You Went Down

Ok, so I like to think of myself as a pretty good illustrator most of the time. I've designed for many movies, illustrated dozens of books, created a whole world of Rayguns, robots and intergalactic racism with Dr. Grordbort's (new book in November plug plug).
So I thought, 'I wonder how excellent am I at animation?".
Turns out, not very.

Nevertheless, the results are out on the internet and hey, all in all, they're kinda cute.

Oh yeah. You might be wondering how these hyper realistic moving images were created. Is it some new version of Maya running on twelve Playstation 3's? Or did he get the render wall at Weta Digital cranking for a few weeks? Neither of these is true.
It's a little app, like Colors for the DS called Animanatee that you can create quick animations on.
I did almost all these lying in bed at night when I shoulda been reading a clever book.


Enjoy.

Link

99 Dodgy Slips Video

Well, I finally got round to uploading a video of some of my 99 Dodgy Slips images being created in Colors.
Christian and I did this during the exhibition, they were on continuous playback for the duration of the show. Now Christians video has had some great success getting onto Jalopnik (a car blog) and Kotaku, one of my favourite blogs entirely about videogames.
So I thought, "You tard, put a video up while you still give a damn."
Here it is!

Watch it while you can. 99 Dodgy Slips, of course, has nudity and reveals parts of feminine anatomy that some people seem to enjoy being offended by.
I won't be surprised if it's taken down quick smart.

The Boozer

He stays out all night, drowning his sorrows.
You'd stay out on the turps too if you were just told by your manufacturer that you were an android and not actually sentient, just programmed to think you were sentient.
That shit is deep. Think about it...

Wha.....

What is this thing? I have no fucking idea.
I fell asleep at the wacom, woke up...hello.... whatever the fuck you are...
If you have any idea, you are probably on drugs.
Remember, winners don't use drugs.
Except for medical mary-jane. Winners love that.
It cures their lumbago.

District 9 Trailer up

The trailer for Neill Blomkamps District 9 is up and I am smiling.
This is the only film I've taken time away from Dr. Grordbort's to work on at Weta over the last couple years, and it's finally nearing completion.
It's personally very exciting for me to finally see this trailer. I consider the design work I've done one this film to be my best so far, and it's incredibly gratifying to see a glimpse of it finally made public.
Check it out here.

Prints and 99 Dodgy Slips Books available

Eyeball Kicks, a great little pop-art (best term I could think of - they sell excellent art prints, books and toys) store in Wellington, is now selling one of my personal prints.
Idrisopod meets Earth man was a painting that I did for a friends son and I believe it's limited to 20 pieces.
They're also selling the 99 Dodgy Slips books for $99 NZD and they ship internationally.

I have various other prints and limited edition posters for sale. These are all from the Dr. Grordbort's world and you can get them at the Wetacave in Wellington or from the online store at WetaNZ.
Check that shit out!
You know, if ya want to.

The Battery Updated

I've been deep in Dr. Grordbort's land writing my follow up book for the last three months so I've barely had a chance to update the blog. In the background however, my good friend David Vega Morales has been updating my main website The Battery.
It doesn't look or function a whole lot differently, but it's now way easier for me to update. So when I have time I'll be able to put up new images etc..
Please come along and check it out. There are a few new images in the latest gallery.
After the new Grordbort book comes out (later this year, look for an announcement at Comic Con), I'll finally put a whole bunch of that artwork up. I'm really looking forward to seeing all this work finally made public. It's been a huge job.
The Battery is now my personal site but you can check out my Battery founding partner, Warren Mahy's work at the Mahy Studio.
He draw good.

99DS Opening Night Photos

OK, so 99 Dodgy Slips & 99 Deadly Sleds is already over, but wanted to throw some pics up of the opening night anyway.
It was a fun night and lots of friends and a few weirdos came along to enjoy the amazing selection of complimentary bananas, banana lollies and banana flavoured milk.
Oh, yeah, they looked at the art too and all of them said nice things so I was very happy.

Many of the prints sold from the exhibition during it's time open, but we still have some available as well as the art books which compile all the images.
If anyone is interested please get in touch via the comments and I'll figure out a way to get them to you.
The prints are from one part of only two editions (edition one of all 99 prints having sold before the opening of the show) and sell for NZ$99 each (roughly USD$50 at the time of writing).
The limited edition art books also sell for NZ$99.
Christians prints and books are available for the same amount.

Thanks again to all that came along.

Photos by Steve Unwin!

Getting Directions....

Sometimes, you just gotta know where the nearest public toilets are.

Imagine FX Dinosaur

Dinosaur! Well sort of.
It's a Dinosaur that I created for an ImagineFX Tutorial (British concept art magazine) and it's entirely fictitious as you could probably guess.
I think I called it Atrocitasaurus, which is derived from a Latin base and means Hipster Doofus Lizard....or something like that. No wait, it means Lasers for Eyes Lizard...
This concept along with a bone diagram and some other supporting sketches became the basis for my friend and fellow Wetite, Steve Lambert's 3D version.
He created that (modeling, texturing, rigging and animating!) for 3D World magazine.

Spam!

Here are a few older pics that I don't have here on my blog. They are at other places on the internet (like my very outdated website) so you may or may or may not have seen them.
All of these are personal pieces that I've done in my spare time away from Weta.
I'd love to add some Weta work at some point but I'm always really hesitant to do so, gotta get permissions etc.. boring shit.
The picture of the boxer is now available as a T-Shirt through my friends at Brawla.
Also, happy new year! It's sunny and beautiful outside, a glorious day. Perfect weather for playing videogames!

99DS -Dodgy Slips and Deadly Sleds

It's been a long time coming from my point of view (I finished the art almost exactly a year ago and planned to have the exhibition early in the year) but the 99 DS exhibition finally has a date and location.
I had finished all my art and was encouraging my friend Christian Pearce to do the same (99 pieces all on one theme or idea quickly sketched on Colors for the Nintendo DS) and the plan was a small exhibition at a small location, very simple. I probably would have had the exhibition even before Christian had finished if things had gone to plan.
Well, the year has worn on, and my work on Dr. Grordbort's and on District 9 at Weta chewed up all my time
Over the year, the plan for 99 Dodgy Slips shifted and changed but all for the better.

The exhibition will now showcase both mine and Christians work - 99 Dodgy Slips and 99 Deadly Sleds.

We'll be having the exhibition in the Wellington city centre at the Civic Square, right outside the City Gallery.
We're fitting out a unique space for the exhibition, two stripped back, white shipping containers joined together with my 99 pieces in one and Christian's 99 in the other.
I think this is way more appealing than either of our collective works on their own.
We also plan to have a couple of monitors showing the actual painting process (at an accelerated rate) which is a really cool feature of the Colors software.
We'll have 198 mounted prints altogether, which will be for sale, as well as limited edition art books containing all the prints.
The whole thing is possible due to a few people and I have to give massive credit to them.
Richard Taylor, my friend and boss man and his partner Tania Rodger have enabled the whole thing, making what would otherwise be a simple little exhibition into something quite unique and special. Linda Hughes and Tracey Morgan are the ones behind the scenes doing all work that goes into actually getting something like this off the ground. They rule - that's a scientific fact.

99 DODGY SLIPS and 99 DEADLY SLEDS
An Exhibition by Greg Broadmore and Christian Pearce
Civic centre
Wellington
New Zealand
1st - 26th Feb 2009

Opening night is on the 2nd I think... come along if you're in town! There's pictures of naked chicks did mention?

www.99DS.net

Dragon Abuse

Another Dragon! Again, this is for French publishers Daniel Maghen who publish a series of books on Dragons.
This image is for Volume 3 which will be published next year some time.
I wanted to create a very different image from the last one I did.
The first one was of a powerful looking beast and this guys almost the complete antithesis.
A meek, brow beaten creature, chained and subdued.
While talking about this piece with my friend Jamie Beswarick, a fellow designer at Weta Workshop , he mentioned the behaviour of a circus or captive Elephant that's been restrained with a small, short chain since infancy. Even when fully grown they think this now pitiful chain will hold them and so don't move beyond it's bounds. That's exactly the sort of mindset I imagined for this guy.
He doesn't know his own strength.
I like the idea that one day, this Dragon will lose it and eviscerate his keeper. He goes Dragon postal if you will.

Brandywine Museum

I recently returned from a trip to the States where I visited a fair few places, spent time in a lot of museums and saw a lot of really inspiring art.
The pinnacle of all this, for me, was seeing the illustrative art of American Illustrator of the turn of the last century N. C. Wyeth.
I made a special trip south of New York city to Wilmington, Delaware where I visited the Brandywine museum.
This simple but astounding little museum contained dozens of his original artworks which were so astounding to me that I can't really put it into words.
For me it was as close to a 'spiritual' experience as a guy who doesn't believe in spirits is ever going to get.
The Museum also houses dozens of Howard Pyle pieces (they've had 100 new pieces donated to them recently which they have on rotation) which are also astounding to see up close.
On top of that, they have many works by N. C. Wyeth's son and grandson as well as a few by Harvey Dunn and Frank Schoonover amongst many others.
If you are ever close to Delaware, go and visit, you won't regret it.
Unless you are suffering from the brain damage...

OW!

This is another quick piece I created for Radical comics.
What's it all about you ask?
Well, sometimes, when a man hates another man very much, he hits the other man with a sharpened stick. In the head. Hard.
That's the miracle of love.
I mean war...

Raygun Princess Deuce

This is the final version of the design that I did for Richard's stylish Citroen Coupe.
It's more Deco than the other design and although I prefer the other design, I would choose this too for a car like his.
A friend, Mike Norman, is sculpting the final piece and I can't wait to see how it turns out.
It'll be cast in metal, chrome plated and then screwed to the bonnet to make the car go faster.
Sexy and aerodynamic.

Angry!!!!!

This picture depicts an angry dude who wants to club the viewer to death.
I wanted it to be an allegory for modern mass media's subliminal bombardment of masculine stereotyping... aaah, I can't keep that up. I don't even know what 'allegory' means.
It's actually another picture I did at Weta for Radical Comic's Hercules property.

Raygun Princess

This piece was done in some spare time at Weta as a design for my friend, and boss man, Richard Taylor.
It's a hood ornament design for his Citroen Coupe . The car is a beautiful old 1930's era (I think) classic that Richard wanted a sleek retro futuristic ornament for.
This design was actually the rejected one.
The final design (I may post it later) was more Deco styled and symmetrical, more suitable for the cars aesthetic..
This one was fun too so I made a poster of it which resides in Weta's design room.

The Hiker

What is the story behind this piece? I can't remember, I was drunk when I drew it.
I don't endorse drawing drunk though.
Stay off the hooch kids.

Invasions!

This piece was done today, took probably two or three hours? Quite a long time for the result really. Still, it's fun, simple and chunky.

Ruric - Medieval Angry Man

More blood and guts. This was done for Radical Comics for their property, Medieval.
It was a really quick piece and took maybe a few hours. Not that I am that efficient all the time.
Initially he had a beard, but it got a quick photoshop shave in the second iteration.
I really enjoy quick illustrations like this, they're the most fun. Best to get a simple concept done and dusted before you have a chance to mess it up by labouring it.
Much thanks to Radical for a fun job.

Here be Dragon

This ornery beast is a Dragon (no shit) that I illustrated for a French publication, L'univers des Dragons Tome 2.
It's not out yet but the previous edition is on sale now and includes the work of John Howe, Paul Bonner and Guillermo Gonzalez amongst others.
I'm not usually really into doing traditional fantasy illustration so much, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to draw a Dragon. They're like wacky Dinosaurs.
I wanted to make it a classic fire breather, as is the implication here, but treat it as just a big animal, not a malevolent intelligence or anything.
You can see the fist book here and buy it here
Volume 2 will be out at the end of September 08.

Hercules and Mates

This line up of ye olde thugs is a piece I did through Weta Workshop for Radical Comics. It's just been printed as a wrap around cover for an issue of their Hercules comic.
I actually went through a few couple versions before I got to this one and it was worth it, the earlier ones were shite.
This version must be better because it has lot's of spilled blood and brains.
Thanks to Dave Elliott for badgering me until I got it right.
You can visit their website here.

When Space was on Drugs....

Here we see a friendly astronaut (or cosmonaut, let's not be racist) greeting a lovable alien quadraped. How fun!
Later they might sit down for petting and cuddles, or maybe the jovial human explorer will glass the planet from orbit and zone it for interstellar strip malls.
I hope it's the first option.
I did this bright and sunny picture for my good friend Steve Unwin's (Weta Workshop photographer) son Idris.
I was sober when creating it.

Robot has body image issues

When I was 12, I wanted to grow up and have Arnold Schwarzeneggers biceps. This didn't happen.
Despite this, sometimes, I think our future robotic overlords will have similar aspirations.

CGNZ Interview

I did this interview a while back now and I really like this site. It's the New Zealand equivalent to something like ConceptArt.org.
I highly recommend it.
Interview here.

STOP!

Even baby eating ogres need a pep talk sometimes.
Go!

99 Dodgy Slips

These are a few of the images that I'll be showing in an upcoming exhibition. I did them all over my three weeks Christmas 2008 holiday on my Nintendo DS with an amazing piece of software written by Jens Andersson called Colors.
Whenever I had a spare 5 minutes, in bed, on the couch at a friends, waiting outside a shop while my girl went shopping, on the can, wherever I was I would draw one on of these.
Most of them took about 2 or 3 minutes, but a few cantankerous examples took almost an hour!
I thought I'd do maybe 100 or so, maybe 125 and then do an exhibition with the results. As it turned out, the software only supported 99 file saves, so I had my total images decided for me by a fucking robot! Still, it was a wise robot, cos I was beginning to get RSI.
Why girls slipping on Banana peels? Excellent question!

Samurai Machine Gunners

This is an image I made a few years back, but I still like it.
It has the two prime ingredients of any great composition: Samurai and a Machine Gun.

Thompson Submachine Gun and Friend

This was a 30-45 minute sketch I did for my little brothers birthday. I should do more like this cos I tend to like em' way more than the laboured ones. That said, when my little brother finds out I spent a measly 30 minutes on his birthday present, I'm going to get disowned.