Christian Lorenz Scheurer is a concept artist who has worked on films like The Fifth Element, Titanic, The Matrix, Animatrix, Final Fantasy, What Dreams May Come and The Day After Tomorrow. Born in Switzerland but now living in California, Scheurer initially studied to create graphic novels but realized he wanted to pursue a career in concept art after being struck by lightning (literally).
The Movies section of his site has a selection of his concept art for many of the films he has contributed to. The Games section, similarly, has concept art from many of the games he has worked on, including GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, Lord of the Rings: RotK, and Final Fantasy IX. The Paintings section contains some striking images that don’t seem to be tied to a particular project.
The sketchbooks in the Sketches section are a particular treat, filled with flights of fancy in a loose, comics-like drawing style, slightly reminiscent of Moebius at times. This is probably my favorite part of the site and enough to make me wish he had kept up his interest in doing graphic novels. The Characters Sketches section (bottom right link on the Sketches page) has drawn and painted versions of the same sketches side-by side, something I particularly enjoy.
The Projects section has art from several projects, including a fascinating “secret project” (that looks like it may be a theme park installation) and Entropia, Scheurer’s own book project.
Entropia is an art/story book about a fantastic land (called Entropia), packaged as a book about rare stamps from that land. There is a separate and rather elaborate web site devoted to the book.
Scheurer seems to work both digitally in traditional media. He is an instructor in “analog media” (a misuse of the term “analog”, they mean “traditional” media) at Gnomon Workshop, but his instructional DVDs are in digital concept art techniques, such as Introduction to Digital Painting in Adobe Photoshop and Advanced Digital Painting in Adobe Photoshop (which includes the image shown above). Here is his gallery on the Gnomon Workshop site.
There is an extensively illustrated interview with Sheurer in the CG Channel site.
