DRAGON WARS : Fire and Fury

A documentary airing on National Geographic US on Sunday 9th December at 8pm.

Dragons were once thought to be just as real as wolves, boars or deer. Now, go inside some of the greatest battles between man and dragon in Western folklore and explore the many influences that came together to create the sum of all medieval fears.

The show features a number action based animated sequences that depict full on battle sequences between the human heroes and the Dragons.

More images and short previews can be found on the National Geographic site.

More images to follow soon.

Crimson Moon

Old concept sketch from around 2000 that i finally got round to colouring.
Crimson Moon was originally a game concept. It was basically Van Helsing for kids.
The Mill would have been the good guys headquarters.

Silo

These are the first round of designs for the lead character "Silo", named after the place of his birth - an abandoned missile silo.
I decided to re work the Rockabilly character in a slightly more graphic way as well as pile a few more pounds on him. I want to inject a bit of humour into the designs and personalities. Rockababilly also seves as the Cook for our rag tag band of heroes.

Steambot

I'm delighted to have been given an 3d total excellence award for this Robot concept design.
I pulled it together from 3d bits and pieces from older projects. I wanted to just get a concept design out as quickly as possible so used a lot of paint over techniques in photoshop rather than do a detailed 3d model at this stage. Makeing of can be found here.

Imps!

Here is the first post of a project we have in development called "Imps".
Below is a sheet of 3 design options with a star to indicate the option that we preferred at this stage.






















































Stylistically i wanted a simple but expressive form that would lend itself to lots of squash and stretch as the character bounces around. Also we aimed for a strong, graphic silhouette.

CHERRYGHOST - music promo pitch

Main character design and style test.

This is design work for a music promo pitch for UK band Cherryghost and their track "sleep on stones". The lyrics and music style provided the cue for the design direction and led me to imagine a timeless and desolate, wild west inspired landscape and a tale of outlaw bounty hunters who ultimately meet the Reaper in the form of the wraith, Sheriff Cherrygost.

Outlaw character designs
















Style boards - The overall look would be inspired by the classic "wanted" posters from the wild west, incorporating an overall sepia palette with spot colours for blood and police sirens etc. The animation style would be a 2d/3d mix. Points of reference - Sin City, Mike Mignola, Tarrentino, Sergio Leone, Ben Hibbons "Code Hunters" to name but a few!






































I felt that this style choice would provide the right atmosphere to compliment the track, giving scope for wide vistas and dramatic action set pieces that would synchronise with the dynamics of the music.

ABC WARRIORS

Here are some of the character style sheets(produced by myself and Steve Maher)
that show the general direction we wanted to take for the ABC WARRIORS/2000AD teaser trailer.
















We looked at a number of different ABC Warrior designs that have appeared in 2000A.D. over the years for reference.
















The aim was to create a Graphic and bold designs that gave the characters a more contemporary edge whilst still retaining the essence of the original characters.
















Screen Grabs

The production toolkit consisted of 3ds max for modelling and animation, headus uv layout for UV unwrapping (very cool little app). Photoshop and bodypaint for textures. Aftereffects for the final composite. Cebas Final Toon was used to get the final render look we wanted.

This was a great project to be involved in having been a fan of 2000ad for many years.