An early idea of what Dr. Manhattan's lab would look like in Watchmen. All images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. ™ & © DC Comics.

Scott Lukowski is a very busy concept illustrator. While Watchmen Production Designer Alex McDowell recommended him for this interview, it turns out that he's also worked on the new live-action Akira, Alice in Wonderland (his second stint with Tim Burton after Big Fish), Fantastic Voyage and Surrogates. Prior to these, he contributed to Transformers and Zodiac. And, previously, Lukowski worked in vfx by sculpting and fabricating miniature vehicles and architectural items from scratch as on-screen elements, including extensive work on Titanic and minor contributions to Stuart Little 2 and Spider-Man.

Bill Desowitz: So it was through Alex that you got the call to work on Watchmen?

Scott Lukowski: Yes, he called me to come in and interview as he was building his art department. That was early in 2007 and I met with him and Francois Audouy, the supervising art director. I had worked with Francois briefly on Zodiac, and briefly with Alex on The Terminal, but this was the first time I worked more closely with Alex. Although I wasn't on location with Watchmen [in Vancouver], all of my work was based in Los Angeles. But from what I could see, it had the same hyper-real feel as my experience on The Terminal. The photographs that I had seen and was referencing for my illustrations looked like reference material and not photographs of the set itself. With Alex, it's always like an information highway of design.

BD: And what was it like working with Zack Snyder?

Scott Lukowski.

SL: It was great. I came in early on -- I think I was the first illustrator to come on board. And the first thing I did was the Owlship: What would the Owlship look like? And Zack would constantly be in my office talking about this. First of all, it had to be grounded in reality, right? And what would a real life Owlship look like? How would it be manufactured inside and out? How would it interact with its environment? Let's research vertical lift vehicles so we can better understand how this thing could hover over a crowd. So I did multiple passes with that. How would the side door open? How would it unravel into a staircase? It also has to function as a ramp at some point. So that was a lot of fun and he was really into it. He has this personality that you think that you know him when you're communicating with him. He's so relaxed and is a regular guy and has very clear ideas of what he wants to communicate with you and get your feedback and really work as a team. Then as Zack got busier, I saw less of him. Paul Ozzimo ended up finishing the final design of the Owlship, and he created the 3D in Rhino and construction built the vehicle based off of that.

BD: What else did you work on?

SL: Dr. Manhattan's lab was an earlier piece; the Owlship hovering over the [New York tenement] crowd was also early on. Both of those were a lot of fun. I also worked on some of the interior views of Karnak, where Ozymandias is in the main gallery area where he has a lot of his ancient artifacts... So I did multiple versions of that: different views to figure out lighting and just a general overall sense of the volume of the space. With regards to the backlot itself, I did a painting that incorporated a lot of different elements that helped with visualizing what the final product would look like. A lot of the individual buildings had already been designed by various members of the art department. And my task was literally to bring all of these designs together and then paint it out for what it would look like in the real world. So it was this attempt at a photorealistic pass for what the final street would look like. I also did some prison designs -- exterior, interior -- the Hollis Mason house, fleshing it out from the exterior because it was a limited reference in the graphic novel. That was a bit of a challenge. I also did an early pass at the Owl Chamber. I believe Dean Sherriff realized the final version of that. And that was a lot of fun: grounding this character in this reality. Where does he build the Owlship in this abandoned subway interchange? And multiple versions of the Owl crater, the tenement inferno, where the Owlship comes out of retirement for the first time to rescue the people in a burning building. I did a couple of exterior versions of that.