Chris Achilleos's Men-At-Arms

I've never seen or heard of Chris Achilleos until a few days ago, and I'm surprised That i haven't. I stumbled across an art book of his (Sirens to be precise) at a nearby Barnes & Noble five days ago. The funny thing about This particular B&N is that they throw the fantasy art books in the Fantasy literature section, as opposed to the art book section, which is beyond me. regardless, I found it while looking for Boris Vallejo books for a good laugh. When i opened it, i was shocked to see what I saw. His work is definitely up there. Most fantasy artists have pieces with epic battles, dragons, men armed with a sword (sometimes half-naked), scantly-clad fantasy babes, and Dragons. And they're all usually for Young Adult novellas or pin-ups for comic nerds. He's no exception, but his work definitely is better than most. This post will be based on his "single dude with a weapon, possibly fighting hordes of brutes" type images.



This image made me a fan of his for numerous reasons:
1) The Quality of The Art- It has texture and that means alot to me. Most fantasy artist ruin their work by making it as shiny and glossy looking as possible (like Boris Vallejo) thus making the image annoying to look at. It has a certain roughness to it where I believe this guy is lost on the ice somewhere. You can also tell that he did a detailed drawing and just filled it in with paint, keeping the "black line" semi-intact. That's considered a "no-no" by some professionals. I think it works for what he does. I'm under the impression that Chris Achielleos probably spent a good chunk of his time in high-school drawing "Eddie" of Iron Maiden in the back of his math notebook, then when to art school for a few years** (this is more apparent in the other images I put up later in this post.) This certainly adds to the rawness of his figures. I'm also going to throw out there that this piece (and all of his other works) have that look where you can tell he was hired to make this for a publisher, unlike Frank Frazetta who is a Painter as opposed to an Illustrator that paints. Not that its bad, I find his "chunky" anatomy functional and better than people who have spent more time on the ideal anatomical form who've forgotten to add imagination (again, this is more obvious in the later images). His art would be at home on a Magic card or on any respectable metal band's record jacket (he did; unfortunately; do one for Whitesnake , but that's a later post). Then again, his work is a step above any artist who works in those spectrums. The one thing that doesn't work in his favor is that his characters come off as posing, as opposed to being in motion. Then again, most people aren't successful at that.

2) The Imagery- When I saw this, I was interested in knowing what this guy's deal is. Like, where is he going, why is he leaving that castle, who's is that old guy he's thinking of/being haunted by, etc. In my opinion, a Fantasy Artist has succeeded in making a good fantasy image if it comes off as a glimpse of this larger, fantastic world that i believe exists somewhere in my imagination. Which leads me to my last reason...

3) The Characters/Environment- The outfit this guy is wearing is awesome. Bits of 15th Century armor clad with functional leather garments that are semi-historically accurate, trudging through a icy landscape, chained for whatever reason. I can tell this guy is from somewhere, and he just escaped from the castle int he distance, in attempt to return to where he is from. He's just one in many people that fill this other world that is filled with fantastic landscapes and amazing architecture. Chris Achilleos does a great job at blending European-style armor, clothing, architecture, etc. in a more fantastic setting. Or pushing them from realistic to plausibly realistic. His work has a sense of function to it. Most of today's fantasy art is either plagued by trying to have that jagged, WETA fantasy vibe from LOTR or bad Manga-style quality to it. Whatever happened to having a Classic Medieval look?

Here's a collection of "Men-At-Arms" hero type images, to get an idea where I'm coming from-













*note- The first image at the beginning of this post is his illustration of a Nazgul from Lord Of The Rings. I think that character design schools the cloaked robed wraiths of the trilogy films by Peter Jackson. That Nazgul looks like a warrior decked out in various exotic garb from his travels haunting Middle-earth. Awesome.

** He was already a professional artist by the late 1970s, but he has that attitude in his work.

Ian Miller's contribution to "Wizards"

As far as fantastic, other worldly landscapes go, few come close to touching Ian Miller. Granted- his work is more abstract than most, but that's what makes it truly remarkable. I love images of misty mountain-tops with dueling wizards as much as anyone, but The worlds he illustrates (or scratches out) is dense. This "density" is brought about by images of ruined man-made city-scapes, deteriorating castles, and colossal industrial machines. It's no wonder why Ralph Bakshi wanted him to illustrate the backgrounds in his 1977 animated classic Wizards



Above is the establishing shot of Scortch, which is a desolate wasteland that is a remainder of the war that destroyed the world 300,000 years prior to the story. If you've never seen Wizards, you've been missing out. The basic plot is about how humanity destroyed itself during a big nuclear war, and basically no one lived. Those who did were usually mutants or some other type of monster. Over the course of thousands of years, fairies, elves, and other related fantasy character type emerged and magic came back to common use (because it was apparently forgotten due to us worshiping technology). Then this queen of sorts gave birth to a set of magical twins. One was completely good (Avatar), and one was completely evil (Blackwolf). The movie is about Blackwolf trying to eliminate magic peace from the world through the use of technology, black magic, reanimated evil knights summoned from hell, and armies of mutants from his realm of Scortch.



The above image is Blackwolf and Avatar standing in Blackwolf's castle before their final showdown. Witht he use of silhouetted objects in the foreground, it encapsulates Avatar and also makes you feel somewhat claustrophobic. This image gives you a good idea of what Ian Miller's work is like in the film. It has this crowded but colossal architecture that feels like it's the product of another time. Much like this screen grab, many of of the images of Scortch are of parts of massive castle-like structures that you never see the whole structure, only parts. Even from shots of the distance, the Castles are part of the overall landscape, blending in with more layers of jagged architecture. The Castles have this look that they are in the beginning stages of degradation. Example-




Although most of the backgrounds he's done are super complex, he's also done his share of rough line sketches for backgrounds. Usually for the more "organic" but eeire tone that is Scortch outside of Blackwolf's castles and surrounding city. Maybe it was done for budget reasons or time reasons, but whatever the reason, it feels more desolate and cold. The two images above are rough drawings he did for the production. Below is a collection of the rough, freehand work for the final film (note that the establishing show of Scortch is of this style)













These are screen shots i took, so I did my best to capture a frame with as little animated characters on it as possible. Some of the screen shots are just covered with them, but you can still see the backgrounds pretty well. I'm gonna post the rest of the backgrounds i grabbed for you to look over. I strongly encourage to to look deep into them. They're all very complete and thick. You can honestly loose yourself in them. Side Note- The first image on this post and the image following this paragraph (The red Castle) is my favorite establishing shot in any animated film, ever. It's also one of my favorite illustrations ever. I'm not kidding.






































On an trained animator note- In a couple of scenes, Ian Miller's illustrations are used as layered background to show movement (moving foreground element, or a panning mid-ground element) which really add a whole new level. take this image for instance (spoiler!) The background is a flat image, but after Blackwolf is killed, this happens- The flat background is cut into seperate pieces, with a mid-ground and foreground shaking back-and-forth, while the background gets saturated with color to amply the action that just happened. Ralph Bakshi is a skilled director, i don't care what anyone says. Wizards is one rare Independent animated film from America that aimed to be artistic in it's own way and not follow the standards held by the Disney school of animation. Yeah, it was made on no budget and they characters break their model all the time, but at least it's honest and unique. Something those other studios seemed to have lost a looooong time ago. ALSO- These images lost some quality (and size) when i converted them from bmp to jpeg, so if you want any of these at a high-resolution, send me an e-mail and i will gladly send you them