Taken through the glass cabinet of a display in the Oxford Pitt Rivers museum. This thing was incredible to look at and just had me fixated for probably half an hour.

No colour alterations have been made to this photo: it’s “as is” from the camera apart from cropping and sizing down.

For the project I’d been working on at Team17 I was required to learn 3D Studio Max.. I’d been using Maya for years and it was a refreshing chance to learn a new package.

This image is entirely modelled and rendered from scratch in Max as part of the learning process- I wanted to make sure I could match a painterly style as close as possible.

The trees, for example were modelled in 4 entirely different ways and the ground texture was an almighty effort of cross breeding blends and fall-off. The only problem I discovered along the way is Max’s handling of transparency while there’s fog present in a scene.

Doodlings with pencil and paper, this sketch I used as a base for a wee competition/challenge on GFXArtist.com a good few years ago.  (Admin-insert link here) mainly as a colouring excersise while fishing for texture artists to hire

The Bridge Inn is somewhere I’d love to explore. It’s outside the West Gate of the town of Penaggon; A pub where Pirates and Wizards can drink in peace -safe in the knowledge that the city guard are close (but not too close for comfort..)

They also serve Newky Brown Ale!

Because I do mostly 3D imagery, I decided to try my hand at painting again (cut and pasted from 2003). This image was painted directly in photoshop, entirely from mind ( though I must confess, mostly as a ” doodle” .The perspective may be all wrong, but at least there’s not a straight line to be seen.)

Far too many concepts to be displayed in a small post (for now). Will work a thumbnail browser into this section as soon as I can. Just placing them in a slider frame teaser while testing layout options.

Similar to the Blue Dragon (Midght Dragon) this guy was entire modelled by poly (slice, extrude, move) but this time in 3DS Max, as part of the process of learning that package for a larger project. As a yardstick, this one really helped me by having the Blue Dragon to compare to. It’s amazing to look at it now, as it’s embarrassingly “rubbery” when I look at it, I’d LOVE to revisit this guy with modern sculpting approach.

Strangley (even though it makes me sqirm to look at this now, as does most old artwork) it was phenominally popular at the time, and even ended up front page as an article on CGSociety.org!   There’s a “making of” the dragon article as well, which I’ll put here as soon as the rest of the content of this site is ready.

Mercedes Monster was requested for an advertising campaign a few years back. They intended to push the “beast under the hood” as a real monster presumably to appeal to that part of the market they were missing out on (hey, I never question these things!). It was supposed to be very organic, but include elements of the car and engine design (note the bizarre nostril/logo layout).

I’d not done any character work for a while at this time, and then I was asked by the guys over at DeviantArt for a “Dark” themed image for their 2004 (done in 2003) Calender.  It also seemed like a perfect excuse to get this guy out of my head.

Entirely modelled in Max (polygon box modelling) and textured in photoshop.  Again, please bear in mind the poly limits available at that time, let alone the modelling tools – Vanilla max, no mudbox/Zbrush/BodyPaint etc.

2010 :  Ohh this one has haunted me for a while, and frustratingly unfinished.  One of thes days I’ll get around to re-working it as it deserves.

2002: Partly modelled in Maya, partly painted in photoshop. This image is my step into making the dragon series. After the overwhelming response to the Blue Dragon (midnight) I decided to make a series of images based on the colours.

Being a glutton for punishment I decided to do the Green Dragon as the next in the series -to get the most difficult one out of the way. It’s incredibly hard to make a picture dramatic using just green colours as a theme.

Ahh “Midnight Dragon” was pretty much the one that started me off on rendering Dragons. It’s one of those things I really enjoy doing on this side, as it never crosses with my main client work (even doing games, I’ve never had a project that required a dragon !).

The curious thing is, I also tend to use it as a yardstick now, comparing the capabilities of new software vs the tech that was available in the past. Midnight Dragon, here was done wayy back in 2002 and as such there were no sculpting utilities available, no normal mapping, no functional displacement mapping, basic shading etc, and god forbid you use more than 30k polys. This guy was entirely modelled and rendered poly-by poly (cut, extrude, move) in Maya (Maya 4, if I remember right)