Last night I burned the midnight oil working on new illustrations for my animated film project, The Legend of Billy Blin, about a mystical creature on stilts in search of his lost youth. I started to think about the various film artists who have had a significant influence on my work. If I had to play apprentice to a single concept artist alive today, it would surely be Jean Giraud Moebius, a French illustrator whose designs have shaped the cinematic landscapes of Blade Runner, Fifth Element, and The Abyss. I’ve always been obsessed with the production sketch — I’ve been making “movie drawings” since age one — and Giraud’s juxtaposition of earthy, sandy-booted souls against fluid backdrops of a nostalgic, future-primitive cosmos is quite characteristic of my own visual pathos.Giraud’s trajectory — technical training at the Arts Appliques at age 16, then a stint as an intern for Belgian artist Jije (well known for his Catholic-fueled gospel comics) , followed by an impulsive name-change, treads familiar territory. His collaborations with mad genius/Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, the director behind surreal, inflammatory gems “El Topo” and “Santa Sangre”, have also cemented him as a fringe visionary. That association alone included a little-known failed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” (later filmed by David Lynch, of course) which was to star Salvador Dali and feature a soundtrack by Pink Floyd. If only. Giraud “Moebius” returned to his passion for the pen and illustrated The Incal, a comic series written by Jodorowsky. He would be drawn to film again, with Luc Besson’s airy “Fifth Element”. It is perhaps this film, along with Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner”, that captures the rainbow-orange-swirl of technology so rampant in his panels. It’s this mix of the pen and camera that I’m really interested in. The concept artist’s job brings me back to days of Harryhausen old. But that’s another story….