Horrible Histories Behind The Scenes

Want to know more about how Horrible Histories was made? Then look here!

A nice quick documentary piece for children, which includes animation director for Triffic Films Tim Searle presenting (and very nicely I might add) a pencilled storyboard drawn up by yours truly for a comedic sequence about Roman Catapults. Hope you enjoy it!

Sophie In The Souk

Mr Ben Campbell of Rampage Studios gave the me rather fun opportunity to design a title sequence for his new series, Sophie In The Souk, earlier in the year. I did a few illustrations for it, including some more cartoony work I'll put up later, but the biggest part of the job was going through the thousands of production photo's in order to create full 1080p HD montage backgrounds through Photoshop and Illustrator. He had a very particular vision of what he wanted it to look like, and given how messy montages pictures can often look, I'm happy that we managed to find a clean look that doesn't look cluttered or confusing.

Tim at Like A Bull At A Gate, who previously worked on Pepper Pig, then did an amazing job of taking the puppets and backgrounds and creating a super-snappy animation from them which you can see at his website here. All of this was done to a very, very tight schedule of less than a week for both the design and animation, and Tim also created some little interstitial animations involving gags with the two main protagonists (as above). Two other artists, the very talented Ana Bermejo Santos and Caroline Parkinson were also involved in creating some animated scenes and map segments.

It's currently airing on the Travel Channel (click for more info and a clip) and as far as I know, is going down a storm. Congrats to Carlos and Ben at Rampage.

More concepts...

Just some unused concept art that lead up to some final designs that I sadly won't be able to publish.

Poetry Pie hits today at 4.55pm on Cbeebies!

Triffic Film's Poetry Pie finally hits the screens today - and I'm a bit excited. Well, one of the reasons that I worked on it and had a great time, and also because apparently Childrens Laureate poet Michael Rosen also likes it! Anyway, here's the link to the website. Hope you enjoy it!

http://www.poetrypie.com/

See the first episode on iplayer (UK only) here.

Filmore continueth...

... just had a quick fifteen minutes, so now... more Filmore! Updated as usual when they're done.

Some conceptual designs...

Just a few drawings from something I'm working on (will update later). All copyright (c)2009 Benedict Edward Bowen. Older designs below, newer designs above.

Gorman (now Filmore)

This Gorman character cropped up as an injoke meme on an internet forum based on an urban dictionary reference. Then it suddenly took on a life of its own, and Gorman was born... since then I've changed the character name to Filmore to differentiate it from the original meme, and will update the above strips with the new name.

More old boardwork...

Just a small section of a board from Friends and Heroes Series 1 (I think), which is about three years old now (if not four). These boards were pretty hefty, weighing in at around 350 pages per episode. This section is a bible story for a CGI section, hence the shading, and were done quicker and looser than the 2D main sections, which were on-model.

Very Quick Pitch Boards

When I say quick, I mean really really REALLY fast. Got the job on a Thursday night and delivered Friday lunchtime. Phew! Anyway, not the best artwork I can pull off, but I want to put something on here that shows at least quality delivered in a very short time frame that received good feedback from the client. They needed to be presentational boards, which meant a bit of pressure to make sure they were clean and read well - I am happy with the line quality and shading, gives them a bit of an American indie comic look (even if I had to stop on the floor shadowing due to time constraints)... not so happy with some of the figure drawing, but hey, it reads.

All the artwork was done straight into the computer using a cintiq monitor.

This was done for Agile Films' Davina Abrahams from a treatment by director Lucy Cash for a Comic Relief pitch. The reason the fellow in the van wears an "X" on his hat was because the celebrity in the short hadn't had been selected yet (although he's got a bit of a Johnathon Woss look about him).

PITCHBOARD REMOVED - Job back on

Storyboard Samples

Well, I AM a Story Artist by trade. I'll be putting up some samples from previous clients for television projects. I'd love to put up more but naturally it depends on the client and copyright... as I'll only add something that's not in production and has made its way to screen. The first here is Planet Sketch series 2. I'll admit it's quite a "flat" board, but that's the Aardman way - earlier ones were ditched because the dynamic angles didn't fit in. Instead concentration was put on the acting and keeping everything concise, clear and above all - funny.

Goin' Disco...

... just doing an illustration for a club flyer.

By way of explanation, the large figure is Kyroman, who is an actual club dancer who dresses like that and uses pyrotechnics and dry ice to enrapture the audience. There three men are the DJ's, in the suits that they actually wear during the night, and the two ladies are the dancers under their employ for the marketing...

I've also done a "back page", which I had about a day to do (amongst other things)... I've included it here but it's not quite right in parts and given more time I'd do a few things differently. A good experiment though.

I've left space for text in both pages where the client could change things (as seen in the finished article). There's a few things I'd change in the original image (the woman at the front and on the right were added in the computer, directly via the cintiq and the gun's a bit off-looking) but for what it is, it works. Both were created from sketches directly into Illustrator. Final graphics and layout by Dan Harvey.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS 2008!

Heh, this should force me to update again sooner in the New Year! Happy Holidays, all! I've also included some "making of" sketches for giggles.

Some old FNH backgrounds...

It's been far too long since my last update. Since then I've had the wonderful opportunity to work alongside some wonderfully talented artists on a Disney/Miramax film and have been pushing ahead doing boards for projects with a lovely bunch of people on a new BBC series.

Anyway, another reason for the lull was the panic over moving. Which, funnily enough, meant the occasional rummage around the hard drive. So just for kicks, here's a couple of backgrounds from Friends and Heroes last year.

A couple of storyboard images...

I've been told I've not been putting enough storyboard work on here! Here's a couple of sketches for you completed recently. They were done pretty quickly and intended to show fast work. I'll post some other, older works later (all work is copyrighted).

edit - Blogger's image upload isn't working. Here's a non-previewed colour for now, again done quite quickly.

(blogger is screwing up... give me some time!)

Crater

This crater is for a multi-plane push in packet shot for an advert a friend is putting together. The colours are lifted directly from the movie Stardust, which is where the inspiration from the shot came from. It was done pretty quickly over a few hours - annoyingly I would've done it sooner if the computer hadn't had crashed on the first try. Remember kids, save often!

edit - the advert is finished! Two backgrounds are done by myself, the crater and desert, I also do the main voiceover and a couple of others. Congrats to Ben Campbell (director and creator) along with Anne Moen (animator), George Plakides (CGI), Carlos Saini and Marnie Shipard for pitching in and creating this little gem in less than two weeks!

Background painting

Some background painting based on one of my Friends and Heroes designs and a work in progress.

Tribute to Roger Dean

(changing as updated)

Practising the ol' digital painting...

Updated as and when I fix it up... will add more in future.

End of an era...

Well, it's been four years or so since I started out on Friends and Heroes, and now - for me at least - the series storyboards are at an end. Director Dave Osborne brought me in on it back in 2004 for the first series, so it's kind of sad to be leaving it behind after so long. As a cartoonist the more realistic action, subject matter and fantastic character designs by Alan Batson were at first a tricky combination to get a grasp of, but I managed to stick with it and last all three series! Producer Naomi Jones and her crew of Tracey, Victoria and Andrew have been a pleasure to work with, and meeting with original series one producer Gary Kurtz was, as a bit of a Star Wars nut, a bit of a headrush.

Thanks to you all, and series creators Brian Brown and Eric Danenberg, for giving me the opportunity to work on this fantastic project.

For more information visit - http://www.friendsandheroes.tv/

(candid photo by Amanda Stockley)