[Yoshikazu Yasuhiko] Arion Promotional Character Concept Art (1985) 安彦 良和 - ネオ・ヒロイック・ファンタジア アリオン 初期のコンセプト画

 

Concept art acquired from a private source who wishes to remain anonymous. These are illustrations lithographed from the original concept cel paintings by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, created sometime in early to mid 1985 before Arion was released in theaters. Production wise, these are mounted to cardstock and are printed with standard CMYK lithography, and show up in some other materials including the art book released after the film had come out. 

With that said, some information was given about them. According to my source, the originals are housed at Sunrise and these were given out to staff and backers to give a general gist about the characters. 

There were more done, though I was only given these as of now (my source cannot locate the others, but did confirm that concept art for Lesphina as well as Apollo do exist). There is a larger piece that was done and used on the Italian DVD release of Arion, though I was not given this document to archive/clean. 

Cleaning these was a slight chore as I've had them for a while now (about 6 months), but due to my backlog as well as the cleaning process in general, my time was stretched thin with other commitments. With that said, I kept things in good faith to replicate the color of what they should have looked like as these were faded and damaged. Athena took the hardest hit, so a lot of stitching/patching was done by hand on hers in particular. 

There are earlier character concepts that do exist, though I was not given access to them. What I do know is that these were done when Arion was being serialized, between a period of 1980 - 1983 proper. I have seen the drawings of Arion in particular, though based on how they are drawn, Yasuhiko was still working in a manner that was very much akin to say Raideen and Mobile Suit Gundam 0079. 

All the same, I am working again with my source, and I hope they allow me to document them should they have them/allow me to. 

Most of these designs did not change whatsoever sans for outfits and character stylings, so this is interesting history to compare to the finals.