Formula Fun!

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Avatar Pistol

Here's the handgun I designed for Avatar waaaaay back in dickity-six. I don't really have anything to say about it except that it got approved in the first drawing which has never ever ever happened to me before for anything ever. Ever! Never!

District 9.... Things

District 9?! What is this ancient junk? Stop living in the past Christian, it's 2001 already!
These are very early weapon and tool designs. You can see these and many more of the designs I contributed to the rubbish bin in our reasonably priced Art of District 9 book.

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Under The Mountain

Here's a couple of early Wilberforce and environment concepts for Jonathon King's Under the Mountain from waaaay back in 2007. That's so last decade now!

Boneless!

A doodle that got scanned. I coloured the pencil linework on this which was... refreshing! Then I coloured in the background like a big boy. Well how about that!

Esoterra Doodles

I think this video is awesome, he invents more funny characters in that 3 minutes of miming than most funny character creators create in 5 minutes of funny character creation. I was all like "I must draw you, poorly". And so I did.

Motorbikes!

Quick variations of the same basic engine and frame arrangement.
What was the line from George Orwell's classic allegorical tale, Automobile Farm... 'four wheels good, two wheels bad?' Especially when I draw 'em! As relevant today as when it was writ.

Mecha-Gojira!

Emoticon Anatomy 1

Dragster! I mean... Dragon!

I musta started this drawing 4 years ago. I dug it up this evening and says to myself I says "you're not going to bed til you've finished colouring it in!"
Nah stuff it, I'm going to bed anyway. G'night!

Doodle Dump

Damon Packard!

A drawing of one of my favourite film makers as his character Bob in Reflections of Evil. I was pretty blown away when I first saw that film and the character really stuck with me.
This was my first attempt inking with the dip pens I'd seen my pal Matty using at work with great success . I had less success but I reckon if you could get the hang of 'em you could bust some pretty clean lines.

Sawmill Incident

Peyow-Peyow!

Here's a quick 'un I did for the far too talented Scott Spencer. He has a tutorial in the current issue of 3D World where he sculpts this sucker up in ZBrush

Make Tanks Not War

Here's one I started 'ken ages back that I just finished painting about 54 seconds ago. I had this pencil sketch that I started dolloping virtual paint onto now and then, just kinda picking away at it over a few weeks.
The idea was that it was an umanned sentry that would be dropped into disaster areas to ward off looters or any invading forces. It has a real low level AI and a super slow hydrogen extraction system that draws energy from the atmosphere, you pretty much give it enough charge to toddle itself into a tactically sound position and forget about it.
"Unmanned eh? Why the hatch then dickhead?" - maintenance and for the off chance it may need to transport survivors. Yep, it makes heaps of sense. And take it easy with that dickhead stuff will you?
I had it deployed amongst all this rubble, collapsed buildings with a bunch of gruesome stuff going on and had it pretty much finished at the start of the year. Then Christchurch got decimated by quakes followed by Japan and I didn't want to look at it any more. I painted out all that stuff and parked him at the beach in the sun.

Oh yeah, those weird looking wheels are inspired by/burgled wholesale from those rad AIRTRAX forklifts

Bellflower

I don't really know anything about this film but when I saw the car in the trailer I bugged out like crazy! That thing is badass! I did this little doodle of it and then I coloured it in. Cool story eh?
Check out the Bellflower website, looks like it's gonna be pretty cool and their custom cameras they shot it with are fascinating.

Anna Coddington's Album Cover!

Alohahaha! I told Anna 'ken years ago that if she didn't let me do an album cover for her I was gonna give her a hiding. I guess she took me seriously cos she's mean as at karate now, also she let me do this one.
To start with we went through a bunch of images I put together and agreed that an Alphonse Mucha ripoff inspired piece might be a good starting point.
I wanted to make this painting as Nu Zillund as possible without putting Buzzy Bees/jandals/tomato sauce in it. The view is looking across from Manu Bay near her place in Raglan, a tui is hollerin' at her shoulder and that guy in the bottom left is my idiot cat Lando. The stars are loosely based on our view of the night sky and that bench she's chillin' on is supposed to be like that one you were chillin' on in the weekend eating that pie. You should ease up on those pies by the way.
All the patternwork is based on native plants - kowhai, pohutukawa and putaputaweta. I had a bunch more of that stuff going on for a while but it looked pretty manic.
AC wanted to have some scifi/space elements in there so those weird clouds and ringed planet are ripping off paying a respectful homage to the amazing end image from NZ's own Quiet Earth.
That female humanoid in the middle is meant to resemble Anna Coddington. I traced a photo of her face, so what? I aint trying to do no goddamn likenesses ever again! That was actually pretty challenging for me, painting a recognizable face even though I traced a pic. Fortunately Anna isn't very horrible to look at which made it a bit more bearable.
So that's that! The album's choice, Anna is choice, everything is choice. Wait - earthquakes are not choice.

Album on itunes

Anna's website

Crab Skeletons

Here's a pretty cool little seaside casualty I found the other day. You see these guys pretty often at the beaches here but this one was a bit bigger than most so I cleaned him up and did these sketches.
I hadn't really looked too closely at crab skeletons before and it proved to be a real learning experience. It's cool seeing how these little mammals have adapted to life in the sea. As warm-blooded vertebrates they share a similar basic structure to us but with a few specialised modifications.
The metacarpals and phalanges have simplified and fused into a pair of opposing pincer-like shapes and with their thick epidermal layer they function as highly effective claws.
The wide scapula sits far down the ribcage and forms a strong foundation for anchoring the teres major.
Probably the component most far removed from our own frame is the pelvic girdle which has evolved into a six-socketed form almost unrecognisable to ours.
I painted up a skull study as well - what bizarre little craniums they have! The eye sockets are open with the zygomatic bone being wholly disconnected from the supraorbital foramen - I guess this is due to the stability offered by the hardened epidermis and to allow free movement of the eyestalks.
What appears to be a nasal cavity is actually a food filtering system - the "nasal concha" is in reality a gill-like arrangement for catching too-large fragments in the feeding process. It continues down behind the maxilla.
A remarkable free floating pre-maxilla carries the first battery of tiny teeth with the second, smaller set of mandibles hidden away below.
So there you have it! That was a pretty interesting process for me, learning about these dudes. I find it fascinating how mammals can adapt and transform to live in any environment yet still retain their inherent vertebrate humanity.

Stackbot - UPDATED

Here's a painting that I worked a bit differently to usual on. I started this one as a pencil sketch drawing from life which I never really do anymore. I was at the Save Large™ supermarket here in Miramar where I'd seen this guy working stacking cans a few times over the last month or so and today I happened to have my sketchbook on me.
New Zealand's labour laws are still catching up with the rest of the world when it comes to regulating mechanical employees so we have this weird situation now where bots are forced to take 15 minute breaks three times a day just like their flesh and blood colleagues. This unit was standing totally still and alone waiting for his timer to run out the enforced rest period, a perfect sketcher's model!
Right, I'm gonna voice what is probably a pretty unpopular opinion: I don't like these guys. I am certainly not robophobic in the least but I am positive we will see an incident with these particular units in the near future. They are over-engineered, under-regulated and take voice commands way too literally. I hadn't finished my sketch when his break was over and unthinkingly I asked him to freeze - he over pressurized his coolant reservoir causing LN2 to flow over the articulated sections in his torso, seizing him up solid. I got the hell outta there before his supervisor came out so I don't know what sort of state he's in now, I'll check back in a few days.

28/02/2011 UPDATE

One of few instances where I hate being right all the time always about everything.

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Cryolophosaurus Tricyclus

Continuing the exploration of theropods voyaging via velocipedes - a Cryolophosaur riding a tricycle. Heavy stuff. Oh! A making of!

Splitters

Pencil doodles with high-end animation.


Why did they happen? I do not know.

A Hot Rod with Legs!

Eyoop! Here's one of the pieces I contributed for Dwayne Vances's upcoming Masters of Chicken Scratch Vol 2. Pretty pleased to be involved!

Crab's Inhumanity to Crabs. I mean Robots.

Holla! Here's a process gif of a piece I did for the White Cloud Worlds book.

I worked a bit differently for this and tried to imagine how a real artist makes a picture. I did a little thumbnail sketch first which I never ever do, there's never any planning stages usually and whatever first doodle I do ends up as the final image. For this one though there was two pencil stages before I started laying in the colour.

I tried to work with different colours in this piece too, sort of a warm yellow highlight, cool purple shadows and like a green mid tone. I am pretty colour-blind though so it's probably actually all in blorgentas™ and graghcillian™ hues.

I had an old sketch of a robot that I based the ones in the picture on, he pops up over on the right there. You can see a couple of photos I took for reference in one of the stages too. The idea was this was set in Wellington and the sea had reclaimed Lambton Quay and had brought a bunch of monster crabs with it. Obviously the only way to resolve this type of issue is to send in a bunch of human-shaped robots with guns and a futuristic tank.

WCW Signing at Unity Books!

Yes! World Championship Wrestling will be signing at... what? You mean White Cloud Worlds? Ah well, come along anyway and get your stuff scribbled on - and maybe even a book while you're at it!

Art of District 9

I'm pimping books like crazy! Here's our artbook for District 9. If you like that kind of stuff this book is pretty good, heaps of drawings that have never seen the light of day before - some of mine deservedly so! That's the cover and a couple of pages of early alien designs I did, you can see quite a few more pages from the book here.
If you buy it from the Weta Workshop store you get a stencil signed by Greggo, Dan, Leri, David and what?! Christian Pearce? I've heard of that guy!

White Cloud Worms! I mean Worlds

Hey hey! Here's something pretty neat, this weirdo I work with put this book together that's just about to come out. I think he's just about to come out too but there's no book about that yet*. This book has lots of really nice art-drawings in it and also some by me! Christian Pearce!

You can mash these words to check out the website for a look at some of the art n' junk.

*Paul Tobin is neither a weirdo nor coming out, not that there's anything wrong with those things.

BMreX!

A few dudes at work donated a piece each for this Plunket charity thing. The idea is that they were little doodles that people would stick on the fridge like something their dumb kids would do so I hand in a scrawl of a dinosaur riding a bike. Imagine my shame when my so-called "colleagues" deliver stuff like this and this! They're trying to get me fired you know.

Art for Ted Chiang's "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" - part four!

Here's a couple of the finished illustrations along with the initial pencil sketches. Ted knew he wanted a watercolour look right from the start and I figured it would be fun to do these traditionally ie; real paint. That idea got the kibosh due to deadlines, the need for multiple variations, global warming and the fact that I am not very good at painting.
I ended up using Artrage to paint up my pencils. I had a pretty tough time with it - I find the interface a bit weird and it really seems to struggle with large images but boy it does some neat stuff! It's kinda cool not knowing how something works and just goofing around with it, sometimes stuff happens that is better than what your dumb brain would come up with. The tough bit is trying to make it happen again!

There's a demo of Artrage but the full version is only like a hundred bucks, well worth it in my most humblest of opinions.

Art for Ted Chiang's "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" - part three!

Here's a few of the robot designs and painting styles I went through. Ted saw an old robot I had drawn (the blue one sitting at the bottom) and that ended up being the basis for the robot in the book.

These ones were all pencil sketches coloured up in photoshop but for the watercolour look we settled on I used Artrage, I'll tell you about my struggles with that in a minute!