Favelas-on-Blast
In the world of director Neill Blomkamp's *Elysium*, the difference between rich and poor is painfully evident to the naked eye. If you want to see immense poverty, look around Earth; if you want to see immense wealth, look to the heavens and the off-world colony that is the film's namesake.
That economic disparity creates a gruesome struggle in the film, and it presented an intriguing challenge to Blomkamp and his production and concept designers: Imagine Los Angeles in 2154 as a grimy, decrepit city of favelas, while also dreaming up a glistening paradise in space. To do that, they spent hours upon hours sketching out the world with every possible detail — designs now available in the book *Elysium: The Art of the Film*.
"My largest personal goal making this film was to try and frame a vision of the future for the audience, and to do that with a world that felt as real and multi-layered as possible," Blomkamp says in the forward to [the book](http://titanbooks.com/elysium-the-art-of-the-film-limited-edition-6462/), [out this week](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1781162476). "The only way that can be accomplished is with a shitload of conceptual design and visual ideas."
To create and curate that "shitload" — more than 3,000 pieces of concept art in total — Blomkamp relied on a lot of collaborators. Not only did he bring back *District 9* collaborators like production designer Philip Ivey, he also called on legends like set designer Syd Mead, the "futurist" behind *Blade Runner* and *Aliens*. The director also got a little help from Weta Workshop cohorts like concept designer Aaron Beck, who worked on both *District 9* and now *Elysium*.
The resulting concepts paint a picture more bleak than the one Blomkamp put on screen. L.A. is crushed and stacked so thoroughly that it resembles a refugee camp, while the place known as Elysium looks like a [Stanford torus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus) straight out of NASA in the 1970s. And yet, both worlds are so rich with detail, it's hard to imagine they're in any way unequal.
"Elysium was a step forward and Earth a step backward," Blomkamp notes in the foreword. "That contrast, between poverty and wealth, haves and have-nots, provided great inspiration because when viewed together, the stark cleanliness of Elysium and the impoverished wasteland of Earth complement one another hugely — on a design level."
Check out a few excerpts of Blomkamp's dystopian future in the images above from *Elysium: The Art of the Film*, which is currently available in limited edition [from Titan Books](http://titanbooks.com/elysium-the-art-of-the-film-limited-edition-6462/).
__*Above:*__
Favela on Blast
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The way Blomkamp imagines Los Angeles in 2154, the California city has become the Third World, with the remains of downtown being surrounded by favelas.
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