Scanning aperture three dimensional display device

These are the first in a series of patents filed a couple of years ago by me and my business partner, David Hartkop, for a three-dimensional flat-screen display. It would work without glasses and allow for a wide viewing range. Essentially, you could display a 3D object on the screen and view it from different angles, relative to your viewing position. It would have been great, except our funding for the second prototype fell through when the majority of our claims were rejected by the patent office, because it was found they infringed on a similar patent by a Japanese company who had thought of it first.
Our original prototype resides in an unmarked crate in a secret warehouse, but you can read the patents here.

David has since started a coffee company around a solar coffee roaster he designed and built.

Zombie Ostrich

Sketch of a plastinated, zombified ostrich from a museum exhibit.

The Great Buck Howard

My rough poster design for the new movie with John Malkovich, in which he plays a hypnotist. I thought it would be fun to make a straightforward magic show poster, and really not even acknowledge it as a movie.

Spirit background designs

Concept backgrounds for "The Spirit," painted in Photoshop at EntityFX. Each of these panels was a green screen element, which I had to key and integrate into a full environmental sketch. We then comped them into each shot, and edited it all together. Beware of potential spoilers.

"The Spirit" matte paintings + concept

Here was a fun thing to do... two epic explosion shots for The Spirit which I got to take from sketch to final comp.

concept art

matte painting in final comp

We started with sketches, which sat as placeholders in the edit, while framing, composition, and design issues were all addressed in editorial context. When Frank Miller was finally satisfied with these things, they were next fleshed-out into detailed matte paintings.

Matching the angle of my sketch, matte painter Roger Kupelian rendered an overhead view of the city in 3D. I took his renders and painted over them in Photoshop, basically to tweak, re-light and modulate detail. I layered in clouds from various stock photo sources, and translated the smoke tentacles into 3d particles.

The final comp was done in After Effects, using warpers on the clouds to make them billow.

concept art

matte painting in final comp

X-files waterfall sequence

Here are some early environment concept images I did in preparation for a sequence which was ultimately cut from X-Files: I want to Believe, in which Mulder investigates by a frozen waterfall.

These are preliminary designs for what would have been the waterfall matte painting.

Zelda still life

click to enlarge

Digital oil still life of some assorted Nintendo paraphernalia and a rice krispy treat, painted from life with Photoshop.

detail view.

Time-lapse of its creation. Scrub through it to see the image at different stages of completion.

Terminator has bad face day

Some concept illustrations I did for Sarah Connor Chronicles showing what to do if a terminator comes after you: shoot him/her in the face with a shotgun. The actor was filmed with prosthetic make-up, and a patch of greenscreen to be replaced with CG.

Terminator matte painting

A matte painting of a post-apocalyptic nuclear power plant from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which I did at Entity FX. The plant was an actual filming location, but I modified it by painting decay and battle damage over it.


Here is what the original footage looked like...

And here is the final composite, featuring a CG human-killing robot by David Alexander.

Flower study

Digital oil still-life, done in Photoshop over a couple of days.

detail view

Here is the painting setup.