My time at Lucasfilm Ltd.

In the beginning of January 2010 I started working at the Lucasfilm Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio of San Francisco. I worked there as a lead artist on Star Wars projects until summer of 2011. *(The photos included here are only of common, open to the public areas of the campus).

Some days were good for a lunch break by the creek or a quick bike ride to the beach which overlooked the Golden Gate and Alcatraz.

I visited the Clone Wars studio at Big Rock and was fortunate enough to go to "The Ranch" four or five times. Including a fourth of July picnic and a special trip to hang out in the archives building which houses all the original Star Wars art and movie props. The archives visit was very rare, very impressive and quite epic. Here are a few images from The Ranch. I can't show any from inside the archives but the SW Blu-rays reveal enough for everyone to get an idea of how neat this place is.

 

It was fun being able to take my son on tours of ILM and The Ranch and have him meet the team making the Clone Wars at Big Rock. Being a young animator, film maker and SW/Clone Wars fan, I think the experiences left good impressions on him. 

Bobba Fett holding it down. 

 

Hanging out on Tatooine - the Anakin home set. (This photo was shot several years ago while I was touring N. Africa for Activision's Call of Duty games).

F>P Design Fab

In 2009 I started F>P as a label for my practical art, design and fabrication projects. Making stuff only in the computer for the digital realm was great but not enough anymore. I needed to also work with my hands again and see more practical designs built for real like I did before the games industry captured my soul. Most of my F>P practical work was centered around film props, gear, costume and character designs as well as some full scale and miniature sets.

I found that as a video game art director I often built practical art pieces and examples as part of my styleguides and relied on practical artworks to get the look I wanted in CG. I'd hand fabricate sections of character armor, throw paint around on real surfaces and always utilize photography when working on character designs and texturing styles. Just because we can technically do everything inside the computer doesn't mean we should. I like to start with reality as much as possible for the style work I do most often. With F>P I started doing Nerf gun and airsoft weapon mods, painting helmets and stuff like that on the weekends just to do more hands on practical art and balance out the major amounts of time I spent doing art & design on the computer.

Now in 2011 as an independent artist, designer and director I spend a portion of my time each week working in shops with some of the best practical fx and model makers in the industry here in the SF bay area. Most all of my F>P props work I do nowadays is fully custom built from scratch. I still use the computer heavily as an art and design tool but most of my final product is now actually hand fabricated and able to be filmed in camera instead of existing only as a computer rendering.

FPDesignFab@gmail.com