No Heroics: Set Artwork
This is the second of three initial posts on No Heroics, a forthcoming ITV2 sitcom which I produced several pieces of artwork for earlier this year. Produced by Tiger Aspect productions, the six episode series airs from September 18th 2008. It stars Nicholas Burns (Nathan Barley), Patrick Baladi (Neil from The Office), James Lance (Teachers, Saxondale etc), Claire Keelan (also Nathan Barley) and Rebekah Staton (Pulling, Doctor Who).
My first job was to start creating artwork for the set, a classic British pub which is a little bit rough around the edges. There were a number of ideas for this, and essentially I had a quota of images to create in order to populate the space.
At the core of this was the idea of doing some fake comic covers from different eras. Specifically the idea was to reference 2000AD, as the logo pastiches clearly show! A Pull List, it turns out, is the shortlist of comics that a fan will put aside to read first from their weekly haul. The characters in the bottom one (Velvet Veil and Rampart) appear towards the end of the series, and are played by Julia Deakin and Clive Russell (yes that's Marsha and Damian Knox from Spaced - yay!). And yes that's me looking rather smug on set a bit further down. In fact all the set photos you'll see here were taken in February when I went down to visit the Ealing Studios set during filming:
Next up, I got the chance to design the backboard of a pinball machine, featuring Patrick Baladi's character, Excelsor. Just a subtle little indication that he's doing rather well for himself and has his own line of merchandise:
We also needed some fake classic beverage ads. I didn't design the labels, but had the idea of doing a Watchmen inspired take on the famous 'lovely day for a Guinness' poster (Niteowl - geddit?!) for Moore's Old Peculiar (brewed in Northampton, naturally). Watchmen is a key influence on the premise of the show, dealing as it does with how 'normal' people would behave if they had super powers. For Ditko's Origin Ale, the Spider-man reference couldn't be helped, and the tagline seemed like a perfect way to advertise the mysterious ale, and Mr. Ditko himself:
Of course, none of this stuff is filmed directly, but hopefully little bits and pieces will be viewable in the background. I'll post a few screen grabs from the show when I've got my hands on a copy - I've yet to see any of the episodes!
While we're talking about the set, I wanted to show you a few additional pieces. As you can imagine, when working on such a large body of work in such a short timeframe, some things just end up working better than others. For instance, the plan had been to produce a 'wall of fame', with various signed portraits of random heroes scattered over the place. But somehow this just didn't sit as well with the dusty British pub and would have felt more in keeping with an American Diner. That said, I'm still pleased with some of the work I did, and thought you might fancy a peek. The robot Pull List cover does feature in the show though, so I'm told...
Finally, another piece that everyone liked, although never quite made the final cut, was this highwayman character, an old-fashioned antihero, not a million miles away from Batman. In fact the creator Drew Pearce liked this one so much that he hopes to get him into series 2, should that ever happen:
My first job was to start creating artwork for the set, a classic British pub which is a little bit rough around the edges. There were a number of ideas for this, and essentially I had a quota of images to create in order to populate the space.
At the core of this was the idea of doing some fake comic covers from different eras. Specifically the idea was to reference 2000AD, as the logo pastiches clearly show! A Pull List, it turns out, is the shortlist of comics that a fan will put aside to read first from their weekly haul. The characters in the bottom one (Velvet Veil and Rampart) appear towards the end of the series, and are played by Julia Deakin and Clive Russell (yes that's Marsha and Damian Knox from Spaced - yay!). And yes that's me looking rather smug on set a bit further down. In fact all the set photos you'll see here were taken in February when I went down to visit the Ealing Studios set during filming:
Next up, I got the chance to design the backboard of a pinball machine, featuring Patrick Baladi's character, Excelsor. Just a subtle little indication that he's doing rather well for himself and has his own line of merchandise:
We also needed some fake classic beverage ads. I didn't design the labels, but had the idea of doing a Watchmen inspired take on the famous 'lovely day for a Guinness' poster (Niteowl - geddit?!) for Moore's Old Peculiar (brewed in Northampton, naturally). Watchmen is a key influence on the premise of the show, dealing as it does with how 'normal' people would behave if they had super powers. For Ditko's Origin Ale, the Spider-man reference couldn't be helped, and the tagline seemed like a perfect way to advertise the mysterious ale, and Mr. Ditko himself:
Of course, none of this stuff is filmed directly, but hopefully little bits and pieces will be viewable in the background. I'll post a few screen grabs from the show when I've got my hands on a copy - I've yet to see any of the episodes!
While we're talking about the set, I wanted to show you a few additional pieces. As you can imagine, when working on such a large body of work in such a short timeframe, some things just end up working better than others. For instance, the plan had been to produce a 'wall of fame', with various signed portraits of random heroes scattered over the place. But somehow this just didn't sit as well with the dusty British pub and would have felt more in keeping with an American Diner. That said, I'm still pleased with some of the work I did, and thought you might fancy a peek. The robot Pull List cover does feature in the show though, so I'm told...
Finally, another piece that everyone liked, although never quite made the final cut, was this highwayman character, an old-fashioned antihero, not a million miles away from Batman. In fact the creator Drew Pearce liked this one so much that he hopes to get him into series 2, should that ever happen:
posted by Sam G at 9:53 AM
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