A selection of design and art direction mood boards for various projects. Dealing with tone, materials, form, lighting, textures and reference for props and architecture.

The fascination with motion picture making goes hand in hand with design and architecture. Capturing light, manipulating time and space.

These are experimental analogue 16mm, Super8mm, and digital Unreal Engine films.

Scope of work : Design, Cinematography, Editing, processing analogue film, Audio Design and recording.

Art Direction, design and Implementation of assets in unreal engine. Architecture and Landscape design, prop design, lighting deisgn, cinematic design.

Working with DICE in Stockholm I was involved at the early pre production stages through to near completion. I was tasked with developing concepts and designs for the City of Glass. This included mood boards and assistant art direction, level design coordination working across the design and art teams, mapping and solving the city structural problems. An immense and exciting project calling on all my design skills. It was a real privilege to work on the Mirror's Edge Catalyst project with the team at DICE. The renders below are a very small selection of the work produced but it gives an idea of the scope of the city and architecture. Everything has been designed, modelled, and rendered from scratch using Modo.

Scope of Work : Art Direction support, level design, architecture design, concept design, modelling, lighting design, cinematic design, coordination between level and art teams.

Back in 2019, I spent some time back at DICE working on what was to become Battlefield 2042. These are examples of concepts exploring the scenes and possible architecture of the world in those early stages of development. The concepts generally involve a fair amount of level design thought. Integrating architecture into the world and extended playable areas.

Scope of work. Art direction support, level design, world design, architecture design, modelling and rendering.

Back in 2016, I had the honour of working for Gavin Rothery on his film “Archive”. These are the final designs developed to establish a layout and design for the main lab complex. The layout is based on script sequences and interactions, framing characters, and plot points within the architecture. Gavin’s direction was something that echoed the works of Frank Lloyd Wrights Falling water. Visually grounded in time but also a nod to the future. Other influences were the Case Study projects of the 50s and more brutalist architecture of the 60s and 70s.

Scope of work : Art and Architecture Direction, developing the architectural language for the main film location. Design and world building. Modelling, design and iteration of the world space. Final rendering and lighting of the design.

The conversation pit was a specific part of the script that Gavin had envisioned. A central space for communicating. The Archive design developed as a freestanding piece of “furniture” that could be placed where needed. A high-end unit taking reference from 1960s Bang & Olufsen Hi-Fi design. Brushed metals and rosewood veneers formed the exterior paneling. Sliding controls and elegant interface set behind clear perspex windows. Essentially a supercomputer. To me, it made sense to create this as something that had some scale to it, an unknown amount of processing and graphics power, almost a parallel reality. Some of the technology is very dated for this world, with hints of analog design.

This was a challenge. I was tasked to work up a vehicle interior and this is totally out of my comfort zone. I dived in and provided research that boiled down to the Lotus Esprit Turbo and the Maserati Boomerang. I worked up the interior based on this reference. For the final film, they used an original Lotus Esprit Turbo and GMC Delorean.

Electronic devices collection

Scope. Design, Art Direction, A.I workflow

Further exploration into architecture and landscape- a shifting map of sound and vision.

Virtual worlds

I was fortunate enough to work with Lockwood Publishing that produced many of the PlayStation Home social spaces. This was a real crash course in virtual design and world building. Very different from traditional architecture and I learnt a huge amount from the art & design team. Playstation Home was a highly successful attempt to bring a virtual 3D social world to Playstation 3. It ran from 2008 to 2015 and attracted an estimated 41 million users worldwide over the course of its life.

Scope of work including art direction, world design, architecture design, level design, sketching, modelling, rendering and presentation.

Well I guess most architects want to be toy makers so here is a collection of toy houses and vehicles :)

Fictional book cover designs using graphics and photography.

Scope of work. art direction, 3d design, 2d layout design, final image mock up.

Record covers for the sounds of the Future. A free form assembly of cut n paste composition.

Inspired by Boards of Canada and Dave Pike.

A compact living space set in 1973. This was a quick design project developed to learn the basic tools of Blender.

Inspiration from Nakagin Capsule Tower. Japan.

Living space concept. Architecture project for elevated living space.

Art Direction, design, modelling and render.

It starts with a sketch. It’s tempting to jump into 3d and get modeling but the sketch phase is an important process to my workflow. Here you can quickly get the ideas flowing, keep it loose and explore. It pays off when you decide to start blocking out in 3d.

Here is a selection of process images where the layout and basic structure is starting to take form. This phase can go quite fast with lots of decisions being made on the fly. I try to keep things as simple as possible as far as detailing and polygon use goes. Form, natural lighting, key views, and relationship to the script sequences are key aspects I’m thinking about.

Hello I'm Ronald Merrick and I'm here to invite you aboard our Starliner, yes it's true day-to-day living becomes a luxury Cruise when you've made your home at Starliner Tower Apartments. Although downtown is only 12 and a half minutes away once you've crossed the carrier bridge to Starliner Island the noise and the traffic of the city might as well be a million miles away. Leave your car in the tension of the city in a space reserved for you in our vast underground garage. If your friends have followed you home there's convenient parking for them on ground level. Invite them up to share the breathtaking view from your balcony or picture window.

Shivers 1975, directed by David Cronenburg.

Pushing and pulling polys. The design shifted away from the 1950s LA Case Study influence and moved into a more brutalist-inspired architecture. More of an elegant bunker with concrete features and less lightweight materials. The corridor element inspired by the work Gavin was doing with the main lab area extruded back into the main features of the residence area. This provided an inversed structure to the connecting corridor from the atrium. On the interior, the structure allowed for seating and storage space with high-level glazing providing natural light. On the exterior, the extruded structure provided a more rugged appearance and allowed for a curved solution to the corner that extended past the kitchen area.

Avakin Life is a 3D life simulation computer and mobile video game developed and published by Lockwood Publishing, a company based in Nottingham, England. The game was first released in December 2013 for Android devices. As per 2022, it has more than 200 million registered users on iOS, Android and ChromeOS and more than a million daily players. Here are some examples of spaces I have helped create for the platform.

Skinning sequence. Later in production, I was tasked with developing concepts for a specific VFX sequence. This is where J3 gets the final skin build. Not much time for this one and a tricky sequence. These shots outline the interior space, lighting, and camera angles to give direction to the VFX team.

More memories of defunct distant architecture. The lost living spaces of the near future.

Using the films as a reference I reconstruct film sets into 3D models to explore the film spaces and learn more about set design and designing for film. A great design exercise.

Here we have Rope by Director Alfred Hitchcock 1949, Poltergeist By Tobe Hooper 1982, and Minority Report by Stephen Spielberg 2002, and The Trouble with Harry by Alfred Hitchcock 1955 and finally E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 1982 with Elliott’s House set.

A rare private commission. SuperDenseCity.

Location - Unknown

Population - Unknown

Working at Tengbom Architects I designed and developed a VR space using the Unreal Engine. This was an exploration into designing within VR and using traditional analogue tools. A Dream space on the edge of reality for meditation and wandering.

A location grounded in narrative clues, distant memories, and visions of the future.

Scope of Work : Art Direction, level design, architecture design, concept design, implementation in Unreal Engine, modelling, lighting design, cinematic design and editing.

”Pool by pool, they form a river all the way to our house”

On the edge of digital virtual space lies a point of collision. Human scale and infinate space. The project was born out of a desire to explore this moment in an architectural format using analogue and digital tools with a focus on story, human scale and memory. Exploring the boundaries between dreamspace and reality the Framework is populated by a chain of neighboring spaces. A sequence of memories. Past, present, and future. Fragments

Recalling the future, forgetting the past, assembled fragments in space. Destination - Unknown

These models were created in VR using gravity sketch, then rendred in Modo.

Prototype Arctic Unit 1984

Deep beyond the line a group of research scientists discover something unexpected.  I'm a big fan of The Thing and this concept stems from this movie. A prefab arctic unit with living, data, lab, sleeping areas. A modular system where one or more units could be connected together to form a bigger system.

The calm before the storm. I wanted to explore a building space, something remote, visually disconnected and meditative. This space is part of a wider link of narrative spaces to explore moments of calm. Although I would imagine the storm is coming.

Interior set design based on the 50s Dingbat style housing in California. A tricky project as there is little interior layout reference on these buildings. The plan has been developed around a typical 3 bed flat with open plan kitchen living spaces that lead onto the full length balcony. To maximise natural lighting we have roof lights, high level windows, and full height glass balcony doors.

I'm sure this stems from Point Break or The Goonies or something. A surfers-skaters den set out on the rocks into the ocean. Constructed from various found timber elements and curved ply wood pipe sections.