Interview
Mark Goerner Talks James Cameron’s “Battle Angel”
MarketSaw: What was your creative working relationship with James Cameron? What was it like working with him?
Mark Goerner: Oh lord, can I skip this one? Honestly, he is one of the smartest and most resourceful people I’ve met. Had a few great, creative meetings, and Lightstorm Entertainment had some warm people that evolved into my dysfunctional daytime family on the west side.
MarketSaw: Which other artists worked with you in the Battle Angel art department? I believe James Clyne and Feng Zhu worked on Battle Angel as well. How did you all divide the enormous task of adapting Kishiro’s visuals for the screen–did each of you have a particular focus (i.e. one of you focused on characters, another on environments, another on props, etc)?
Mark Goerner: It turned out to be a bit of an art buffet with tasks being kicked around. James started a week before I did, jumping immediately into Alita’s form and outfits. I initially worked on some of the grand scheme city designs, and then as a few months went by, dove into everything under that world’s dreary sun. Seeing as James is my best pal, and one of my biggest heroes, I hope you get a chance to hit him up for further details. Feng was on shortly, and in my opinion was not utilized correctly; but that happens in certain studios and offices on a regular basis. As the last one on, I got to see the whole effort and did my most favorite piece in that last week…wish you could see it.
MarketSaw: When working on Battle Angel, did you mainly focus on producing photorealistic, detailed, finished paintings, or did you also do a lot of rough conceptual sketches?
Mark Goerner: For that phase of B.A., the focus was in creating exciting large scale visuals that where intended to excite JC when he was in town and available to check out the work and progress. In the process of developing those images, there were the usual rough sketches, but largely we used large printouts to create the biggest impact to push the drama.
Read full interview here [source: MarketSaw] 
