1. Can you tell me about your background and training in matte painting and design?
I started out doing a traditional technical illustration course at art college, lots of perspective drawing and watercolour and airbrushing. Pretty quickly I realised that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life drawing black and white cross sections of car engines, what I really wanted to do was create paint monsters for a living, so I became a freelance illustrator, specialising in horror illustrations for book covers, but my master plan was always to work in the film industry doing either concept art or visual effects or makeup effects. Back then the film visual effects industry was really difficult to break into, it wasn't like today when there are hundreds of CG jobs advertised on the net, and it was pretty much a viscious circle - you have to have experience to get work in the industry, but you need a job in the industry to get experience! So I kept on sending my work to film companies while I carried on with the freelance work.
Eventually, computer graphics and especially Photoshop came along and killed off a lot of the book cover illustration market, and I figured that CG was now the way to get into the industry, so I went back to college, did a Masters Degree in Computer Animation, got a job at Framestore in London working on Walking with Beasts, then almost immediately got offered a job on Lord of the Rings as a texture painter, so I left England and moved to New Zealand. I never had any formal training in matte painting, it was something I had always wanted to do, so I started working on some of my own shots in my spare time and on the Fellowship of the Ring I was lucky enough to get given some work when the matte painting dept was really busy, first just doing 3D camera projections for some of the other matte painters, then eventually I got given a few shots of my own to paint.
2. What pieces of art or filmmaking do you think have influenced you?
Loads! For the visual side of filmmaking, anything by Ridley Scott. I think his films are just so stunning to look at. Every shot is always beautifully composed and lit. Alien I think is my all time favourite film, I must have almost every 'Art of', 'Making of' and Japanese photo special book that exists on that film. Guillermo Del Toro's work as well, in particular The Devil's Backbone, which is an incredibly beautiful ghost story with fantastic use of colour, and Blade 2 which has a great comic book feel, very vibrant colours and just a great gratuitously violent martial arts vampire horror film. Seven and Silence of the Lambs which both have such detailed and well thought out production design and cinematography that is so important with telling the story, Lawrence of Arabia for the epic landscapes, Amelie for the use of colour.
Film design, Syd Mead's work on Blade Runner, Ralph McQuarrie's designs for Star Wars, both of these artists I think re-defined the look of science fiction films and brought a completely new gritty reality and functionality we hadn't seen before. Gangs of New York, especially the opening sequence which makes you feel like you are really there in that time period. And City of Lost Children for, well, all of it, the story, design, cinematography, fx. Speilberg's early stuff, ET, Close Encounters and particularly Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I will never tire of watching and I think are just perfect storytelling. The original Japanese versions of the Ring, Dark Water, Ju-on and The Eye (I think the Eye was Chinese?), Evil Dead 1 & 2, Exorcist, Psycho, The Birds, Re-Animator and Rosemary's Baby. I think that's enough films to start with!
On the art side, Jim Burns and Chris Moore's science fiction art, Les Edwards and Tim White's horror art, Heironymous Bosch and anything by John Bolton. Lastly Clive Barker's Books of Blood novels which are just overflowing with imagery that deserves to be illustrated or better yet up on screen. Oh, and one last film, Jack the Giant Killer. That was probably the first fantasy film I can remember watching. I think I was about 4 or 5 when I saw it the first time. From that moment on all I was hooked, I wanted to work in the film industry and work on fantasy and horror films (those witches scared the crap out of me when I was 4!)
3. Can you tell me about the first ever major project you worked on?
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. Not a bad place to start really! I'm very gratefull I got to work on all the Lotr films, as they're going to be viewed as another landmark in cinema history.
4. You seem to have travelled quite a bit in support of your art (England, New Zealand and now USA). What kind of experience has that given you?
I get to surf, snowboard and kitesurf in more exotic locations that if I was just living in one country!
5. What would be your favourite visual effects sequence or shot from a film project you've been involved with, or from any film?
From the films I've worked on, the Balrog sequence, Gandalf's jump off the top of Orthanc and Lurtz's decapitation all from Fellowship of the Ring. The Balrog was always my favourite creature from the books, so I was really pleased to get to paint the textures and help define how it looked. I still have a small lead Balrog figure that I painted when I was a 10 year old Dungeons and Dragons geek, so I think I was definitely the best person for the job.
For Lurtz's decapitation, that whole sequence with Boromir being killed I think is so moving and brutal, so the decapitation is a really nasty but neccesary way to end the fight, and the film. Aragorn's sword was CG in that shot, Mel James painted the textures for the sword, and I painted Lurtz's blood on the sword. You'll never notice it on screen but I spent a lot of time working out how the blood would smear on the blade after Lurtz was impaled, his arm cut off and finally his head taken off. Perhaps it's a little worrying I got so much enjoyment out of that!
The Gandalf jump off Orthanc was my first big matte painting shot, I painted ruined Isengard below the tower, and did a lot of work retouching the mountains and valley. At the crew premier in Wellington, that was one of a several big shots that got a cheer from the crew, so I was really quite chuffed to be involved in it.
Effects from other films - there are so many, but a few highlights would be the Ray Harryhausen skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, and the Harpies from the same film, the cowboys roping the Allosaur in Valley of Gwangi, and of course Star Wars and the Empires Strikes Back (the original versions, although I do like the digitally extended city shots of Bespin and Mos Eisley in the special edition). The Starship Troopers bugs and the Reapers in Blade 2. The makeup fx in John Carpenter's the Thing, and the makeup in American Werewolf in London and the Exorcist and the city fx shots in Blade Runner and the Fifth Element.
6. I think your website is very impressive and acts as a great portfolio. How important do you think it is for the work of visual effects and filmmaking artists to be shared and disseminated?
I'd love to see much more production design and concept work out there. There is a huge amount of design work by some of the world's best artists that goes into establishing the look of a feature film, and while there are a fair few 'Art of' books, I think there is a lot of original design work by production designers, concept artists and art directors which remains locked away in film company vaults. There are more books on concept art these days, but even then what you see in the books is only the tip of the iceberg, usually there were hundreds more sketches that are owned by the respective film companies that remain hidden away, but it seems there are no big websites, forums or anything dedicated to the art of the production designer/art director.
7. Do you have time to work on any personal projects?
Yes, I recently directed my first music video, and I'm currently working on the visual effects for a short science fiction short film I directed which should be finished early next year. There are a couple of pictures of some of the designs in the art direction section of my website, the robot wearing the long trenchcoat, the weird goggle guy and the spaceship model.
8. What hardware and software do you currently use for your work?
I work on with whatever hardware of software the company I'm working for provides me with, either PC, Mac or SGI. Software, always Photoshop at some point, and currently Maya 5, and for texture painting Studiopaint. If given a choice, I prefer to work on a Mac. However, once you know how to use one bit of 2D or 3D software, it's all pretty much the same. In the end it's not what software you use, it's the end result that counts.
9. How do your keep yourself interested away from the computer?
I try to get out kitesurfing, surfing and snowboarding whenever I can, watch far too many horror films than is good for me, and read/collect books on art, particularly fantasy/science fiction and horror art.
10. Can you talk about any of the work you have done for Sin City or Constantine?
I'm a big fan of the original Hellblazer comics, which Constantine is based on, so I was pleased to be able to work on the film version. I can't talk about specifics of either film as they're not released yet.