Lidoverse Merit

Chuffed to pick up a Merit Award in the Uncommissioned category at the Hiii Illustration 23 competition for my ongoing personal project Lidoverse. Always nice to get recognition, especially for creative work close to your heart, so thank you to the jury. Here's my bit of bumph about the project.

Lidoverse - A series of personal illustrations and animations that are based on a local landmark called the Cliftonville Lido in coastal Margate, UK. The work re-imagines the modestly proportioned Lido in epic and miniature scale in an alternative seaside universe. One populated by abstracted takes on Margate’s architecture, signage, concrete promenades, coastal hazard markers and sea wall escape ladders.

Crablington House

I had so much fun last year creating Lido Crab for Margate's Crab Museum calendar 2023 that I couldn't resist submitting another local landmark/crab inspired artwork for the '24 edition. As I'd been developing some illustrations this year featuring the monolithic br-eauty Arlington House it seemed to be the ideal candidate for crab-ification. Working with a Cinema 4d model I'd already made of the building I added concrete pincers and legs along with some rooftop eyes before composting into a Margate Main Sands scene in Photoshop. Happy to say Crablington House was selected for the calendar along with some lovely entries and is available at the Crab Museum store here. Get your claws on one. 

Into The Lidoverse

Here are some recent experiments from my ongoing Lidoverse personal project inspired by Margate's iconic Cliftonville Lido sign and staring out to sea too much. The Lidoverse gallery has embraced the imposing brutal architecture of Arlington House this year and spliced it's DNA with the Lido for a few daunting appearances so far. The Lido sign itself is transformed into an end of Summer cocktail drinking vessel and makes an appearance on a flyer design for my wife and I's 50th birthday party, Margate Five-0, in July before congregating amongst itself out at a dusky sea. The Lidoverse continues to expand and is all 3d modelled with Cinema 4d and composited in Photoshop with my own photography. You can also see the work on the main site here.

For Escape Only

Here's a recent bit of personal work I've been playing with in between jobs, a mini-project offshoot of the ongoing Lidoverse project called For Escape Only. It's a series of illustrations and an animation that expands on my Cliftonville Lido obsession to include other local landmarks such as the perfectly 80s (and hideous) College Square sign in Margate town and an abstracted take on the area's concrete promenades, coastal hazard markers and seawall escape ladders. With everything built in Cinema 4d it seemed natural to turn the illustration series into a subtle 3d animation exercise with simple camera movements added through the scenes. I paired the animated visuals with an edit from the atmospheric track Kibo by Ashford based band Bossk.

Lido Crab and the Lidoverse

Since moving to Margate, just over a year ago now, I've had a bit of a creative crush on the Cliftonville Lido tower. So much so that I built a 3d model of it in Cinema 4d to tinker around with for an ongoing project I like to call the Lidoverse. Here are some of the illustrations created so far mostly envisaging the tower as an enormous monument out at sea that develops a Santa complex at Christmas and, for its latest incarnation, transforms into a crab. The Lido Crab was created as a submission for the 2023 calendar from the wonderful Crab Museum based in Margate. Happy to report the Lido Crab will appear in the calendar amongst some very fine crustacean-centric art and is available here.