Interest

CG Starship Troopers Anime's Ships Previewed

The official blog for the new computer-animated Starship Troopers: Invasion film posted designs for the anime's starships on Monday. The film will feature two new ships: the big starship John A. Warden and the small fast-attack ship Alesia (named after a Western European battle between Julius Caesar and Vercingetorix).

The anime draws design cues from Paul Verhoeven's loose 1997 live-action film adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's original novel. The blog had previously posted a rough illustration of a suit from the Starship Troopers franchise drawn by Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed) in November. Aramaki is directing the Starship Troopers: Invasion film, which is due out in summer 2012.

Flint Dille is writing the screenplay for the film after working as a story editor on The Transformers and G.I. Joe television series of the 1980s. He later wrote the Venom film and the video-game tie-ins for The Chronicles of Riddick. The staff commissioned illustrator Hidetaka Tenjin (Macross Frontier, Macross Zero, Hellsing Ultimate) to create a teaser poster for the film. Joseph Chou (Appleseed films, Halo Legends, proposed live-action Evangelion) is producing the new project. Edward Neumeier and Casper Van Dien of the live-action Starship Troopers film are executive producers.

Before Paul Verhoeven's loose live-action film adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers novel classic and several direct-to-video follow-ups, Gundam anime studio Sunrise produced a video version of Starship Troopers in 1988. Tetsuro Amino (Macross 7, One Stormy Night) directed that version with designs by Kazutaka Miyatake (Macross, Gunbuster, Eureka Seven).

Studio Nue (Macross, Legend of the Galactic Heroes) co-founder Naoyuki Kato had created powered suit designs for his illustrations in the 1977 Japanese reprint of Heinlein's novel. Sunrise has openly noted that Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino drew some inspiration from the humanoid powered suits of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although the mobile suit robots of Gundam are ten times the size of humans (18 meters, or the same size as the super robot pioneer Mazinger Z).

Thanks to Daniel Zelter for the tip.

[Via cityonfire.com]

Images © 2011 Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Inc.

Update: The historical Battle of Alesia took place in Western Europe, not Eastern Europe. Thanks, otakunomike.