Spotlight on: Martyn Pick

Film Maker and Digital Artist

Martyn Pick studied film and fine art at St.Martins School of Art and the crossover of painting and cinema has driven his work ever since.

Early animated films such as ”Spectres (1987)” “Taboo of Dirt (1988)” and “Signature”(BFI New Directors Award 1990) were characterised by raw gritty charcoal drawing, wild fluid movement and brutal subject matter. At odds with the dominant commercial cartoon style they were screened in art galleries, international film festivals and on television, establishing his distinctive voice as an animator and filmmaker.

In the nineties working as a commercial director at Soho production company BermudaShorts he applied his style to many commercials,promos and tv idents. He began to introduce liveaction performance, cgi and digital compositing into the expressionist flow of his animation.

In the Channel 4 commissioned short film “ PLAZA”(2000) which was screened at film festivals including London and Edinburgh he created a tension between a savage animation subconscious and the placid live action reality that it shatters.

This led to the FilmFour commission “GREEN” which was his first pure liveaction drama. “PLAZA” was also the basis of a commercial for BUDWEISER for the US which used the same abrasive mix of raw scratched animation corroding liveaction. At the same time he directed six high profile sixty second commercials for the American corporation ADM through the agency FCB. These were a strong commercial application of all the experiments with integrating liveaction and cgi into fluid painterly hand animation.

They received massive exposure on US networks and won the Gold Plaque for Animation at the Chicago Film Festival.

In 2004 he directed his biggest ever job in the UK which was the BBC promotional trailers for the EURO 2004 tournament in which live-action of famous European footballers were treated in an eclectic mix of painterly styles.

Recently he has completed his first live-action commercial for the UK and is developing a longform live-action/animation drama.

Links to Martyn's work:

	'The Siege' - moodboard
	'Meat & Electricity'
	Martyn Pick portfolio
	Martyn Pick - film maker & digital artist