Times Square

Progress pics of the New York spread. Curiosity's landing was streamed all over the world. I watched it on the internet in my pajamas at about 5 am UK time, while others got to watch on a slightly bigger screen. Watching the NASA team confirm touchdown and celebrate, hugging and high fiving, still gives me goosebumps , you can see the years of hard work pay off in an instant. Some spreads in the book didn't need filling , with the vastness of of space stretching from edge to edge . This page however was the chance to see how much I could fit in. Theres even an easter egg or two, such as my nieces watching from the sidewalk.

One of the best parts about illustrating this book was the range of spreads this rover's journey allowed me to portray. 

Some pages required a lot of detail and intricacies, whilst others had to convey such a large scale, it was best to draw very little at all.

From the gorgeous Californian hills surrounding the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to high tech launch control rooms, to landscapes on another planet all together, it really was an incredible story to try and put to paper, with the best part being - it was all true. 

The feats this mission has achieved thanks to the incredible engineers behind it, captured my imagination and countless others around the world. She really is a very special rover indeed. 

Cali

Roll up

Never did get round to posting this, a fun exercise.

Hide some layers...

And voila, negative space

Many happy returns. So, so many.

It was my birthday a few weeks ago. There were no balloons, but there was cake, so it all balanced out.

A giraffe, yesterday.

A Closer look

Here's a look at what I've been tinkering away on. 

I was greatly inspired by the journey the Mars rover took, on Earth and in space, and I felt there was a great opportunity to teach younger readers about the amazing things happening in space exploration. 

The story is told by Curiosity itself, much like the rover's official Twitter page tweets in the first person. Seeing the first person narrative created on the Twitter page was one of the places I drew my inspiration from.

I was also inspired by Pixar's film Wall-E, which perhaps was itself partly inspired by previous real life rovers. 

My goal was to create great big spreads which would capture children's imaginations, whilst also teaching them about the amazing story behind Curiosity's mission.

Ho ho ho

Our Etsy shop sure is looking a little fuller these days, what with my cards for this year now up, plus the hand made decorations Charlie has been working away on busily. See for yourself at our ridiculously Chrtistmassy looking shop.

A is for....

I was inspired by the new Little White Lies issue with a Man of Steel cover to do a simple portrait of Henry Cavill as big blue. LWL covers always feature great covers, with the brief simply being the chosen films stars face on the cover. 

This is where my idea for a simple portrait came from. Click for full size.

To boldy go...

So things are about to get very hectic around here, what with uprooting and moving to Brighton, so this could be my last chance to post anything for a while, so here are some seemingly random pictures, all from my ongoing project I'm working on. Hint - it's about spaaaaace.

Man of Posters

Needed a break from my current project. I'm drawing alot of pages with a deadline I've set myself. It worked pretty well for my final major project, so I'm hoping I repeat that situation here. But in the meantime, this is the result of me blowing off steam for the evening.

And since there's no 'S' on the cape to this costume, a more movie accurate version.

Birthday invite!

So Charlie and I (collectively Foss Art) were recently asked to create a birthday invitation for a couple of very special birthday twins, to the theme of Doctor Seuss. The brief was really open ended, which basically meant I could design whatever I wanted. That was the easiest part. The hard part was realising what's Doctor Seuss without a really cool rhyme to go with it? I was completely stumped and didn't come up with anything more then a line long, but Charlie came up with this rhyme out of nowhere, and we had our invite!

Valentines day

It's fast approaching, and I see it as the next opportunity to roll out some more illustrations/items under the Foss banner. These are what I have so far. The idea is that leaves resemble hearts ( I'm probably not quite the first person to realise this) , so I managed to get a whole bunch of hearts on there without making it look too 'lovey dovey' - not that is anything wrong with that! The colours are perhaps not quite what you might think of when you think 'Clintons Valentines day card' but they are in there, so I hope I get the best of both worlds from them, something which stands out, but is still a bit traditional.

So this is what I'm playing around with for now.

Man of Steel

When I'm excited for something, it usually manifests itself into artwork of some sort, and this is no exception. So there could be more festive things to put up a week before Christmas, but to coincide with the new trailer that is doing the rounds for the new Superman film, I designed a teaser poster of sorts. I wanted to keep it simple since the film is still 6 months away, and perhaps do a more dynamic one closer to release. And it doesn't get much more simple and iconic then the shirt rip people!

That's Mister Chief to you

I decided to come up with a poster for Halo 4 after seeing one of my favourite artists, Olly Moss, tweet that he wished he could've designed a poster for the game's release, but had to decline as he simply didn't have the time. This was sad news indeed as I can only begin to imagine the awesomeness that would transpire from a Halo and Olly Moss project. It did however give me the idea to have a go at one myself, seeing as my art schedule isn't quite as busy as his (just a guess).

I wanted to keep the poster pretty simple since I only had a day to do it (I'll be away from home for the next week, and with the game being released on Tuesday, I wanted it ready and online beforehand).

To keep clutter to a minimum, the only text on the poster would be a tagline and release date. Characters in videogames don't get much more iconic then Master Chief, which is why I didn't feel the need to plaster 'HALO 4' anywhere on it. It's also a sign of how successful a character or franchise is: if something is so recognisable you don't even need the name or any information to go with it, you've definitely hit gold.

Image one is how the poster looked at the end of day One. I worked on it some more the next day and produced the second image, where I tried to get MC looking a bit more like his Halo 4 counterpart (his armour has had quite the upgrade in the design department).  Not sure which one I prefered, so uploaded both.