Top 5 of 2013

That time of year! My Top 5 of the year. As always Im only including films Ive seen so apologies on missing any...

5. The Way Way Back
- can't beat a good coming-of-age movie and this did it form me. Sam Rockwell is on fire

4. Mud
- the Matthew McConaughey revival continues. Better than Killer Joe in my book. Enthralled all the way to the end!

3. Man Of Steel
- probably the 'Prometheus' of 2013. A film I hyped for ages. Love the character. They took a different direction with it which Im happy with. just wish they had managed to keep John Williams score...

2. The Worlds End
- the work from Pegg/Wright/Frost has become something of a point to make when stating our great comedy exports from the UK. Hilarious film, great ending to the themed trilogy and lived up to expectations for me.

1. Gravity
- no surprise here. Stunning. Great in 3D. A gripping thrill ride and for the first time in a long time there was stuff in there that I was left wondering 'how did they do that?'

Honourable mention doesn't really go to one film this time. Saw a bunch of films I was pleasantly surprised buy and really liked; The Wolverine, Behind The Candalabra and The Kings of Summer all great movies to check out.

Didn't have a complete bottom five thankfully as I missed as much of the crap as I could but here are 2 that were pants regardless;
Sharknado. 'So bad it's good'. No just bad guys. If I want to see a stupid low-fi B-movie of the today I'll watch Sharktopus with Eric Roberts. Texas Chainsaw 3D; was willing to give this a go. How bad can it be... pretty rubbish and so incorrect with things. Crazy...

On to 2014!!! I expect 2 films in my top 5 already so if this goes tits up Im not going to have a good year. Godzilla and The Lego Movie! See you in the new year

SpitPaint 30_12_13

'Ancient Yeti' was the theme of the day...

Wasteful Christmas

Two for one today.
Looking through my files and found something I hadn't shown before. It was called Waste City apparently.

Also just to say a Merry Christmas to everyone and see you on the flip side.

Should be placing my Top 5 films of 2013 next week too!

On to the next 100

So its post 101. Just a quick one. Through tumbler and facebook a group has been blowing up on social sites. Daily Spitpaint assign 3 or 4 subjects a day to be used as themes for a 30min speed paint. No textures or photos. Simple as that. I may end up posting a number of them to the blog here. Todays topic. Meditation

POST 100!!!!

This is the start of something. There I said it. Time to push once again on my concept art. New skills have been learnt and I shall be using them within my processes in the future. So I got this image done for post 100! Pretty much standard by me. Big sci-fi thing in the sky etc etc.

The 99

So today the big reveal is I am now able to post work from my time on the TV series The 99 for Endemol UK.

The work was completed between 2010-2012 so a little while ago and early in my career.
Check this link here to see the work.

No Im not dead...

but I have been away from the beloved concept art world for too long. Sad times. I need to change this predicament and hopefully this is a starting point. Today is just a link post to old work that has been given the OK to be shown. In August the new series of Chuggington aired on CBBC and I was fortunate to work on it. On my website I have posted a small handful of designs that have aired.

It was the first job that required me to use 3D in my workflow so I had to learn SketchUp pretty quickly. The benefit of this on my other work was impressive and now its pretty cool to have blocked out and sometimes even basic renders to work from. Anyway enough chat.

My Chug work is here

Tomorrow I have an even bigger run of old work that can finally see the light of day! News to follow...

Its been a while...

And it sucks when things like a blog slow down (really need to keep the pace up). New job has pushed my side work back a bit but just to say on my sister blog a new piece is up in preperation for The Wolverine movie out in a few weeks. Hoping to take a few of these prints to London Film and Comin Convention (5th-7th) to sell. Anyway here is the link to the page. ENJOY :)

Gateway action

A scene I did last week or so. Seems kind of superhero inspired in its styling. The whole location is a paint over of a 3D model base

Man of Steel

IS COMING!!!

Ive created a poster for it. Check it out on the side blog to this one HERE
Happy Friday

Sketchy Friday

Here we have some early sketches for guard designs. Big and bulky they are used for menial tasks like keeping watch and lifting things. They wear faceless masks partly out of protection and mostly to show their low status in life.

Walking in the the clouds

Weapon work: Complete process

Back to concept design. Here we have the thumbnails of which I picked 2 to clean up a little further. From there I took one to sketchup and painted over a basic render.

Stuntman Mike

Viewable over on my illustration page

Quick spaceship

Back to some concept art. Just a quick one today. Large passenger transport...

Alien head 3

This used to be the stork of a banana mirrored... Also Ive set up a seperate art blog for purely illustrations over here

Supes sketch

Trying to get a more traditional approach and finish to painting digitally so trying out a program called Sketchbook Pro. Really nice pencil tool, REALLY affordable for the full version too. Have 15 day trial so better use it a lot

Nah Nah, Nah Nah, Nah Nah, Nah Nah...

Batman! OK early sketch this week but you'll find a 'bordered' version on a side blog im setting up which is specifically for my art and illustration work compared to the design based career I tend to lead

Traditional #9

This week Saturday Sketch is back! We have Bane. You have my permission to view... (see what I did there...)

book face

So today we got a random location for a book cover (just for fun) and some alien heads. With the heads I'll be producing more of these as they are pretty quick to develop once Ive collected the shots required. Scott Robertson recently advertised this process. Using a mirrored effect in a camera app you can knock out loads of symetrical designs. Give it a try...

Pod ship

Been doing some more 3D work with a photoshop paint over. Went for the bubble ship idea thats around a lot at the moment. Please enjoy. There's additional screen shots of the reverse and inside the cockpit which I may get to clean up at a later date.

Quick line sketch

Thought I'd show a little car sketch. Pretty simple stuff. I still think some of the best concept design you see are line drawings and marker renders. Top skills to have

Traditional #8

Its Ryan Gosling this week in Drive. I'd love to produce a full poster for this film. There's a few things that need to be improved on this one but its something...

Modern Living

Thought I'd work on some 3D skills a bit. Had a go at building one of the 'dream' homes that we all hope to build and own one day. Its a 3D sketch up model with a fairly standard render then photoshoped the environment and detailing a little.

Morning warm up

OK so with the Easter 4 day weekend out the way, thought I'd do a warm up piece. Just a photo study. Its of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater house which I love. Kept it quick...

Traditional #7

MEGA CITY SUNSET!!!!!

Been back and forth on this one for a little while but pretty happy with it. Not often do I push the limits of over saturating things so it was a good practice in some way.

Location friday & Traditional #6

A few locations Ive been doing... EDIT: This should have posted friday but Ive found it still in the drafts. Dont like blogger sometimes. Also added this weeks Saturday Sketch. Not my best by a long shot. A bit rushed for time :(

Traditional #5

This weeks Saturday Sketch comes in the form of the Quo who I saw this weekend for the renuion tour. Absolutely the best gig Ive seem them do EVER!

Mini Ship for friday

Fairly quick render today. Based on a marker/pen sketch with some textures dropped over and some paint :)

Poster design

OK so Im not technically an illustrator/graphic designer (though some friends tell me i should be haha), I wanted to create a cult poster for a film in the way that the poster company Mondo print limited edition litho prints. Think these could look really nice up on a wall. Let me know if anyone would actually take orders on this and I'll see what I can do ;)

Traditional #4

This week for #SaturdaySketch as it is now called we have Jules from Pulp Fiction. Enjoy! :)

Vehicle friday

Just some vehicle stuff this week. Heavy duty 4 wheeler and some alien spaceship stuff

Traditional #3

As I missed my saturday sketch here is the catch up. I did the original sketch but had a go at adding a little colour in post

Ive had some of my work posted on Concept Vehicles site :) CHECK IT HERE

Struzan inspired

Going through a big Drew Struzan influence at the mo. Using his familiar style to practice drawing people as its really not my strong point. This was also fun as it got me to use my Cintiq some more! :)

25 mins to do. Did a very quick line trace to save time on getting the proportions right as I wanted to focus on the shadows and light sources to bring the face to life rather than exact lines.

Vehicle concept

Got something new for the week! Tough week for inspiration but I finally got this out

Traditional #2

So to follow up on Quint, here is Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York. Possibly my favourite character in film since we hit the 2000s. Next week I'm thinking of a De Niro performance. So many to choose but I've always love him as Max Cady in Cape Fear...

Race Day

Speeding round a new arena! The crowds go wild!!!

Sci-fi City

Going for vast scene. Need to improve the sense of scale still I feel...

Inferior interior

So I havent really done much of an interior since I worked on a show a while back. Just messed around with some stuff. Need to do more for my site really