Jim Henson's Lord of the Rings

The possibilities are endless with AI artwork….

… and what do I do with all of this power at my fingertips? I use it to fuse two of my all time favourite fictional universes: Jim Henson’s Muppets and Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

The below images were created using Midjourney 5. Strangely, I struggled with Arwen. Hopefully I can perfect her after further prompt tweaking.

Frodo

Sam

Gandalf

Aragorn

Arwen (struggled to add certain details or make her look elfen, will try again soon to get her right)

Bilbo during the Hobbit

Bilbo on his eleventieth birthday

Boromir

Gimli

Legolas

Legolas

Gollum

Galadriel

Galadriel (alt)

Galadriel (alt)

Galadriel (alt)

Saruman

Smaug

Smaug (Alt)

Smaug (Alt)

Bonus content:

Some failed attempts…

The many fails of Arwen

Galadriel

Aragorn

Sauron (I gave up in the end)

Legolas

Sam

This horror show

The Devil in Me...

In 2022 I had the opportunity to create artwork for the latest title from Supermassive Games in the Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me.

Beware, the following post contains multiple spoilers!

The Devil in Me is a 2022 interactive drama and survival horror/slasher video game. It is the fourth instalment in the The Dark Pictures Anthology, after Man of Medan (2019), Little Hope (2020), and House of Ashes (2021). The game features five main playable protagonists and a multilinear narrative influenced by player choices.

The brief from the developers was to create a map of the grounds that would have been part of a vintage tourist brochure. A physical copy of this would come with the special collector’s edition of the game. Also included in this edition would be a penny dreadful, which required a cover and sketches of the main characters.

The Map

The map contains in-game locations the player visits.

The Penny Dreadful

Guildford Games Festival Illustration

This year the Guildford Games Festival and Awards hired me to create a custom illustration featuring many obvious as well as hidden references to the Guildford and worldwide gaming industry. Guildford is home to many large and indie game studios alike and has been called the ‘Hollywood of games’. Being a Guildford born-and-bred gamer myself with experience in creating game art, it was an enormous pleasure to be part of this project. Due to obvious reasons the festival went live on twitch this year instead of at the usual G-live venue. The much smaller Guildford Games Awards ceremony was held at the Boileroom in at extremely limited attendee numbers, where the design was displayed on large banners and later printed on merchandise.

The official Guildford town coat of arms consists of a shield with the town’s castle in it, topped by a knight’s helmet wearing a crown, in which there is a roaring lion. I began the design with this basic set of elements but swapped the knight out for a dead astronaut to represent the multitude of space related themes in games by local studios. This unfortunate pilot has the Guildford town centre area post code (GU1) on their helmet screen plus both X-Box & Playstation buttons on the crown and helmet. The central jewel in the crown is a reference to No Man’s Sky, the expansive space exploration title created by local studio Hello Games. The lion inside the crown is a more elaborate version of the logo from the legendary Lionhead studios. This is an example of the level of detail and referencing throughout the rest of the design, which has over 30 references in total, some only recognised by local game creators who have been around since the early 90’s.

Clothing, posters and more on the Guildford Games Festival website.

November was a wild one...

The proverbial boat was pushed out this month. After weeks of living like some crazed techno orc huddled over my graphics tablet in the Adobe glow late into the evening, it looks as though more sleep is a real option for me once again! I can rest assured that it was all worth it for the amazing projects I have had the pleasure of working on for the last month. ‘What projects?!’ I hear you softly mumble… Well…

1: The mysterious, highly detailed game-inspired illustration….

A project to create a highly complex/detailed illustration for an upcoming games festival really pushed my skills and imagination to the limits and I very much look forward to sharing that with you when the time comes. There are over 30 visual references and in-jokes representing games, games companies and other computer/console related themes within one image. Hopefully it will be a fun game in itself for you to discover them all. The design will be available to purchase on clothing, posters, postcards and more alongside the festival - More information to come!

2: Merch design for streamer & content creator TagbackTV

US based online creator TagBackTV has a youtube following of over 1 million subscribers. It was therefore a huge pleasure to work with him on creating two separate merch designs incorporating characters from his original tongue-in-cheek storyline ‘La Hamilia’, a Godfather style mafia saga played out by hamsters and other characters on his Animal Crossing New Horizons & Happy Home Paradise islands. Will Flurry take over the family business once Don Marlo retires, or will Detective Beardo and rookie Filbert be able to stop the dastardly family? Tune in to find out!

The designs are created as parodies of vintage movie posters and are available on a number of different products including hoodies , t-shirts, mugs and more.

3: Album artwork for multi-award winning blues artist Dom Martin

Dom Martin is a truly hard working and authentic blues artist from Belfast, recognised by both the UK and European Blues Awards for his raw, silky talents. Last year Dom and his team asked me to bring a concept to life for the vinyl edition of his first album ‘Spain to Italy’. This month they reached out once more for matching artwork for a second run of physical CD’s due to an unsurprising rise in demand. I very much look forward to adding this to my current Dom Martin collection! Buy merch here and help to support live music.

Welcome to the ‘What's New’ page

From now on, the latest pieces I am able to share will be posted here, accompanied by notes and thoughts on the projects. Thanks for checking in and I hope you enjoy what you find here!

Today’s post is t-shirts, t-shirts, t-shirts!

This week marks the public release of two new t-shirts designed for the fabulous Americana musician Elles Bailey, now available on her online store and at live shows. One shirt features a circular design with Elles’ logo, the other features a more illustrative design of a wolf howling in front of the moon, which was a joy to conceptualise and manifest. I had a wonderful time working with Elles on bringing her thoughts to fruition and very much look forward to seeing her fans enjoy the shirts.

Next up is the wonderful Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, a live music club that has been rocking since the early 60’s and has been graced by such huge names as the Rolling Stones and Led Zep. Adding hidden meanings and culture to my designs where possible is a big part of how I work and after being hired to create a t-shirt design for the club, my research found that there was a wealth of iconic retro hand drawn posters in the clubs’ history to draw inspiration from. This t-shirt is available to purchase at one of the many live gigs the club still hold regularly.

Up my sleeve is currently is a design for a Surrey based gaming event, which I cannot wait to share with you once the time is right! Till then, have a great rest of your month - A xx