Broadcast Illustration

Nominated for an Emmy Award in 2003 (The Most Extreme: Jumpers), our specialised illustration skills are unique in Dunedin and can be applied to broadcast graphics, poster design and a variety of advertising media.
With an Honours DFA (Otago) in Fine Arts, we have the perfect mix of traditional art skills - including drawing, pen and ink and photography - with digital painting an image manipulation.
Our work for Animal Planet, Discovery Channel and National Geographic productions over the past decade has seen us accumulate an extensive portfolio of digital illustration covering a wide range of styles and techniques.
Leaving no genre sacred, we have ransacked the art world from prehistoric cave art, to Victorian engravings and modern advertising - creating unique and quirky graphics in these styles.

1960's Spy Comic

For four seasons Third Eye Design created realistic art historical images for The Most Extreme, illustrating script twists that are not available as footage or existing graphics.
This illustration depicts the story of spy-versus-spy Ricin poisoning as 'found' in a 2-colour 1960's comic book spread. The original line art was hand-drawn with pen and ink, scanned and colourised. Multiple layers of effects and textures complete the stylisation before embedding the images on paper. Lighting effects are added and the graphic is panned over in the edit suite to bring the story to life.

Cleopatra

The Most Extreme is a fun look at how the best (and worst) of our world stack up against the animal kingdom. It combined amazing facts, archival footage, 3D animation and 2D illustration in a fast-paced countdown of extremities. A thorough understanding of Art History was required to unearth potential resource material and to ensure that the illustrations fit both the context of the script as well as appear stylistically and historically "authentic". The graphics were presented as found works of art. This image is one of a series of hand-painted Egyptian illustrations on timber depicting the life of Cleopatra.

Marquis de Sade

To illustrate the story of the decadent Marquis de Sade, a sequence of pseudo-Victorian watercolours were drawn with pen and ink. Once digitised these are given the full paper texture, age and degradation treatment to simulate the type of look required to appear authentic. With multiple camera pans, crops and close-ups the story unfolds as though delving through a series of ancient paintings.

NHNZ - New Zealand Journeys

In 2006 Third Eye Design was contracted by NHNZ to produce titles, animated graphics and 2D illustration for the CCTV (China)/NHNZ joint production New Zealand Journeys. This five episode series was produced in consultation with the NZ Government's Tourism Board to introduce the Chinese public to New Zealand's natural and cultural history, our innovators and their innovations, New Zealand Cinema and the historical and on-going relationship between New Zealand and China.

This 2D illustration was from Third Eye's original storyboards illustration a style concept for the series' map animations.

Thomas Edison

Hand-painting the moment when Edison dreamed up the light bulb was no easy task. Still, it's a lot of fun. There aren't many jobs when you have to find out what on earth Phrenology is (the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities - see the man standing behind Edison as a boy). And then there's hours of drawing in pen and ink, scanning, manipulating and then digitally painting your image until it looks like it fell out of a dusty old book.