The Blue Door - Storyboards

Selected panels from a sequence boarded for horror short The Blue Door (2017). For the full storyboard sequence click here.

The Grand Tour

Initial sketches I worked on last year for the planning of a worldwide PR stunt for Amazon Prime's motoring show The Grand Tour. It was fun to work on and was supposed to be light-hearted, but some didn't see the funny side, as this Guardian article makes clear. In hindsight they probably have a point, car crashes aren't that much fun in real life.

I like the article's quote from Gary Rae, from road safety charity Brake "...car worship is dated and misplaced." I wish I could get my four year old son to agree with that... we might be able able to curb his addiction to Hot Wheels cars!

Three Grandfathers

Exploring colour/texture options for a Grandfather character I drew for a Children's book set in Kenya.

Blonde bomber

Just testing out some different approaches to rendering with Photoshop and Painter. The subject is a sketch I did for a character who appeared on this Bondish Misery Bear illustration.

Railsea - route 2

Above is the rough sketch that was chosen as the second route (see my previous post for route 1) to develop for the cover of China Mieville's Railsea. The finished illustration doesn't actually look very different from this initial sketch, but that's not to say I didn't tinker with it endlessly before returning to the original look.

I tried a few variations on the design of the train itself. Part of my inspiration for the redesign were the vintage rail posters that had guided the composition, but another were illustrations of futuristic transport and machinary from science and technology magazines of the 30s. Modern Mechanix had a very particular take on the future. Their covers saw the technology of tomorrow as being beautifully rounded to the point of being bulbous... and red, everything was going to be red in the future apparently.

So I did my Modern Mechanix version of the Mole train Medes. There was a little inspiration too from the Geo Ham motoring illustrations - the chrome side exhausts and the wheel arch styling borrowed from a Delahaye coupe. I wanted to make reference to marine vessels in the design too. This was Rail-sea afterall, and the story itself plays on the story of Melville's Moby Dick. To this end I placed what is essentially the conning tower from a U-boat near the rear of the engine. Out of this protrudes a mast flying a flag, though I didn't go as far as adding sails.
 

I was quite pleased with this look but it didn't go down so well when I asked friends for their opinion. Everyone felt it was overdesigned and just had too much going on. I have to admit that the teardrop styling and red paintwork probably didn't fit very well with the concept of the train being a vessel for hunting giant Moles. It looks more like the sort of thing a Railsea-world movie star would have taken out for a leisurely cruise.

I was casting around again for moletrain inspiration when I came across the vintage rail illustration below by Alexander Leydenfrost. It shows the distinctive Pensylvania Railroad T1 Locamotive, streamlined by Raymond Loewy.

I thought the distinctive wedge shaped nose of the train had something of the look of a U-boat design or possibly the prow of a ship... once again the seafaring connection. It felt like it would make more of a pared down, raw and dangerous vehicle than the portly scarlet predecessor. I also thought the nose design seemed to echo the shape of the Mole, an idea that I liked.. but that may just be me, I probably had moles on the brain by this stage.

I worked up a rough based on my initial route 2 composition, but adding my T1 inspired Moletrain. I'd been asked to take a look at the design of the type for the title too, and found that if I flipped the illustration I could possibly work the title into the tracks running alongside.

I thought I could simplify the design further by limiting the palette to just three colours. I then went even further by suggesting two duotone colourways, which I felt could look quite cool and very striking.

All of this may have been one design change too many however. The panmac design team liked the new sketches but were still really sold on the initial black and white rough sketch I'd shown them, including that pretty simple train design. If 'it ain't broke don't fix it' was the feeling I got, and with the deadline looming I was happy to go with this. So it became a case of going back to the rough and making as good a colour interpretation of that as possible.

Railsea - route 1

Of the number of initial sketches I submitted for the recent Railsea cover (see last post) the example above was one of two that Pan Macmillan's art director Rachel Vale selected for development.

My initial colour rough for this route (above) just seemed a too predictable, a bit of a pale Ashley Wood or Jon Foster imitation, likely to to get lost amongst a sea of other similarly sepia tinted steampunk covers.

I went back to the source of inspiration suggested by the brief. I wondered if those modernist and art deco rail posters that had suggested the composition and foreshortened speeding trains might also suggest a 'new' palette and a fresh approach to my mark making that would help the cover stand out.

Another point of reference for me were the vintage motoring posters of illustrator Geo Ham. These images seemed to capture the excitement and dynamism that the brief required, but also looked quite different from what you might normally find on a fantasy book cover.

Two of my attempts at dressing my composition up in Ham/Vintage rail styling are shown below.
 

It was a fun exercise but I'm not entirely sure I'd have been the best person to execute this style had it made it to the final stage. None of this was to prove a concern however as it was later decided that this route was to be retired to the sidings in favour of route 2... which we'll meet in the next post.

Railsea roughs

Today the young adult paperback edition of China Miéville's Railsea found it's way onto UK bookshelves all swathed in my cover design. Above are four roughs I produced when first asked to submit ideas for the cover (please click the image for a less teenieweenie version).

The brief asked for an image of a train with a boy hanging onto the front brandishing a harpoon. The giant mole, and the vast network of rail lines from the novel were optional. Once the possibility of including a giant mole has been raised however it's pretty difficult to prevent yourself crowbarring the critter in somehow.

The main task was to convey the dynamic adventure of the book. My Art Director suggested I look at some vintage rail posters such as the wonderful samples below, for their use of extreme foreshortening in conveying this sense of dynamism. As you can see from the roughs I stuck pretty close to their angles for my trains.

Two of these roughs were selected for development, but more on that in the next post. Railsea is available now from your local bookstore, or online naturally at the usual places. You can still read the first two chapters online here.

Sketchy heads

St Jean

More old stuff, my attempts at a portrait of the beautiful Jean Seberg as Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger's St Joan (1957).

Fruit and Veg

Marker Vs Digital

I found these old pieces of work recently, both obviously use the same sketch as a foundation. The marker rendered version at the top is probably around ten years old, whilst the digital version dates to about five years ago.

Whilst both have problems in terms of the character itself (not sure why he's balancing a plate on his head in the top version!), and drapery, I'm surprised by how much I like the marker version.

You don't see so much marker work today, but it's still being employed to stunning effect by the likes of Eric Canete and Yildiray Cinar.

head doodle

Author portrait 2

Another go at an author portrait of Graham Thomas. Finished digital painting above and original pencil sketch below.