Career Timeline: 1987 - The Abyss

James Cameron hires Moebius to design the non-terrestrial intelligence creatures for The Abyss(released 1989)

Career Timeline: 1987 - Pocari Sweat

Here is the commercial for Pocari Sweat, starring Cindy Crawford, based on Moebius’ concept art seen in the previous post.

Career Timeline: 1987 - Pocari Sweat

Moebius is hired by popular Japanese soda company Pocari Sweat to design a commercial for them that would star supermodel Cindy Crawford.

(Source: jacq-jacquin.blogspot.com)

Career Timeline: 1986 - Willow

Moebius is hired by George Lucas to do some extensive design work for Willow(released in 1988). He does quite a bit of character/set design work that never gets used. In some cases, like the piece with the sea monster, Moebius just made the whole scene up from scratch in hopes that they might give it a shot.

Career Timeline: 1986 - Masters of the Universe

Moebius, along with artist and sometime-collaborator William Stout, do some concept work for Gary Goddard’s He-Man film, Masters of the Universe(released in 1987). Moebius was hired specifically to design He-Man’s cotume, played in the film by Dolph Lundgren.

Fun fact: Masters of the Universe was loosely based(maybe inspired by is a better way to say it, to dispel an old rumor that it was an actual reworked adaptation) on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World and Fantastic Four comics.

Career Timeline: 1986 - Tomorrowland

Disney contacts Moebius about redesigning the Tommorowland section of Disneyland, at the suggestion of George Lucas. Apparently the project was quickly abandoned, but Moebius had still done concept art for it. See more of these designs here.

Career Timeline: 1985 - Little Nemo in Slumberland

Moebius is approached by Tokyo Movie Shinsha to do concept design work and script revisions for their animated feature film based on Winsor McCay’s comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland.

P.S. Hayao Miyazaki was heavily involved in production early on, even making a test film. He left the project, citing unspecified difficulties, years before Moebius came on board.

Career Timeline: 1985 - Internal Transfer

A sample of the many storyboards made for Internal Transfer

Career Timeline: 1985 - Internal Transfer

In 1980, Moebius met and became enamored with French philosopher and spiritualist Jean-Paul Appel-Guéry. They formed a somewhat tight student/teacher relationship, something that Appel-Guéry did often, gaining him a following of people that believed in his new age teachings(some have said his group operated under suspiciously cult-like behaviors, and at one point Appel-Guéry told all of his followers that they had to move to Tahiti in order to achieve spiritual harmony, which Moebius did for a year). He had also convinced Moebius to re-examine his primary artistic subject matter:

“Appel-Guéry encouraged Moebius to tap into the more positive zones of his subconscious. ‘Most of the people that were studying spirituality with Appel-Guéry did not know much about comics, but they immediately picked on the morbid, and overall negative feelings that permeated my work,’ said Moebius. ‘So I began to feel ashamed, and I decided to do something really different, just to show them that I could do it.’”

—Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier, from Moebius Comics #1, Caliber Comics, 1996

So in the early 80s, along with Appel-Guéry, writer Paula Salomon, and animator Arnie Wong, Moebius began conceiving of an animated film called Internal Transfer. This was to be a full-length feature, meant to embody Appel-Guéry’s philosphical message. Most of the conceptual artwork was done in 1984 and 1985, including lengthy storyboards and an unfinished comic. Moebius and Wong even hand-animated a short ‘pilot’, which you can see here(at the 3:45 mark).

The film lost all of its financing, and was abandoned in 1986. Appel-Guery’s influence on Moebius lived on though, as his Aedena Cycle is partially rooted in these concepts.

Career Timeline: 1981 - TRON

Moebius is hired by Disney Studios to begin concept design work for TRON(released in 1982). He would also serve as a backup storyboard artist.

Career Timeline: 1978 - Les Maîtres du temps

Moebius begins production of Les Maîtres du temps(The Time Masters), an animated feature film where he will design, storyboard, and co-write the script. He partners with animation director René Laloux, already well-known for directing the surreal La Planète Sauvage(Fantastic Planet). Les Maîtres du temps was released in theaters in 1982.

Image 1: Movie poster, drawn by Moebius

Image 2: Concept art by Mobeius

Images 3-10: Stills from the film(taken from here)

Career Timeline: 1978 - Alien

After Dune falls apart, Dan O’Bannon writes the script to Alien. When the film is greenlit and begins pre-production, O’Bannon invites many of the people who worked on Dune to get involved, including Moebius. He worked on costume design, specializing on the space suits.

Career Timeline: 1976 - Dune

Moebius meets Alejandro Jodorwosky, and begins work as a concept artist on a filma adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, specializing in costume design and storyboarding. The film was infamously abandoned, but created many new relationships for Moebius, particularly with Jodorowsky and writer Dan O’Bannon.