CURVED SPACE IN COLOUR

I've been working on my digital drawing and painting skills using Clip Studio Paint Pro and Photoshop.

For this Instagram Comic I thought it might work best in colour as there are few opportunities to produce colour work due to potential printing costs further down the line. 

This series will only ever be used for the internet, so I have had the chance to be more expressive with the colour palette.

I'm still not sure when it will be released as I want to have a number of pages to work as a buffer before publishing it.

So consider this a little preview.

BBC Docudrama The Herald of Free Enterprise

Working as a freelancer at the BBC’s Factual and Documentaries Department in White City, I produced this storyboard for a documentary dramatising the catastrophic events of the Zeebrugge Ferry disaster in 1987.

This was an ambitious project for a documentary which combined interviews with the survivors, CGI effects shots and filmed dramatic re-creations of the moment of the disaster.

The excerpt below is from my favourite scene which captures the moment the Herald of Free Enterprise began to capsize.  I found it a challenge to portray the energy and horror of the scene, using the likenesses of the interviewed survivors who were recalling their experiences.

It was also a challenge mentally to orientate the environments 45 degrees so that a glass wall would become the floor.

With so much going on in the shot, it was difficult to keep focused on the main point of action (the main characters) without getting lost within the chaos of the whole scene.

I also needed to recreate the darkness within the vessel as the lighting went off, leaving only dark voids with slithers of light to define the character’s features.  This led to a very atmospheric storyboard. 

Curved Space

A sneak peek at a new webcomic designed purely to be published on Instagram.

This will be the first time I have used an all digital process for a webcomic after introducing digital drawing gradually into the Stanley Vasco Case Files on Comic Fury and Smack Jeeves.

The process was primarily achieved using Clip Studio Paint with some assistance from Photoshop. I love using halftones, but I'm not sure how effective they will look online making this something of an experiment; with the artwork potentially being viewed in different sizes on a variety of devices.

Creature Concepts

Here are some examples of concept work, created for a feature film project.  This was a typical creature feature with a team of heavily armed soldiers sent to discover the goings on at a top research facility.

The script described a human/alien hybrid able to find its way around in the dark with a ferocious bite and the strength to lift a grown person off of their feet.

It was also suggested that the creatures had the ability to somehow impale their victims, so I started to imagine an animal that could project a bony like barb from their forearms.  I also played with the idea of an animal that had nocturnal features like a bat or other night creatures as well as a human/grey hybrid animal.

Teletubbies Archive

Between 1996 and 1998 I was employed by Ragdoll Productions UK as a Storyboard Artist on a new children’s television series called ‘Teletubbies.’

I was fresh out of Film School and relocated to Stratford–upon-Avon from London, where I was deposited in a porter cabin and then later my own green caravan at the back of the set within the lovely Warwickshire countryside.

I worked directly with the show’s co-creator and writer Andrew Davenport to visualize the scripts and establish a new visual grammar aimed purely at pre-school children.  Each frame is carefully designed to engage the attention of the very young.  When I think back it does seem strange that I worked with the writer instead of the show’s various directors, but Andy was driving the show and had a very clear vision of how the show should look, with input from co-creator Anne Wood.

Hard at work using a light box made by the art department, which used to emit the heat of a small sun.

Due to the fast paced nature of continuous shooting and the fact that we rarely had a buffer of scripts prior to the start of production, pre-production effectively ran side-by-side with production.  As such my drawing style became very simplistic and cartoony in nature as I tried to convey the energy of the performance as well as keeping in mind the strict positioning of objects and characters within the frame.

 

Post it note king; singles frames showing the simple cartoony style.

I developed a process whereby I would draw on post-it notes and stick them to the Live TV show formatted scripts; this was so that corrections could be made quickly on site after a brief meeting with Andy.

Here are some examples of Andy’s directions for me.

A copy of the first five pages of the shooting script for 'Little Lamb.'

When my employment came to an end with Ragdoll I had worked on ninety, thirty minute scripts and enjoyed every minute of what was a very unique period in my life which I always look back on with great affection.

The wall of reference.

Me on set complete with dodgy 90s hair style and a poor attempt at a goatee beard. 

One Night in Turin

Based on the book 'All Played Out' by Pete Davies, James Erskine's film 'One Night in Turin' re-visits the Italia '90 World Cup.

This feature length docu-drama combined documentary footage with new scenes to tell the story of the England team during the tournament in 1990 during a time when the country's reputation for hooliganism was at an all time high. 

However Sir Bobby Robson and his team set about uniting the nation as they played their way to the World Cup semi-finals.

I used a huge amount of research material when working on this project, sifting through footage of the games and an archive of photographs from the tournament. With the World Cup once again proving to be the greatest show on earth, I thought this would be a good time to post this trip down memory lane.

MOVIE POSTER ART

My first post of 2018 and it’s already March!  Continuing with the second year of The Stanley Vasco Case files, I have decided to have a little fun with the set dressing by placing a few Easter eggs in the background.

The following pieces of art are my attempt at low budget 1950s B-Movie posters, which incorporate a few characters from the comics I used to draw with my friends as a teenager.

I have always enjoyed good movie poster art and have collected a number of books of the artists, such as Drew Struzan.

With the level of detail that goes into computer game environments, including posters, magazines and product designs I thought I would indulge myself too with art pieces that will probably have been missed by the reader!