In the early 90’s I was working for a small design studio in Manhattan as an Illustrator. We had many well known clients as we served the Entertainment Licensing community. One of those clients was New Line Cinema. At the time the Lost In Space movie was being created. It had not been released yet but it was in production. They contacted us to create the commercial style guide.
This was the first major style guide that I would cut my teeth on after being a toy designer for a number of years. In fact , I wasn’t the main artist on the project but I did get to see and use all of the onset unit photography as well as I got to see a lot of the dailies without the special effects added! To make a long story short, I got to create a bunch of vector art for the sale guide some of which is posted on this site!
Anyway, fast forward to 2024, I get a call from Flat Earth Enterprises! They’re rebooting the franchise with all sorts of cool projects. The Lord of the Rings franchise has a new owner and they’d like to set things off with some vector art style guide pieces.
The best part about it, The guy who contacted me is the same guy we dealt with at New Line Cinema! Total 360 circle. Anyway, with me in the middle of selling my house and looking for one in North Carolina (New York is just too expensive) I illustrate a bunch of vector art based on the Ralph Bakshi LOTR tv movie. Great fun. I actually had to watch the movie again which I hadn’t seen for like 15 years. I actually pulled out the old DVD player and watched it with a bowl full of popcorn!
Now, I could have streamed it but I had the DVD and I wanted to see all the extras. I could have streamed those too but I’m a 70’s kid and I wanted to hook up the ole DVD player! In fact I still have 3 shelves full of DVD’s and I wanted see if my player still works (which it does). I actually bought 2 small dvd players and added them to my tv’s!
So, that was the last Licensing job that I’ve done. I had a ball and hope they call for more! Currently, I’m adding things to my website, setting up a Patreon and rebooting this blog. We have some fun stuff coming up. I’m busy writing and scheduling so stay toned! Sign up for my monthly newsletter so we can stay in touch and I can tell you when the new stuff drops.
Well that’s it for this one. Stay cool and I’ll see you on the next one.
Lata!
L
