One of the pieces of work I’m most proud of from my time at MPC was ‘Diorama’. I had the opportunity to co-present this work at SparkFX in Vancouver, and at Siggraph 2019 in LA.
Diorama Title
Category: title_image
Diorama Final
Final layout example from one of the demo run-throughs. Approx 4 mins of work (see the embedded video to see it done live).
Diorama Pokemon
Diorama was used in some way on most shows that came through MPC Vancouver – including 10,000 billboards for the Ryme City environment on ‘Pokémon’s Detective Pikachu’.
Diorama Video
John and I were invited by Unity Technologies to present ‘Diorama’ at Siggraph 2019. Unity were kind enough to record and release the talk online.
Realtime Titles
Despite starting off as a 2D concept artist, I’ve found a lot of my personal projects have drifted into technical experiments in realtime and VR.
Houdini Engine
Two Houdini procedural assets combined in Houdini Engine for Unreal
Realtime Unreal
Unreal scene, combining the same assets
JL Titles
MPC Vancouver was the primary vendor for the 3rd act of ‘Justice League’ – set in the fictional town of ‘Skrunda1’ (a mix of Chernobyl and Pripyat). The Environments team was tasked with dressing a full CG city, 12km square
JL Daytime
This daytime shot is one of the few where our work is really visible. A lot of the rest of the team’s efforts is hidden behind FX, motionblur, and a heavy red grade.
Neverland Titles
Two part TV Movie for AnthemFX – meant to be a prequel to the ‘Peter Pan’ story.
MPC Titles
I worked for MPC Vancouver for more than 8 years, 7 of them as head of the 3DDMP / Environments department.
As far as I can tell, I hired 154 people into the department during my time there, around 40 for their first ever role in VFX.
The studio closed it’s doors for good in December 2019
Sanctuary Titles
My first project in Vancouver, for AnthemFX, the company that brought me to Canada. They’re sadly long gone, but they threw amazing parties…
Leap Year Titles
This was my first film at Cinesite, and the one that taught me not to chase projects. I was initially very disappointed to be given this instead of ‘Prince of Persia’, but ended up having a great time, and the opportunity to have large creative impact – even if it’s not necessarily a film I’d actually watch…
Triffids titles
Arch-viz Titles
Concepts Title
KAEC 2
Freelance contract for ‘FlamingCGI’
Aerial Timelapse of ‘King Abdullah Economic City’
Concept trailer
Trailer park interior for ‘PaintingPractice’. Based on an idea by Dan May.
Leap Year Boston Night
Night shot of Boston Harbour, all digital. Was meant to have a ‘magical’ look, but wasn’t really in keeping with the surrounding shots, and ultimately never made the final cut.
MPC – TFH
The Finest Hours – 2015
I was again lead artist on this show, as well a HoD of the whole of the Vancouver environments department. I created several coastline matte paintings for this show, as well as some skydomes. This is one that I worked on at a rate of about 1hr/week for the duration of the show – a fully digital grass bank, blowing in the wind.
MPC Jersey Boys 2
Another of the few shots I completed myself for ‘Jersey Boys’ – a Matte painting / set extension of Coney Island amusement park. Wheel and roller coaster were rendered in Modo, with models and textures by Corey Sewell and Aline Nordmark.
Neverland spirit colony
Matte painting of the Tree Spirit colony on fire. Flames and smoke were added by the FX artists.
Icebreaker dawn
Icebreaker at dawn (the ‘hopeful’ shot at the end of the episode). I don’t think this made the final cut.
LVK Titles
LVK town street
Stages of the ‘Town Street’ illustration for the Film’s prologue. The sequence was meant to have a comic-book feel, so these illustrations were used as backgrounds in the actual film, rather than concepts for a more photo-real painting.
Human body title
Blood SEM
One of the key ‘looks’ of the documentary was to use Scanning Election Microscopy (SEM) images for any shots within the body. As SEM images are basically depth maps, I used them as displacement maps within ‘Fusion’ to create pseudo-3D scenes. Combined with extreme depth of field and false colour effects, the results were very effective.
Title Post
