With Star Trek revitalised after the release of the first film in 1979, a new wave of licensed products and books entered the market. A personal favourite is the 1980 Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology, written by Stan and Fred Goldstein, and illustrated by noted Trek-alum Rick Sternbach.
Many people have talked about what happened with John Carter – the movie – this spring. The film was good, the marketing was weak, and the unfortunate result is that the sequels are very much in doubt.
A straight-up technical illustration to show potential clients how modular structures are constructed.
Welcome to the completely redesigned Catspaw Dynamics.
After a number of years where my work and interests were divided among various websites, it was time to streamline and focus my online presence. Whether you’re interested in my design services or if you’ve read my comics, you’ll find everything here on this site.
The Starlost was a television series that aired primarily on NBC in the U.S. and CTV in Canada during 1973. Created by Harlan Ellison – with technical details on the ship by Ben Bova – it was an early foray into Canadian-American co-production and syndication release. Special effects genius Douglas Trumbull was also on board with a new process using miniature sets and camera effects to dramatically reduce the costs of producing movie-quality science fiction on a television budget.
When the Sky Fell details a scientific theory about Earth crust displacement first put forth by Charles Hapgood, and expanded on by Rand & Rose Flem-Ath. Albert Einstein supported Hapgood’s work. The theory also dovetails with Plato’s description of the end of Atlantis, and the many flood myths in ancient literature. When the Sky Fell was first published in the 1990s, and I was at one point working on the updated version to be published as an ebook.
When I was a younger man, I thought being book smart made me smart in life, but I was absurdly ignorant about the latter.
At 21, I was years away from understanding anything about myself, and I was at the end of my first three years at the Alberta College of Art (now The Alberta College of Art & Design : ACAD). College was not like high school, and the visual communications program demanded a level of maturity, discipline and talent I did not have at that point in my life. And not being able to deal with it, my behaviour was disruptive and not appropriate for someone who was hoping to become a contributing member of society, let alone a creative professional.
Best Communities started as a feature in Alberta Venture magazine. Then working with the staff web programmer, he built the basic structure, while I provided art direction and interface details. It was a successful collaboration.
This project won in the Best Cross Platform category at the Canadian Online Publishing Awards in 2009.
For this annual feature in the magazine, I created a strong overall design language to unify the variety of content included in the package: photos, illustrations, articles and listings. The package is built around isometric drawing language and electrical path traces. The grey boxes are where ads went.
Sketch to final rendering. I’ve often had to take technical material (see top right) and make it understandable to lay audiences.
This one was for a magazine article that featured carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a controversial – and largely unproven – process to inject the CO2 created by extracting gas and petroleum deep under ground, preventing it from contributing to the escalating effects of climate change.
