design process.
I was just trying to get it right
because I knew this was gonna be based on likes,
so I wanted to incorporate the old classic
kaiju features cause I knew people will be
kinda looking for that, you know?
At the same time I wanted to incorporate some of those
cool new Pacific Rim aesthetics into it.
I really like the idea of hell and sulfur and brimstone,
so I wanted to communicate that with the bright yellow.
The idea was that he came and these sulfur miners
working in their nasty, stinking mines,
all the sudden the earth starts rumbling
and the yellow dusty earth cracks and bleeds
since melted brimstone looks like blood
and from a boiling red and orange pit comes
this disgusting, stinking, massive beast
dripping from every one of his mouths this
putrid slime, ready to devastate everyone.
I spent about a month just working
on it trying to get the right shapes.
Some gorilla reference, scorpion reference,
Alien reference, I mean come on now Xenomorph mouths there,
human reference definitely, I love human elements
in design just because they make it that
much more relatable almost, you know?
It was a crazed effort to get that thing to the top.
Because it was based on likes and a couple of the artists
have pages of followers, you know?
And here I am, 17 year old Conroe kid (laughs).
My parents jumped on sharing the picture,
sharing the link, and oh my goodness.
It was great because I was actually
driving to Chicago at the time,
so we were in the car everyone like sharing,
screaming like oh he's ten ahead!
Oh I'm ten ahead, oh he's 50 ahead,
oh no how are we gonna get that lead back?
So, yeah.
The first time I saw the big kaiju Xaga printed out
on the floor huge it was like whoa, this is happening.
It was the first concrete moment and it was live
and oh my goodness and every moment of it,
it was getting more real and more real.
And then I see Ian Hunter, sign up
for the ten day web course How to Build a Miniature City,
and I thought to myself, they're having
an entire other class for the monsters to battle in?
Granted like that's an amazing skill
to put that city together, you know?
And at the same time I'm thinking this is a big effort!
I'm part of a big effort, this is crazy!
So, that was another defining moment where
it just got that much more real.
Oh my goodness.
Walking up there is like walking into my own brain,
where I imagined this creature chopping cities off
like, the building's gonna come crashing apart.
This is a way bigger effort than I
ever imagined it would be.
My biggest dream is I wanna be a movie director.
These creature designs, I do my best to draw them,
but these ideas I have in my head are moving, they're alive,
they take shape and form and behaviors
that is fun to express in drawings
and I really hope to develop that skill
but at the same time in a cinematic form,
these things will come to life.
I just, my brain is boiling with things
I want to put on the big screen,
just idea after idea after idea
and they're all alive and there and moving.
It hadn't sunk in yet and now it's starting to sink in,
that this is happening, this is a reality,
that my career could happen.
- [Interviewer] How does that make you feel?
(laughs)
- [Michael] Passion, passion leads to practice,
practice leads to skill, so if you have the passion,
you're doing it every day, you're developing it,
you are maturing your skill, you are
making something from nothing, that's
when it all comes together.