Makers At Heart | CG Lead Artist Graeme Turnbull on his journey into the creative industry & how his personal work is inspired by architecture

We are Makers At Heart. We create the extraordinary.

As the creative engine room of the world’s biggest brands we are driven by one purpose: to solve our client’s toughest briefs beautifully. Our Makers believe in the power of cooperation and partnership to deliver ambitious ideas to that break new ground and deliver awe-inspiring creative work.

Everything we do as a team makes great ideas come to life. We are thinkers, designers, artists, directors, producers, developers, colourists, coders, technicians, editors, animators, writers, doers and makers.

In our Makers At Heart series, we introduce the people behind the projects to hear more about their inspirations, motivations and creative insights. We spoke to CG Lead Artist Graeme Turnbull about the inspirations behind his personal work and how he got into the creative industry.

Are you working on any passion projects at the moment?

I have recently been exploring techniques to turn my paintings into 3D sculptures. I decided to use the work from home set up to my advantage and go back to my CGI roots with my personal work to create some larger pieces in a digital format. I normally paint using a combination of loose and hard-edged brushwork with minimum colors. It’s quite refreshing using my visual effects skillset to create artwork that is normally kept so separate from what I do day to day. I have been using this experience as a way to explore the procedural possibilities in the 3D software Houdini and learn some new techniques.

My personal work is directly inspired by architecture, natural geometry & negative space. My paintings are never planned or sketched out, but I take lots of reference photography which helps create a visual library of ideas to experiment with. I like to deconstruct architecture and toy with the building and breaking of perspective, ultimately resulting in geometric works characterised with a sense of unpredictability and controlled chaos.

How did you get into the creative industry?

For as long as I can remember making art has been important to me. The medium of film & animation has fascinated me since I was a child – art school was a no-brainer. I did a BaHons & MSC in Animation, during which I was drawn to the fast-paced commercial side of the industry with its ever-changing creative challenges. Through my master’s program, I was able to access contacts in the industry and travelling to London to visit post houses gave me the face to face interaction which helped a working relationship be established. I was fortunate enough that The Mill offered to mentor me through the remainder of the program, I moved to London four weeks after finishing studying and the rest is history.

Check out more Makers At Heart features here and get in touch with our VFX team regarding any upcoming projects here. You can also follow Graeme on Instagram @s_t_e_n_d_e_c.