Twitter Art Challenge

An Artist from Pixar Animations put out an art challenge on Twitter. The brief was to sketch four story panels relating to the word 'Rejection'. As he works for Pixar I thought this would be appropriate. Here is my quick-sketch entry.

HB pencil and Photoshop.

Move and he'll drop it!!

I'm intending on writing/developing a game idea with many of these characters.

Pencil sketch. Painted in Photoshop.

Watercolours.

4B pencil, cotton buds and lighter fluid.

Junior Dredd.

After recently seeing the new film trailer for 'Judge Dredd' it took me back my childhood when I saw an illustration of 'The Big-man' on a cover of 2000AD. But no-matter what, I'm pretty sure that if I'd cut up a bucket and got me head stuck in it, my parents then having to take me to A&E to get it removed, my parents would have become 'Judge, Jury and Executioner'. So this image is of me (if I'd been allowed to do it). I probably would have made his gun from an empty toilet roll.

Sketched in Pencil. Painted in Photoshop.

Bronze IronMan Head

After watching the brilliant 'The Avengers' I decided to make another IronMan head from the (sadly tattered) original mold that I created for a number of casts for Marvel, London. Instead of painting it in the original gold and hot-rod red I wanted it to look like a 'Lost-wax' bronze cast. I think the paint job gives a nice, weighty look to it!!

© Marvel

World Wildlife Film

Another Aardman project that I worked on was the World Wildlife Fund film. It was created to teach younger people about the importance of Biodiversity. I was allocated to create a Beluga Whale. It was a tricky puppet to make as the replacement mouths were very large in comparison to the Whale (lots of smoothing  plasticine in between shots).

Here is the original colour drawing created by the Director, Luis Cook:

A couple of shots of me sculpting the replacement mouths and doing an animation test to make sure they worked. The other replacements were kept in the fridge to stop them from melting under the studio lights:

An Assistant Producer put this image together in Photoshop to see if how the puppet would look in a hospital scene:

On the green-screen set. Me, The Whale and the fantastic Animator Mr Terry Brain (Creator of 'Trap-Door' and 'Stop It and Tidy Up'). Terry did a brilliant job animating this huge lump of clay!!:

© Aardman Animations

Elm Road Productions

Many moons ago I worked on a number of T.V. commercials and a few children's episodes for Nickelodeon at the Bristol based Elm Road Productions.
A small team of us created puppets, props and sets for 'Stan and Harvey Do Lunch'. Unfortunately I can't find a link to any of the episodes online.
Here are a few of the replacement heads:

And here's a shot of me sculpting replacement mouths for Jack Nicholson:

Alton Towers 'Ug-Land' ride.

I sculpted this 1 meter long Dinosaur head for the close up shot on the commercial:

Here is the finished commercial. If you look closely, at the final shot you can see that we left a small step-ladder in the left side of the horizon. Oops!:

Alton Towers 'Singing Barn'. 

For a quick turn around on this commercial we only made the front half of the puppets knowing that there wouldn't be any full shots of the farm animals.

A shot of me sculpting the replacement mouths on the 'goofy' horse:

I made the sheep from 'Super Sculpey' and many, many pipe cleaners!!

Here is the finished commercial:

Faxe Beer commercial.

I made two ufo's from vacuum formed components and the undercarriage doors were edited in post production to give the illusion of them opening and closing.

Here's the Vimeo link to the final commercial directed by Micheal Wright:

http://vimeo.com/32446853

Eye Study

I sketched this image with HB pencil and painted it in Photoshop. It wasn't easy as I had to quickly adjust my focus from a spot light in my eye and staring into a mirror, to pulling my focus back to paint on the screen!!!
It took about 3.5 hours to complete and it's about 15 separate layers in Photoshop.

Character and Creature Designs

Here are some Characters and Creatures that I've designed:

Professor-Scientist concepts (Pencil and Photoshop).

Cave Yeti (Pencil and Photoshop).

Alien Warrior (Airbrush and Inks).

Alien Gunners (Biro and Photoshop).

Bazooka Orc (Watercolours).

Maskull (Pencil and Photoshop).

Blind Claw Hogs (Pencil and Photoshop).

Beast concept (Biro and Photoshop).

Zombies (Watercolours).

Still Life Studies

Here are some still life studies that I've done over a period of time.

Swiss Army Knife (Black and White Watercolours):

Perfume Bottle (Watercolours and Pencil):

Pebble (4B Graphite Pencil):

Coral (Black Ink and White Gouache):

Rotten Orange (Watercolours):

Not so Regal (Black Ink and White Gouache):

Left Boot (HB Pencil):

Coloured in Photohop:

Dino Time!!!

One of the first companies I worked for in Bristol was the brilliant Puppet Factory. There I learnt many skills on mold making, armatures, sculpting and painting techniques.
A few of us worked on this Dairylea Dunkers T-Rex. We built a full bodied Dinosaur and a larger neck and head, with bigger hands/claws (for the close up shots).
Ray Harryhausen was at the shoot and was highly impressed with the final puppet/s. Merlin Crossingham animated the commercial, Creative Director of 'Wallace and Gromit' at Aardman Animations.

Here's a shot of me putting the finishing touches to the paint work on the T-Rex:

Here is the larger head. For the skin we used foam latex. The tongue had a few replacements and was made from silicone. The claws and dental work were cast from dental acrylic.

Grrrrr!!:

Ray Harryhausen on set with the full body puppet and Merlin Crossingham.

And here is the final commercial. It has Harryhausen's style splashed all over it:

I had an amazing time working at the Puppet Factory. They were all a very skilled and talented crew. A big thanks goes out to Sam, Simon, Max, Andre, Sarah, Clay, Andy and all the others that walked in the door. ☺☺☺

Snails!!

I was asked by Aardman's Director Luis Cook to create some imagery for a 'commercial pitch'. It was for the Saturday Telegraph's home section. Aardman got the job and Luis did a brilliant job of directing it. The stop-motion puppet was stunningly made, painted and animated (I held it after the shoot...Wow!!).
Here are some of the pencil and watercolour sketches that I did for the 'pitch' and a link to the beautifully atmospheric advert:

Here is a YouTube link to the commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD6MDbgJ4ns

"Rickety Hill"

I have always liked the idea of a 'Model Village'. When I was younger I used to look at the 'Lilliput Lane' houses in the shop windows. I then came up with the idea of the complete opposite to the pretty little cottages covered with flowers, and so I created 'Rickety Hill'.
This is the first model I made back in my early teens:

Here are a few of the sketches I've done to inspire other/new models:

These are some of the models. I generally use mount card and cereal box cardboard for the main structures.

I am open to commissions. *Note: Clear dust cases are not supplied.