Gothenburg Book Fair
- At September 30, 2013
- By Niel
- In Events/News
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Cover Reveal – Sorrowline Thailand edition
- At September 16, 2013
- By Niel
- In Writing
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Not only is Sorrowline being published in the UK, it’ll be out in Germany next month and Thailand soon after. So I’m delighted to be able to share the Thai variant cover with you!
It’s by Thai artist Gratuaidong and even features a nod to my Northern Promise Award! I’m sure New Writing North will like that!
I can’t wait to have a copy of this and the German edition to put on my shelf next to the UK version. There’s also a Braziliian version to come some time in the future. What do you think? Which is your favourite cover?
Beneath The Ice
- At September 12, 2013
- By Niel
- In Animation
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If you’re interested in my work on the animated Ice Warriors episodes here’s the making-of doc from the DVD.
Ice Warriors production sketches
- At September 11, 2013
- By Niel
- In Animation, Artwork
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If you’re a Doctor Who fan you might have heard me shouting about the release of The Ice Warriors on DVD recently. Like many early Who stories some of the episodes are missing from the BBC’s archive. The Ice Warriors, first broadcast in 1967 is a six part story with episodes 2 and 3 lost to the ether. So in order to complete the story for release on DVD BBC Worldwide commissioned the production of animated versions of the missing episodes. Along with documentary maker Chris Chapman I produced the animated episodes. Director Chris Chatterton led the character design effort but this was something I was also involved with in the early stages. The hardest part was agreeing on a look for the Doctor, and our work went through many iterations. Here are a few of my sketches from that early period in production.
Most of these are face studies using photo reference. We were trying to capture the essence of Patrick Troughton’s performance in a stylised form – not easy! Chris took these drawings and combined them with his own studies to create the final artwork used in the animation.
I also did some turn-around artwork for the Ice Warrior, Varga. This is an early rough.
Finally here’s my artwork for Victoria. By this stage Chris had set the tone for the designs so my work on Victoria is a more finished, following in the the set style. Each piece of character art has to be broken up into various components in order to be used for animation. This means that the foot, calf, knee and thigh all become separate pieces of artwork, one overlaid on top of the next, so I couldn’t resist adding in a bit of extra hidden detail onto Victoria’s foot.
The Ice Warriors is out now! Here’s a clip from the animation:
Radio Tees Interview
- At September 08, 2013
- By Niel
- In Writing
0
Last week I spent an hour with BBC Radio Tees presenter Bob Fischer on his show. We talked about animation, comics, Doctor Who and writing. Here’s a short clip from the interview when we talked about Sorrowline.
Niel Bushnell Radio Tees Interview from Niel Bushnell on Vimeo.