Dr. Grordbort's Random Treats

Some random sampling's of the Dr. Grordbort's world for your edification.
I have just googled the word 'edification' and I have found out that it means: "The instruction or improvement of a person morally or intellectually".
Now, I am not so sure that pictures of tanks, angry soldiers and more or less nude-women reclining in a fantasy setting have the power to improve anyone morally or intellectually and most would argue for the reverse, but I like the word and cannot be bothered to find a replacement.

The first is from my new book Triumph and the other two from Victory.
The Moon Maiden image is also available in paper instead of pixel form as a limited edition print.

I've just survived a really fun week doing the CDW workshop here in Wellington alongside ridiculously clever chaps, Aaron Beck and Ben Mauro. Also sharing his insights was the masterful, Robh Ruppel who also turns out to be an all-round top bloke.
I'll be posting some of the images from those 5 days over the next couple weeks.

The event was a surreal experiment for me - I normally wake in the afternoon, but every morning at 9am sharp (it felt sharp at least) I was revealing my crude and rough shod illustrative processes to a more than accomplished crowd.
Seriously, half of those in attendance should have been up on the stage instead of me.

Nuthin' but Mech

Calm down, calm down! It's not a typo. I know how to spell 'nothing', okay?
What I am not sure about is how to spell oarsum.
Regardless, oarsum is how best to describe the new book based on the fantastic blog of same misspelled name.
It's chock full of amazing robot art and also this badly postured slackerbot from me, Greg Broadmaugh.
It's an old un' I know, I know, but you know what's also getting old? Your attitude, that's what.

Go buy it or don't.

Villains and Assassins

Strychnin Gallery in Berlin is having a new show opening 10th of August featuring some incredible artists.
I have a couple pieces in the show including this limited edition piece called Robot Killer and one of the Dr. Grordbort's Rayguns.

At the moment, Strychnin is the only gallery in the world to sell Robot Killer and it's limited to 20 prints.


That's right 20. I said 20 and I mean 20. 
After all 20 are sold, I will delete the files but burn one last copy to a USB stick. I will then cover it in peanut butter, eat it, digest it and shit it into sewerific oblivion where only giant rats or crocodiles can reproduce it for their unknowable subterranean purposes.

Although not clinically tested, purchasing one of these prints will likely cure your lumbago and dog-herpes, so between that and the sewer thing, you kinda have to buy one.

The show features some annoyingly terrific artists like George Pratt, Christian Gossett, Paul Tobin, and my personal favourite, Many More.

I will also not be doing the USB sewer thing.

Tintin pt 3

The last wee bunch of pics.
These were fun colour and light studies, and even though we knew these scenes wouldn't be in the film, it was just about examining a possible style and feel.

If you enjoyed the film, or just want to go deeper into the film making and world building process at Weta, I really recommend checking out the Art of the Adventures of Tintin Ipad app. 
It's one of the most elaborate digital books I've ever seen and well worth exploring.

Tintin pt 2

Both Nestor and Haddock were really fun to work on.
I used photos that I snapped of various people from around the Weta design room to construct key aspects, and followed Herge's lines as closely as possible.
I think the mouth in 'spit-gag' Haddock is Christian Pearce.

Tintin pt 1

 

The Adventures of Tintin has been out for a while so I thought I'd show a little of the work that I did for the very early stages of the film.
I have to say, I had very little to do with the film overall, and simply watched as Chris Guise and his team worked their magic at Workshop, while the guys at Weta Digital worked ridiculous hours to bring this cherished world to life.
My small contribution was near the start of the project, and involved simply taking iconic frames or covers from Herge's work and rendering it as realistically as I could in the time we had.
It was a total departure from my normal work, in that I was slavishly faithful to Herge's lines and contours, as well as using photographic elements, which I seldom like to do.
This is not the sort of creative work I usually like, but for some reason I found the whole process quite refreshing.
It's one of the few times that I've just obsessively observed and followed a comic masters work and forgotten about my own creative intentions.
Quite liberating for a change.
If you want to see more, I'd recommend checking out the in-depth art of book Weta has made, and the incredible Ipad version.
More to come.

District 9 Concept Art - Dropship

The Dropship from District 9 was developed very quickly. Just a few concept drawings, all of the same design and it was on it's way into the film.

That's a pretty rare occurrence in film design.

Above you can see one of the early sketches that nailed down the silhouette and angular form, followed by a paint-over from a later stage of an in-production film model.

This quick concept sketch shows concepts like the modular slave hold, mimicking an insectile abdomen at the rear of the ship.
The idea was that the Dropship would carry various modular containers and in this case held a prison like container for the worker aliens.

images©wingnut film

The Embassy VFX created the first model from my super basic, quasi-retarded Sketchup mess, but I needed to do this paint-over to illustrated details and construction that weren't evident in the first concept drawings.

In the end, Weta Digital handled most of the Mothership and Dropship scenes in the film and added even further detail so that it held up when the camera got very close.

District 9 Exo Suit Concept Art - part 2

images©wingnut film

In this weeks instalment, we see two more of the Exo suit concept pieces - it's like a sequel you see.

The head close up was done for Weta Digital and Embassy VFX to aid the modelling and texturing of the final model. It shows the mandibles that were there to reflect the alien physiology externally. I figured if the aliens had the equivalent of a 'hand' on their face (the complex crab like feeders as well as tentacles) they would use them for communication - a more complex, maybe pictographic version of our facial expressions.
If that was the case, then this would be integral to them and it would be necessary to make an analogue on the robotic suit too.
It also makes it look 'mean as' and also 'muy alarmante'.

The second illustration was a simple frontal plan view - very quick and dirty but showed the frontal proportions for the modelling process.

There were also side on views, internal views and diagrams showing how the chest opened and the internal system extended out to take in the pilot.
But you can't see those here because I have pasted them in using invisible pixels.

Tune in next time when more pictures of things are accompanied by hyper-nerdy descriptions.

District 9 Concept Art - Some Guns...

images©wingnut film

Guns! I like to design guns. What a sad human being I am.
They're pretend guns so that makes ok though eh? Hello?....

These three designs were all based on a phrase or concept that Neill threw out to me:
An electric 'lightening' gun (the Arc Generator), a Gas Thrower- something that would project out gas or liquid like a flame thrower, but unlit - perhaps some destructive, corrosive gel or gas (it ended up just blowing shit up in the film - corroding humans costs a lot of effects budget...) and an Assault Rifle.
The Assault rifle has all these little tubes down the side - the idea being that each tube discharges an explosive burst of gas one after the other down the length of the barrel behind the projectile - a linear accelerator gun, like a rail gun but without the magnets. Of course it would fire these all rapidly to get a high rate of fire.

That shit is nerdy.

We went through a few colour schemes - the arc generator was originally black with red accents (we tried a few colours) and Neill sent back a tweaked version to me (hence me crediting him on the design, and the leftover watermark).

There were also versions of the Arc Generator and the Assault Rifle adjusted to go on the Exo suit.

ImagineFX Isssue 50 - District 9

Issue 50 of ImagineFX mag is out soon (now?) and has a feature on the conceptual design we did at Weta Workshop for District 9.
There's a good compliment of our concept art included as well as interviews from David Meng, Leri Greer and myself.
There's some really nice photos of David Meng's incredible Prawn sculptures and a lot of Leris' preparatory work for the graphic design of the alien language.

District 9 Concept Art -MNU

images©wingnut film

More District 9 concept work.

We built two armoured Hilux's at Weta Workshop and both got pretty messed up on set (as you may remember from the film, one crashed into the Exo suit, and one ended up on it's roof).
Neill provided me with the render of the model which he had added bullbars and guns to, and as a starting point I referred to one of Christian Pearce's very early sketches - that's why I put all three names down as signatures.

I don't tend to work over renders or photographs for the bulk of my work, and almost never for personal work. For a design job like this though, I was adding to an existing vehicle, so I worked into the render adding photographic elements like lights and guns and illustrating the armour panels and anything I couldn't find.

For the final build, we had to lose the MG's and mounts due to cost but everything else stayed exactly the same.

The MNU armour was a lot of fun. This full armour set was intended to be the heaviest version available - some guys would have less, some none.
The idea was to have this armour reflect some of the alien tech, a hint that perhaps MNU had learnt something, however little from the Alien technology over the 25 years or so since arrival.

The logos ( and all the graphic design for the Aliens and MNU) are by Leri Greer - every time I added his logos it brought the designs to life.

District 9 Exo Suit Concept Art - part 1

images©wingnut film

I can finally start showing a little of the concept art that I did for District 9 - these two images along with a few others are up on WetaNZ.com promoting the work on the film we did at Weta Workshop.
I also talked on a Weta podcast a little while back if you want to know more about the process we went through working on D9.

These two images are two of maybe fifteen or so illustrations that I did on this particular design.
I probably did forty or more on earlier designs. (as I mentioned earlier, we actually built a full scale prop of one of the earlier versions but we changed to this design after principal photography was finished)

This version became the final design and went through a few iterations but really didn't change much from the first pass.
It started out as predominately white/grey with black extremities and orange markings. Neill asked that I make it black near the end of the design phase.
Definitely looks more menacing in black, but I kinda liked the mainly white version.
The very first version also had little external arms that Wikus's (or in it's intended form, an alien's) arms would slot into and you can kinda make those out from the back view.

Now that I think about it, I probably did a lot more than fifteen illustrations of this design....
I'll show a few more soon as well as a few other designs.

I've seen some really cool home made models of the Exo Suit now, some in Lego that are particularly good.
This one is great, and this one is proportionately the most accurate.
Pretty impressive considering the lack of decent reference.

More soon.