Production Design, Story development and merchandising designs
I started off a career in animation at Hannah-Barbera doing layouts for Yogi Bear and Popeye. I was then asked to production design a sci-fi cel-animated 2D show for the Arabian market called New Babylon. Which led to designing a new live-action TV series based on the UK retro comic series Dan Dare.
After drawing comics at 2000AD for a few years (Judge Dredd), I got involved with the brilliant guys who developed the groundbreaking computer-animated TV show ReBoot and worked with them in Vancouver for about six years, on and off.
TV shows include ReBoot, War Planets, Weird-Ohs, Metal City PD, Snowtime, Yogos, Pinocchio, Jungle Book and The Iron Man
The computer-animated work which I did for Mainframe Entertainment in Canada was totally ahead of its time. ReBoot was the first long form cgi animation, predating Pixar and Dreamworks’ later films.
I did the character designs for their sci-fi TV series War Planets (or Shadow Raiders in the US) which was a kind of ‘Braveheart in space’.
Weird-Ohs was based on a set of 60s model kits. Big Daddy Roth’s hotrod creation Rat Fink was a big influence. This could have been a great, anarchic animated TV show, but sadly it was eviscerated by network interference.
Metal City PD was a gritty, animated ‘The Wire with robots’ type of cgi series. It didn’t get picked up by a network though… It would stand a better chance these days with all the new TV venues opening up.
Snowtime was a TV feature story pitch for the Christmas market.
Yogos were designed for a TV commercial campaign.
Pinocchio was an animatronic/animation fusion developed with Henson’s Creature Workshop.
I developed a new animated/live-action version of The Jungle Book for one of the major US studios. But this one didn’t fly.
The Iron Man designs were for a rock musical based on the classic Ted Hughes book.
