Want To See What The Whole Power Suit Might Look Like? New Official AVATAR Concept Art! Aircraft! WARNING: SPOILERS!!

**SAME DAY UPDATE: Have heard from @mordecaidesign (Twitter) and Tom Powell (see comments) that they are sure that the first image is from Dylan Cole. Appears they are both correct. There is conjecture that the second one is by James Clyne Ryan Church. Looking for confirmation.

Jim here. Another breaking AVATAR story from the best place to be for all things James Cameron.

**SPOILER ALERT** - If you want a pristine viewing experience of AVATAR, it is best to stop reading NOW.

One of my readers (Thanks G.L.!) just sent these huge pieces of AVATAR material to my attention and due to the sensitive nature of the content I made sure it was ok with Fox before releasing it - it is THAT good!

This is official, concept art from the forthcoming book The Art of Avatar: James Cameron's Epic Adventure (which I have on preorder) which has 100 120 full color concept images in it as well as interviews! Better get your hands on this AVATAR book and others!

Click on these for the higher resolution images!!

Fox says run with it - it got approved through the right channels soooooo... take a good look at the whole darn Power Suit!! Please keep in mind that these photos are concept only and may not make it totally into the final AVATAR movie but you can clearly see how my Power Suit's photo fits into the concept drawing! Right down to the ammunition hanging down on the unit's side.

And a stunning new look at AVATAR's futuristic helicopters! WHOA. What do you make of those? For those of you who have read more about AVATAR, this is probably not a AEROSPATIALE SA-2 SAMSON as they only are armed with a door gun and are mainly used for operational movement on Pandora. However if you look in the background of the Power Suit, it looks like the downed aircraft behind it is a Samson! The second photo clearly shows much more heavy weaponry - missiles for example. So it could very well be an AH-19 SCORPION gunship or a C-21 DRAGON gunship which are over 100 feet long and looks like a "giant predatory insect, with multiple canopies at the front for pilots and gunners." (quote from original scriptment). Further the names may have very well changed from the scriptment, but you get the idea.

And ummm... is that a BANSHEERAY chasing the Gunship? Or a LEONOPTERYX? With someone riding it?? :-) I believe this concept art may be more driven by the mechanical design of the machinery than the creature design that Neville Page (who is also designing the prehistoric piranha's in Alexandre Aja's PIRANHA 3-D!) and others has worked on, so it is hard to say if the Leonopteryx (If that is what it is) will wind up looking like this or not. We do know that they can be ridden from the scriptment. But - DAMN - awesome creatures! We also know that originally the Leonopteryx (several times larger than a Bansheeray) does attack Samsons as they think they are enemies. Can't say more as it may have not even made it into the final movie, but let's just say these scenes are going to blow our minds!

This movie is going to kick some serious butt guys. What we have here is typical, knock your socks off James Cameron designs woven into a precise storyline.

So thus begins the ramp up to the release of AVATAR! It has been a long time coming, but let's start right here! I will get confirmation on exactly what that aircraft is shortly from my sources - stay tuned for updates! And as always, keep it on MarketSaw for the latest and greatest breaking 3D news.

What do you think of these designs - and Pandora's exotic landscape?? Is that what Pandora will look like?

Quick Post: Some "Avatar" Bite Size Pieces

Jim here. Darkoo - an avid AVATAR fan and MarketSaw enthusiast (thanks!) dropped some more background for us to digest. Nothing of extreme importance, but nice to hear some stories associated with the project:

1. AVATAR Score: James Horner - Forces Of Geek have a nice post by Tommy Pearson about Hollywood film composers and naturally James Horner is talked about. Here is an excerpt pertaining to AVATAR...

"He's worked with Cameron before, of course, most notably on Aliens and Titanic, which won Horner two Oscars. They were fairly traditional orchestral scores but Avatar will have a different approach, employing all sorts of exotic electronic sounds and soundscapes mixed with orchestra - sounds that would be impossible to replicate on a piano. So Horner finds himself working with mock-ups to enable Cameron to hear properly what the score will sound like. When I talked to him about it, there was an air of excitement about doing something new, but also a whiff of apprehension. We'll hear the results at the end of 2009."

2. Sidebar has an audio interview with Neville Page who of course worked on AVATAR. Neville was very coy with the interviewers, if fact to the point where he was putting together sentences after reading them in his mind first! Kind of disjointed, but who can blame him? I certainly can't. Anyway, an interesting listen - especially in the last 1/4 of it where they talk about AVATAR. Love the part where Cameron shows him the ORIGINAL concept drawings of ALIENS and THE ABYSS. Here is the MP3.

Enjoy!