Over the past few years I had the pleasure to work with the amazing team at P&P Projects on the design and visual-storytelling for Grupo Vidanta’s impressive and cutting-edge Luxury theme park resort development in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico.  I contributed with hundreds of concepts and visualisations for numerous key experiences across the Park, of which I’m permitted to share just a selected handful of designs here (Look for the BON logo).

From the press release:

Partnering with P&P Projects, VidantaWorld’s BON Luxury Theme Park has redefined the art of storytelling through masterfully crafted theming and design. P&P Projects worked in close collaboration with Grupo Vidanta’s in-house design, architecture, and construction teams to create original intellectual property and design captivating ride vehicles and cohesive environments, ensuring that each attraction delivers a fully immersive experience. From the epic Tecuani Beast to the family-friendly Izari’s Flight, every detail—from vehicle shapes to the surrounding landscapes—has been meticulously designed to transport guests into the fantastical world of VidantaWorld’s BON Luxury Theme Park. By combining visionary creativity with unparalleled craftsmanship, P&P Projects has helped make VidantaWorld’s BON Luxury Theme Park a destination where storytelling and adventure seamlessly intertwine.

To get a sense of the immense and breathtaking scale of this project, check out this video introduction.

In 2022 I had the enormous privilege of being invited to contribute to the design of the main-stage and a number of sponsor’s stands by the team at Leisure Expert Group, Netherlands, on behalf of the event organisers, Insomniac, Los Angeles. Unfortunately, I’m not permitted to publicly share my designs but from the dozens of initial explorations of the stage design that I undertook, the final design of the stage inflatables does significantly draw upon my later contributions, notably the ‘art deco’ video screen towers, the design of the rays and how they intersect those towers, and the vines wrapping around the tower bases and defining the central stage.

A number of my proposals also included the projection of vines and greenery, which was carried over into the final effects line-up. It was an amazing project to work on and I feel privileged to have contributed to it and to have worked with the immensely talented team at LEG.

Preliminary sketches and materplans for the redevelopment were supplied by the owner and Creative Leader of Basemint Creative, Josh Adcock. Josh and I collaborated closely to realise his vision despite the considerable time difference and super-tight deadline.

A fun project where I had an opportunity to flex my archvis muscles somewhat.

The recent system upgrade has finally allowed me to start putting 3D Coat through its paces in an integrated visualisation workflow. I’ve owned a copy for quite a few years however my previous system seriously limited its utility. Any moderately detailed voxel or surface sculpt would leave my old system dead in a ditch.

After an initial thumbnail establishing the overall composition a brief exploration of the visual language of the architectural forms, I dove into 3D Coat to create a collection of assets from which I could construct the interior. Through a heavy use of the symmetry tool and of Stencils (both my own and those created by others) using the Extrude tool I created the secondary and tertiary details, as well as the damage and weathering.

These assets were then individually exported as obj’s, reducing the polys in the conversion from voxel objects by 80 to 90 percent (depending on the level of detail).

Additionally, I created a rough and ready sculpt for the head and torso of ‘Cthulhu’ who will be seen emerging through a doorway. I didn’t need to invest too much time in the detail or fidelity of this sculpt as he would be quite distant and shrouded in mist.

These assets were then imported into Blender with the positioning and POV of the camera referencing my initial thumbnail.

To reduce the file size, system load, and render-times (as these are very poly heavy assets) I created Collection Instances for duplicates. For the material I wanted the cavities to be accentuated and to suggest the buildup of grime and dirt. For the materials, I created a Vertex Color instance under the Object Data Properties tab, shifted over to Texture Paint workspace, set the Object Interaction mode to Vertex Paint, and selected Dirty Vertex Colors from the Paint menu. This creates a Dirt Map based on the Cavities.

In the Shader Editor I created two copies of the Principled Shader – one for the overall material and another for the colour and properties of the Dirt Map. A Mix Shader was used to combine them, and Attribute and Color Ramp nodes were used to specify the Cavity Map and control its scale and edges.

The rest is playing with lighting with a mix of warm local and cool ambient lights, and volume shaders to create areas of mist and fog. The figure in the foreground was created in Makehuman and posed in Blender. Rendered in Cycles with a ‘Clown pass’ created with Workbench to make masking and separating easier in Photoshop.

Maybe I’ll post some demonstration videos next time I use this workflow.

Here’s another concept dusted off from the vault, and another that I’m still rather proud of to this day.

Undertaken for the Rise of the Godslayer expansion for Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures. Echoing traditional Bhutanese and Tibetan architecture yet giving a decidedly ‘Conanesque’ flavour with a level of solidity and pared-back detail that befits the Hyborian world. During my time at Funcom, I undertook countless designs – often turn-arounds – for structures.

I’ll share more of these in future updates. Those I did for Stygia for instance I’m still fond of, and I’m proud of the visual language we developed for that mysterious Hyborian land – echoes of the Middle East (Moroccan and Yemeni vernacular), and of Ancient Egypt yet something altogether darker, more flamboyant, and dare I say Gothic in style.

Between early 2005 and late 2011 (feels like a lifetime ago) I worked in the Art Department of Funcom in Oslo, Norway – first as a Concept Artist, and later as the Assistant Art Director (and Concept Artist) on Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures, and on the expansion Rise of the Godslayer, set in a mythological Hyborian land called Khitai, which was heavily inspired by ancient China. I have hundreds of concepts from these projects – from very polished visuals to rough and at times rudimentary sketches (when you work on a project such as this, not everything is a polished ‘Artstation-worthy’ piece of artistic flexing, and often you’re called upon to produce a simple sketch at a moment’s notice) consuming Gigabytes of hard drive space.

During a general backup, I happened to stumble upon this sketch from Rise of the Godslayer for city walls, and specifically a sea-wall gate for the passage of ships in and out of the harbour to the grand capital of Khitai, Paikang. Ultimately Paikang was considerably scaled back in scale and ambition, however I believe the sea-gate was made.

I have to say that I really love this sketch. The proportions, the sparseness of the walls themselves contrasted with the detail of the decks and layered roofs, the sense of scale and mass, the purposeful design with the staggered decks affording a clear vantage point for observing and potentially repelling seaward incursions. Monumental was the aim and I believe that this very simple sketch achieves this.

Subsequently I completed a more polished concept though I have to say, I actually prefer the simple sketch above.

I have a few other sketches from these projects that hold similar appeal and that I’m not entirely ashamed to share (given their age – I’d liked to think I’ve improved at my craft since then). I’ll share these relics from the vault from time-to-time.

This video is a part of a demonstration that I created for my concept art and previsualisation class in the School of Design at RMIT University Melbourne.

These videos in total demonstrate a relatively simple and straightforward environment concept art workflow in students new to concept art from thumbnail iteration and selection, to a final, polished deliverable that involves the use of Blender for blocking out purposes before taking a completed render into Photoshop for completion.

The completed image is featured in my work portfolio on this site.

I’ve long been a fan of Dan Simmons’ seminal science fiction series – The Hyperion Cantos, which spans four books, hundreds of worlds, and almost 300 years, interweaving a diverse range of influences from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the poetry of John Keats, the works of Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Jack Vance, Philip K. Dick and William Gibson among others including radical theological thinkers.

In my spare time I’ve been trying my hand at a series of style frame concepts for an imagined intro to a series based on the first book of these works. One location to depict in the intro is the the seat of government for the Hegemony or WorldWeb, and a Ecumenopolis (a planet covered by a single city). The WorldWeb emerges from the scattering of humanity to hundreds of planets from the dying Old Earth, and is a collection of over 200 planets connected by ‘farcaster portals’ and ‘fatline’ provided by the mysterious AI TechnoCore, facilitating instantaneous travel and communication between worlds. Tau Ceti Center is linked to a number of other worlds by the River Tethys, which is connected via giant farcaster portals.

Work undertaken so far in Blender. Background cityscape is created using renderings of the diffuse and alpha layers of the city from an orthagonal view. These are then mapped on to planes.

Many of the later buildings are courtesy of CGTrader, and are in the process of being modified by me. Ground plane is courtesy of Google Earth. Smaller buildings are simple meshes distributed on the ground plane as particles using weight painting. Still some work in Blender in preparation for a polish pass in Fusion and Davinci Resolve, and in Photoshop.