10 Oct 2011

Concepts & Illustration




Some caricatures from the 2026 caricature challenge in January






Viking Hirdsmen defending a ridge

Scribe writing at his desk



cover for D&D adventure composite created from two Midjourney images.






This and five below - D&D module illustrations - edited Midjourney images








illustration/concept
composites for Du mobile services - using Midjourney AI characters



all elements created in Midjourney and composited together in Photoshop

Maya 3d animation and AE compositing of on-screen content. Environment is AI generated

Maya 3d animation and AE compositing of on-screen content. Environment is AI generated



Forest Djinni






















2d avatar combinations

vector game icons

hand drawn game icons












glum commuter























Tullow Oil book illustrations



Tullow Oil book illustrations

Tullow Oil book illustrations



ADSSC site safety film

























(below) 2d and 3d art and design for various kids TV shows in development. Click on images to enlarge. Our company has developed several of its own animated series and we also were contracted by the BBC to develop the pitch of it's successful kids series Kerwhizz.

CLICK ON PICS TO ENLARGE
















custom icons for Owlbear D&D online map server




Cryptopunx - generative figure illustration layers




fantasy river castle


see 

Gnome Land

CBBC Kerwhizz concept art

Viking settlement - 7th Art ibook

corporate illustration - Myriad Global

2d Mars concept

2d Mars concept - scrolling parallax layers



BBC I Caesar illustrations - series and book

Kerwhizz concepts


Kerwhizz concepts

Industrial Salt pop promo 


Star Street pop promo



pop promo

I Caesar

energy sector safety video
































Life Drawing and Anatomy

I still occasionally sketch the kids or people round the house or nearby. Back in the nineties I was very prolific in studying the human form. I sketched from memory, from life, copying artists and copying from photos. I have made realistic, stylised and caricatured portraits of real and fictional people / characters. Here's a selection of a few taken from old sketchbooks.










11 Aug 2011

Grading and Colour Correction

The use of highend compositing software always includes being able to use the inbuilt sophisticated colour correction tools. Many live action composites require sometimes quite dramatic or enhanced colour, contrast and brightness settings. The range of looks and effects are very great and a lot of real atmosphere can be generated.

here are a few selected examples from across a broad range I've worked on at Liquid TV and SquareZero. Click pics to enlarge.

Retouched Models

click for images for higher resolution.
exercise in speed retouching - taking 20 minutes - that is quite slow by professional retoucher standards but I do not have warper plug  ins on my PS - using only Liquify and clone tool etc.

Face 'cleaned up' ie polished smooth and slapped in digital makeup. About half hour's work.

Fashion showcase

I have made some simple Photoshop exercises by seeing how fast I can produce some typical retouching, clean up and showcasing images.

Simple background removal and then removal of the dummy also. About 14 minutes - in high rez.

Removal of dummy and background. Made up back of collar.

Cut out from model and adding of fake inside area around collar area


Parallax Scrolling ( for game or animation backrounds )




Parallax view with complex multiple layers of 2d art. If scrolling / panning left to right, the layers at the back would move slower than the ones nearer the front. In this case the setup is for a zoom through the images not a pan or scroll. You can tell this because the panels are all the same width ( see below )



A simpler depth layout. The background sky would not move at all . The foreground palm trees would pass by soonest. The foreground elements have to be longer than the back ones as when scrolling they move faster past the camera.

This is a four level depth environment I made - the front layer was even longer but I cropped it. the back layer represents the widest camera framing. When layers are moving this scene gets a real feeling of depth. This is a concept for an iPhone game app background - the scrolling backgrounds being relatively easy to program and giving a great sense of depth to the game occurring in the foreground.