Maps, Geology, Geography

I started map making graphics back at Liquid TV in the late 90's - working on Pilot Productions Lonely Planet TV series -  'Globe Trekker', 'Treks in a Wild World' and others. I also made many maps combined with geology and geography for energy/oil and gas exploration visuals at Myriad Global Media and Western Geco.

animated + composited maps for Pilot Productions Globe Trekker series

Locator for Texas -Pilot Productions

Europe in 1939

Beko Olympic bid

3d geology formations

Oil site locations - global zooms

3d maps simplified

3d map locator

Udan Emas - oil and gas exploration project film .  Watch this animation here

Kris Energy

fully 3d rendered maps

Lengo bridge locator maps

3d map / site layouts  many more of these here.

USA States locator for Alabama

still from a China locator on global planet orbit and zoom

architectural visualisation

pic in pic maps with explainer 3d animation

terrain map with 3d elements

Tullow Oil - illustration maps for printed book project..

illustrated isometric maps

illustrated isometric map

 

some maps made for RPG games...

fantasy map 

fantasy town

hand drawn map for local event

Selected Composites

Over my career I have composited a huge range of media - mixing everything and anything up - all sorts of artwork,  chromakey, CGI, particle effects, photographs. I've comped titles, virals, films and promos. I've preferred node based software - having been a user of Avid's Illusion . For many years after I used Shake, getting to an advanced level making massive node trees. Now that even Shake is dying off I learned Nuke a year ago and getting myself up to speed on that has been fun. Here's a selection of bits I've comped.

2023 Tourism Australia - DOOH

2023 Indigo DOOH

2024  DOOH screen commercial

Speedo hologram event film

Mazda TVC

BBC  I Caesar - docu-series recreations/ animated matte paintings

BBC idents 'Science You Cant See'

Martini hologram vfx, 3d , comp

Industrial Salt pop promo

Samaritans promo

Najma designed and directed a promo for the Samaritans which involved some beautiful plate shots and tattoo designs which animate on the surface of the people's skin. The trick in these shots was to make the tattoo artwork not feel superimposed but feel like it was really on the skin and wrapping with the skins contours as they move.

There were four main shots to compose - a tear, a heart, chains and the most difficult a set of swallows flying over a mans hands and wrists.

I drew the original  designs for the tattoos in my sketchbook and we scanned them in to split up and colour in Photoshop. The 2d animations of each tattoo were then made in ToonBoom for the  swallows and the tear - Aftereffects for the heart being sewn up and Nuke for the chains which needed warping.

Next up the 2d animations were put onto 3d geometries which matched as closely as possible the contours of the body parts they were to sit on. Using Maya for the back and chains I created four variations of the back and carefully keyframed a blendshape warp between the four positions- so the back deformed as it straightened. The 2d animation of chains was then UV mapped to the back as a jpeg sequence and rendered in two passes - one for the colour and one as a matte pass to cut it out.

Back in Nuke the final sequences were put together - some masking, grading and slight repositioning of elements were needed for the best fit. In the heart sequence there was quite a lot of tracking and warping needed also. All the tattoos also had a soft shadow effect in a dark reddish colour.

I, Caesar

From my archives of work from Liquid TV.  Working with historical documentary production company Seventh Art I recreated a series of scenes of ancient Rome. Working with researchers who provided a range of accurate references the images were built up from a combination of 3d and hand drawn digital painting. Statues and texture were taken from photographic sources. Various composites were then created - dissolves from present day footage and real moving skies were added - even some birds for extra realism. All these illustrations were also published in the BBC book which accompanied the series. The series director and author of the book was Phil Grabsky. These were made in the mid 90's and at that time I was not even painting in Photoshop but using instead Matador - a paint programme that also could be used for animation.

The Snitch

Maya model made for pitch of animated sequence for Swedish broadcasting giant MTG. The model is a white, feather winged variant of the Harry Potter golden snitch.