Uncategorized | Meinert Hansen

New logo and business cards

After dissolving my company, Fiction Science, I’ve been living for a few years without a business card. It’s not a big deal, since my primary job is as a teacher, but I do miss being able to have a distinct logo and card to hand out.
Yesterday I received my new cards, with my new logo. I forgot what a thrill that was. Retro-futurism has always been my main interest when it comes to concept art, so I’ve decided that, going forward, it will be my primary design choice in all my work. Steampunk, Dieselpunk, Atompunk, Cassette Futurism and all things rocket-powered or shiny with fins. It’s what I know, it’s what I love best.

Wondla Illustration

In 2013, I was contacted by Tony DiTerlizzi to create a couple of keyframe illustrations based on his book “The Search for Wondla”, the first book in his excellent science fiction trilogy. It’s a superb series, and it would be incredible to have it made into a feature film franchise or Netflix series.

The final illustration, showing Eva and Muthr, beside the Goldfish flying car, the city of Solas in the background.

My sketch of Solas, used for the final painting.

Her’s the kit bashed car I built for the Goldfish to use for reference.

Here’s the model car in front of my iMac, the Photoshop painting in progress. This way I can get the realistic lighting on the car, and refraction through the windshield.

Some illustrations from last year

During the holidays last winter, I created a few personal works for a project, and here are the results. I will be moving in a different direction from this style of Photoshop painting over the coming holidays. Descriptions below, and of course, click to see bigger.

I love the idea of massive oversized industrial ruins in a landscape. The rocket pack in this picture is the one I built for my spacesuit costume.

The rough sketch from my sketchbook.

Rough sketch of steampunk-styled astronaut.

Final painting.

The bunny rabbits in the centre of the gear were indecisive lines right up to the end of this painting, but because they looked like bunnies, I decided “why not?”.

2017 is going to be the 50th anniversary of Expo 67. I was there when I was 9 years old, and it helped fuel my imagination for future visions ever since. This is my take on Expo 2067, the 100th anniversary, with a bit of a retro-future flair.

My rough sketch for Expo 2067

Arrival

Here’s the full trailer to Arrival. I did a fair bit of concept art during the early stages of preproduction, and I’m pleased to see a lot of my work in this trailer. It was by far the best screenplay I’ve worked with. The work itself challenged me immensely – in a good way. Denis Villeneuve and his production Designer Patrice Vermette were a joy to work with – brilliant minds both. Intelligent, thoughtful Sci-Fi.

Illuminae: The Illuminae Files_01 Spaceship Designs

About a year ago, I was contacted to design spaceships for a YA sci-fi novel. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity and it was a thrill to come up with these ships. I’m pleased to say the book has been released this week and it was a blast to read! It’s the first in a trilogy, and I highly recommend it if you like a fast-paced and unique space adventure. It’s also an amazingly well-designed book, told through transcripts, archived files, text messages, blueprints… and at 600 pages, it’s a surprisingly fast read. This book is going to be a big hit. Thanks to Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, the brilliant authors, and Heather Kelly, designer at Penguin Random House for this cool opportunity.

Here are my designs for the main ships that appear in the story, and in the book.

This ship is huge – 3.25km long, and 1.3km high.

A LOT of decks on this ship.

A more sleek, less military design.

Race to Mars – Proper credit

I updated my portfolio to include a proper credit for my Race to Mars illustrations. I was contacted by the designer of the vehicles – Kurt Anthony Micheels – through Facebook, in a message dated from 2011 which I just saw now. Folks, check the tab that says “Other” in your private messaging page – tons of missed emails, not just junk.

As I was only working freelance on the show for two weeks, all my drawings went through approval from the production house in town, and subsequently I should have been more careful to find out exactly where the designs actually came from before putting them in my portfolio and calling it “Concept Art” instead of “Illustrations based on…”. I’m glad Kurt alerted me to this – no one like to see someone else’s name on their creations, and I’ve always made sure to play fair in this business.

From my sketchbook

Here are a few quick sketches – mostly older spontaneous doodles. The John Carter sketch below was the first one I did for the book illustration, but there were already plenty of Carter-versus-Thark images submitted, so they went with my landscape one (https://meinerthansen.com/2011/10/01/john-carter-of-mars/).

New Robot Punch designs

A sneak peek at some new t-shirt designs, coming soon.

The Limitless Ether

I’m starting a new personal project. I’m hoping this will be big. It’s called “The Limitless Ether.” Like many of my projects, the title came first. This is all I can say for the moment: It will be a short story. It will be in motion. It’s definitely steampunk, and it will be a space odyssey.

I will be sketching and developing it this summer and hope to have the pitch ready by fall. No, I didn’t draw this beautiful solar system chart, but it sits on my desktop for inspiration.

So much artwork, so little visibility

I suppose I could use this blog as a blog for writing once in awhile. At this point, I have about three years of artwork which I cannot post online for various reasons. Okay, specifically, I cannot legally post any of it; a film that has yet to be released, another one which has not come out on DVD, one which is still in production and a game which may be another year before I can even say what it is. I’d like to say I have sketches to show, but I don’t. Working on high-profile projects is intense and time-consuming, and I would rather put down the pen at the end of the day and get on with my other interests.

That said, I’m itching to find the time to work on some personal projects I have kicking around in my sketchbooks and my garage. I have been writing outlines and notes for art projects which need to get done soon, for my own satisfaction. I’ll be posting and sharing some thoughts about these in the next post. Meanwhile, here’s a teaser logo for one of my ideas: