Paul Tobin's Blog

The Knight

2012-01-30T23:03:00.003+13:00

I recently completed this piece for a medieval short film pitch for Idle Dandies titled "The Knight and the Fool".

This was the cover image for their proposal and with any luck things will go into production later this year. Best of luck guys!!

Super Santa

2011-12-29T20:42:00.001+13:00

This year I finally had enough energy and time to get round to working up a Xmas card. I always loved Norman Rockwell's and Leyendecker's covers for the Christmas editions of the Saturday Evening Post and so decided to work that style with a more contemporary superhero santa.

Enjoy and a happy new year :)

Click for step-by-step
I often start with just a painted thumbnail and enlarge and detail from there.

One of Leyendecker's covers for inspiration and design ideas.

Trelise Cooper Swing Tags

2011-11-20T09:48:00.001+13:00

A few weeks back myself, Claire (my fiancee), Blake Enting (best friend and Art Director) and the Design team at Saatchi's Design won Bronze at the NZ Best Design Awards for our work on the Trelise Cooper Swing Tags. It was the first time myself and Claire have collaborated on a freelance job and it was a lot of fun. The compositing and design of all the elements was very challenging but the final tags looked amazing with all the raised embossing and cut-throughs!

A big thanks to Saatchi's Design and Trelise Cooper for such a great concept.

We did about four options for each character.

This was my preferred face that did not make it to the final.

Jeffrey Catherine Jones Tribute

2011-10-11T23:09:00.001+13:00

Finally got around to doodling up a tribute piece for J C Jones, who sadly died earlier this year.
Had the idea kicking around since the news but only found the time over the last couple of nights.

Rest in peace....

Superman

2011-10-05T23:08:00.000+13:00

Just a quick poster for my niece's room. At age 4 she already wants to save the world, flying around the back yard with her pants on the outside and a red blanket as a cape wanting to be Superman!

Photography

2011-09-25T14:46:00.000+13:00

After wrestling with HTML the last couple of weekends I can now unveil a new and hopefully improved blogsite. Been going through some old travel photography and have added some to the site. On my trip to Israel a couple of years ago I took my friends lomographic camera - they have practically no settings, are print film and for me out of focus and motion blur were the norm.

Mobility Speeder at the Wailing Wall

2011-06-08T00:35:00.000+12:00

Myself, Claire and Frank attended the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand's annual convention in Auckland on Sunday. It was a real whirl-wind affair with a couple of quick talks and panels then straight into the banquet and awards before leaving back to Wellington at 5am.

The great news is that White Cloud Worlds was nominated for Best Production/Publication 2011 and we won - hurrah!!! Frank also picked up an award for his cover illustration of Tymon's Flight, so it was a real success all round.

I would like to thank the artists, Kate and Harper Collins for their continued support and the SFFANZ committee for the nomination and putting on such a fun event.

Fix-up in 20 Minutes

2011-04-11T23:01:00.001+12:00

I had a abandoned sketch tucked away in my reject folder (very large folder) from a year or so ago when I was working up some ideas for my White Cloud World's section.
This is a quick experiment to see if I could salvage anything in 20.

Original sketch

tempted to keep going...

in 20 minutes #2

2011-04-04T00:00:00.000+12:00

A quick evocative landscape in 20 minutes. This time I tried capturing that misty beauty that Alan Lee captures in his magical landscapes (but with the cowardice of a undo button rather than real paints :)

in 20 minutes #1

2011-04-02T22:29:00.000+13:00

Just a quick doodle, hopefully number one in a series of quick daily sketches under 20 minutes, of course by daily I actually mean at best weekly...

Run Makita Run

2011-04-01T22:31:00.000+13:00

This started out as a quick sketch about 4 years ago when I was colouring up panels on Christian Gossetts' Red Star. The character Makita is a young orphan of the War of Nokgorka and the feature character of the stand alone graphic novel Run Makita Run. A four year turn around is quite quick as personal projects goes, I spent seven years on one particuliar painting, but thats a story for another time....

For more awesome Red Star action go to http://www.archangel-studios.com/comics/redstar/

Gnomon Master Classes 2011

2011-02-12T11:11:00.002+13:00

I was recently invited to participate in this years Gnomon Master Classes (big thank you Alex Alvarez).

I have to say that after only being in the biz for about eight years I would not exactly consider myself a master. I have however been lucky enough to have worked with the odd master or two and have done my best to pass on some of their tricks of the trade (along with a few of my own). My workshop is based upon a live illustration job I did for Coilhouse Magazine (my banner image) and I discuss the workshop in more detail in a CG Channel interview here.

Along with myself there are some other amazing classes being run, including fellow Wetas David Meng and Scott Spencer.

For more information on the classes please go to Gnomon's site

Avatar Action - Part II

2011-02-12T10:40:00.001+13:00

In addition to the Na'vi we also did some early design work on the human costuming as well to get the ball rolling. James favoured a very real world approach to the costume design which comes across so well in the final costuming. He would often reference the Vietnam war in terms of look for the soldiers and the level of gritty realism. For ground personnel the reflective stripes became a very practical feature that you could build a strong graphic identifier into. If you check out Aaron Beck's blog you can see more great Avatar costuming designs.

On one of James' few trips to see us in the Design Room in NZ, I presented this Op Center concept to him. I pointed out that the trousers had built-in leg zips so some of them could be wearing shorts as a option as the base is in a tropical zone. After a moments thought he turned to me and the production designer and said that there will categorically be no shorts in his film.... as is often the case in concept design even a total fail can still yield good information. There were no shorts in the making of this film....

All costumes needed to incorporate the emergency mask which Leri designed, which is a good example of collaborative design. On this costume I started to have some fun with designing a breathable weave made from the RDA logo pattern for the shoes. Lets face it Pandora is hot, dam hot and who wants stinky feet!

Avatar Action - Part I

2011-01-18T21:01:00.000+13:00

So these were done a few years back now at Weta Workshop. With the film not only out but announcing a hopeful sequel I figured it was high time to finally post them. I thought I would start with some Na'vi designs first.

Weta Workshop was asked to help design the Na'vi culture and cultural artifacts like costume and weapons. It was an interesting process, as approved designs are usually designed and made at the workshop and then eventually end up on set. This time round designs were still created but only to be used as a reference at Weta Digital. (Some were used on the motion capture stage as well). Because of the digital process the design process continued and evolved well into post-production.

Neytiri costume design. This had the dubious honour of being Weta's first piece of design on the film. James actually quite liked this and I think parts of it (the yellow halter) made it into the film.

Keeping it in the family, this was a costume design for Eytukan, Neytiri's father. The big shoulders were not a 80's throw back but rather an attempt to make him imposing and the basic design was used in parts.

This was a knife design for Tsu'tey, which could be used in a normal way, or held along the arm allowing for the point to act as a punch dagger and the leading edge to slash. When designing weapons it can be fun to try to give a stunt performers something a little unusual to help create more memorable action sequences.

2010-11-13T23:47:00.000+13:00

This somewhat stoic Dwarf was done a few years back and is starting to look a bit worse for wear.
However, I thought it might be nice to show just how random the painting process can be :)
Essentially I took a quick doodle and decided to see what I could come up with in a couple of hours with no real idea or preparation, other than an interest in what that very clever Dutch fella Rembrandt did a few years back...

Finished Painting

Click for Step by Step Process

CGNZ Artist Interview

2010-10-22T22:36:00.000+13:00

NZ's very own Digital Art Community CGNZ recently interviewed me about White Cloud Worlds and working in the film industry. For the online interview please go here...http://www.cgnz.co.nz/interviews/paul-tobin/

Its kind of long but there are pictures :) Also check out the interviews on the awesome artists Greg Broadmore and Anton Petrov!!

Armageddon Expo

2010-10-17T18:37:00.001+13:00

October 23 - October 25, 2010

Come and meet me and some of the artists from White Cloud Worlds! Artist book signings Saturday and Sunday at 11am & 3pm. The White Cloud Worlds team will be hosted at the Weta stand.

Location
ASB Showgrounds, Auckland

http://armageddonexpo.com/nz/

http://www.whitecloudworlds.com/events.php

White Cloud Worlds

2010-10-17T18:07:00.001+13:00

After two years in the making I can happily announce that my first book is now on sale from November 1st.

White Cloud Worlds is a never-before seen collection of science fiction and fantasy artwork from New Zealand, 'The Land of the Long White Cloud'. It profiles the work of 27 established and emerging artists from NZ and is published through Harper Collins.

An Exhibition will accompany the book. This opens on December 11th and runs until 13 March 2011 at TheNewDowse | FREE ENTRY

I would just like to thank all the artists, contributors and my little production team for all their support in making this possible.

Go check it out and did I mention that it would make a great xmas gift.....

http://www.whitecloudworlds.com/
http://whitecloudworlds.blogspot.com/

http://www.newdowse.org.nz/en/News/Latest-News/White-Cloud-Worlds/

Shindig in Deadwood

2010-08-19T22:53:00.000+12:00

The lovely Miss Claire Hackett and Doc (Paul) Cochran of Deadwood as presented on the night of Sheriff Falconer's esteemed birthday party.

Vamps

2010-08-15T22:30:00.000+12:00

I did these two vamps a few months back for White Wolf's Vampire : The Eternal Struggle trading card game. It made a nice change painting hot vampires over arms and armour!

Shell Shock

2010-08-12T21:56:00.001+12:00

A few months back Mr Pearce heard a rumour that Mr Speilberg was going to direct a live action version of Ghost in the Shell. The plan was do a bunch of fan inspired concept art and hope that it may make its way to the man himself - to show our interest in the project. Here was my outing - a more modern day samurai take on Batou.

The White Fox and Sherlock Holmes

2010-08-07T22:33:00.003+12:00

Welcome to my first ever blog post and I thought I would start off with a recent freelance commission. The ever delightful Meredith Yayanos from Coilhouse magazine invited myself and Greg Broadmore to illustrate a feature on Chinese pre-communism pulp literature. The feature illustration was based off a pulp story that appropriated Sherlock Holmes and pitted him against the White Fox, a mythic character from traditional Chinese folklore. The illustrative result was a fusion of Western Victorian meets Eastern Chinese opera set against the backdrop of red curtain - a symbolic precursor of the communist era to come.