This interview first appeared in Starburst (Spring Special, April, 1997). Chris was the first person I ever interviewed, and was generous and patient. I hadn't known he was going to be at GenCon, so just took the chance to grab him when he had a moment. The resulting interview was a big boost to my career and to my confidence. As such, I shall always be extremely grateful to him.
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| Chris signing and sketching at UK GenCon a very long time ago. |
Ask someone about Chris Foss (and you can ask a lot of
people; he's been working for thirty years) and you'll get an answer that will
be a variation on the theme of
'He's the guy who does the big spaceships'.
Chances are, if you ask a student, you'll be informed in leering fashion
'He's the guy who did the pictures in Joy of Sex'.
Not only is Chris the artist responsible for the look of sci-fi through the sixties and seventies, the man responsible for more film design than most folk know about, he's also to blame for a great number of strained ligaments and a fair amount of teenage frustration.
Starburst caught up with Chris Foss during Euro Gen Con 1996, atLoughborough University
Oddly, Ken had never heard of Chris when the name first came up during discussions over who was to illustrate the revival of one of the classic role playing game worlds. What Ken wanted was someone who could produce lots of high quality paintings and drawings of very believable ships, based on some quite brief comments on weight, purpose and look. In Chris, he found an artist who had been doing just that for years. Very quickly a mutual respect sprang up between the two, and Chris produced hundreds of drawings of ships, weapons and aliens, turning out about five or six quality drawings per day.
"It's been one of the happiest periods of my life, and I think one of the most creative. It is the most peculiar formula", Chris enthuses. Ken Whitman explained the work pattern Chris adopted.
"Get up in the morning and eat. Go to the beach for six hours. Get back and eat. Then work until, on average, three in the morning. Then go back and do the whole routine seven days a week for three months."
Gruelling, I'm sure.
Declaring that he is 'just a commercial artist' Chris is reluctant to discuss his influences and thus tempt providence. As a commercial artist, a lot of the images come from discussions with the client. A formula springs up that is a mix of what the client wants, and what Chris is thinking of in general at the time.
Flicking through the Traveller book, Chris comes across an image from his youth.
"This picture is a space scrapyard. I was still very young then. I spent a lot of time in scrapyards. It was easy to visualise some sort of scrapyard of the future. They (publishersGranada
"I work in the popular market, the 'bums-on-seats' market. One is creating something, trying to make it look strange, and yet there will be familiar tones in there in order for people to interpret what you've shown them. Everything I've ever done is quite representational, everything in there works, and with Traveller all they ever need is some sort of very clear, conceptual painting. Most modern art directors I've dealt with in the last twenty years all say, don't give us plans, just a picture. There's everything we need to see on there. We can build it from there, and that's the way it works."
"Because I've been working so much with the Traveller people, and they have actual scientists who are keen Traveller aficionados, I'm taking science more into account now than I did in the early days."
As an artist, Chris Foss has a career that is enviable to say the least. He began as an eighteen year old, still at University, commissioned and held on retainer by the owner of Penthouse magazine to do a series of illustrations for a book on a science fiction theme similar to Barbarella.
"To give you an idea of how long ago this was, the Mini motor car had just been invented. He had a huge American Buick and I used to sit in this and we'd talk and talk."
Chris was definitely in the right place at the right time, in an era where publishers of science fiction relied on geometric or squiggly shapes on the covers.
Chris was encouraged by his Buick owning friend to go see a film called 2001: A Space Odyssey.
"I found it compelling for the clarity of the concept. Conversely, twenty five years later I ended up working for Stanley Kubrick for six months up in his house inSt. Albans on his latest film
(then titled A.I.)." Although Chris can see the good side of the man, he
found the whole experience a trying one.
"It became some sort of manipulation game between me and him. It was so immensely sad, because I think he is truly a genius of some sort, and it seems such a waste of my virtues and his virtues when we should have been reaching agreement."
The earliest film Chris Foss worked on has gone down in sci-fi movie history as the Greatest Movie Never Made; Alejandro Jodorowsky's version of Dune. Chris got to work with Jodorowsky ("He's a sort of guru, the most extraordinary personality") and Frank Herbert in designing the project. Destined to be an immense wide screen presentation, there is now a book somewhere inParis
The production team went out fromFrance
"I still remember! They phoned me up and said they were going to make a film of Superman, and I thought how stupid, that's a cartoon. It'll never work but, what the heck, let's do it. I did a huge amount of the design and conceptual work on Superman."
Meanwhile, two events occurred that were to keep Chris firmly inHollywood
Fox executives, still looking for more films to cash in on the sci-fi 'craze', latched on to O'Bannon's project and turned a minor, two million dollar film into a fully fledged main feature. That film, destined to be a cult classic, was Alien.
In the meantime, Chris had finished on Superman, and had gone off to work with Dino De Laurentis (who later bought the Dune rights, and who's daughter made the film). Chris was doing conceptual work on Flash Gordon when Dan O'Bannon (who had been sleeping on someone's sofa inLos
Angeles ), called Chris back to join the rest of the Dune team in America
"They brought Dan in because Doug Trumbull was too expensive. Alien was a direct result of Alahandro's really quite inspired creation of the early Dune."
Eventually, Chris returned to O'Bannon's world by designing, amongst other things, the power-loader for Aliens. After all of this, Chris went off to work on a great many smaller scale films. These allowed him to explore the art direction side of film making. One European production even had him building plastic kits as there was no-one else to do the job. Just as well model building is a hobby of Chris'.
At the moment, Chris is working with a company inAmerica
"It's not really science fiction. It's time fantasy. I can't say too much. Just watch this space."
The animation work is very important to Chris. It allows him to acknowledge old friend and mentor, Steve Addis, who had said to a young Chris Foss that he should try to marry his pictures with animation. Belatedly, Chris is now tearing after that goal.
To further this desire, and to carry on the re-invention of Chris Foss, he is intending to team up with artist Steve Stone and Steve's company Nexus DNA. Steve is one ofBritain
In the longer term, Chris is continuing work with the Traveller people. The role playing game is to become a film, and Imperium are keen to have Chris conceptualise that also, to keep an over-all design cohesiveness. The promotion of the film idea is being handled by Sweet Pea Entertainment of California (who own Imperium Games). Traveller is their big push, through an Internet site, comic books, novels, press coverage and so on.
However, the frustrating side of film production is already becoming evident, as the producers take over. It is an aspect Chris Foss knows well.
"This is the problem at the moment. The producer inCalifornia
wants Hollywood shazam, and a lot of it is
incompatible with the whole basic root of Traveller. As I've discovered by
being here (at Gen Con), the traditional Traveller fans know it backwards,
forwards and sideways. They are thrilled that it has been re-issued and has
picked up the old theme."
Traveller had, in previous incarnations, gone off track and died because it strayed from what the huge fan base wanted. Now, in the same way Judge Dredd went so badly wrong, Traveller is in danger of going the same way. As Chris says, there are stormy skies ahead. Dredd was another production that Chris had worked on in the past. As with Traveller, Chris went through a crash course in the character background. He found the character ingenious in its original design, and was disappointed (to say the least) in the casting of the lead and the end result
Ken sums up the process.
"Working inHollywood
Having known role-players all his life, and having worked on the Traveller game, Chris finally got to join in with a live-action game at Euro Gen Con '96.
"I found it absolutely intriguing. It's no criticism of television, but I think electric screens are really boring, and real situations are really very exciting. I can see terrific potential in this. It beats the shit out of projected images!"
On a final note, Chris has one other project he is enthusiastic about.
"Tits In Space; it's my forth coming block-buster. It opens with the biggest steam powered space ship hammering through space, with the engineer hanging out, you know. The boiler room has about three hundred topless amazons shovelling coal."
Yes, well. Moving on swiftly. The future?
"I'm intrinsically a very lazy person. I would like to sit on my backside, lie in the sun, look at the sky and say this is fun. Years ago there was a wonderful film called the Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film, something like that. It was Spike Milligan and all the people like that. Always, in the distance, was this man on the horizon, looking. In the foreground, this big finger comes and beckons him towards the camera. That's what I see my life being like. Always, when I just want to lie down and forget about the whole ghastly business, it's the big finger; you're prodded, you're pushed forward."
"Sadly, in the film, when the guy finally comes up to the camera, he gets punched in the face. Is that how life's going to end? I don't know. I'm very philosophical, fiendishly optimistic. I never know what's around the next corner. Life has become more and more exciting."
That excitement can only be a good thing. As Chris said, watch this space. There's a lot going on.
'He's the guy who does the big spaceships'.
Chances are, if you ask a student, you'll be informed in leering fashion
'He's the guy who did the pictures in Joy of Sex'.
Not only is Chris the artist responsible for the look of sci-fi through the sixties and seventies, the man responsible for more film design than most folk know about, he's also to blame for a great number of strained ligaments and a fair amount of teenage frustration.
Starburst caught up with Chris Foss during Euro Gen Con 1996, at
Oddly, Ken had never heard of Chris when the name first came up during discussions over who was to illustrate the revival of one of the classic role playing game worlds. What Ken wanted was someone who could produce lots of high quality paintings and drawings of very believable ships, based on some quite brief comments on weight, purpose and look. In Chris, he found an artist who had been doing just that for years. Very quickly a mutual respect sprang up between the two, and Chris produced hundreds of drawings of ships, weapons and aliens, turning out about five or six quality drawings per day.
"It's been one of the happiest periods of my life, and I think one of the most creative. It is the most peculiar formula", Chris enthuses. Ken Whitman explained the work pattern Chris adopted.
"Get up in the morning and eat. Go to the beach for six hours. Get back and eat. Then work until, on average, three in the morning. Then go back and do the whole routine seven days a week for three months."
Gruelling, I'm sure.
Declaring that he is 'just a commercial artist' Chris is reluctant to discuss his influences and thus tempt providence. As a commercial artist, a lot of the images come from discussions with the client. A formula springs up that is a mix of what the client wants, and what Chris is thinking of in general at the time.
Flicking through the Traveller book, Chris comes across an image from his youth.
"This picture is a space scrapyard. I was still very young then. I spent a lot of time in scrapyards. It was easy to visualise some sort of scrapyard of the future. They (publishers
"I work in the popular market, the 'bums-on-seats' market. One is creating something, trying to make it look strange, and yet there will be familiar tones in there in order for people to interpret what you've shown them. Everything I've ever done is quite representational, everything in there works, and with Traveller all they ever need is some sort of very clear, conceptual painting. Most modern art directors I've dealt with in the last twenty years all say, don't give us plans, just a picture. There's everything we need to see on there. We can build it from there, and that's the way it works."
"Because I've been working so much with the Traveller people, and they have actual scientists who are keen Traveller aficionados, I'm taking science more into account now than I did in the early days."
As an artist, Chris Foss has a career that is enviable to say the least. He began as an eighteen year old, still at University, commissioned and held on retainer by the owner of Penthouse magazine to do a series of illustrations for a book on a science fiction theme similar to Barbarella.
"To give you an idea of how long ago this was, the Mini motor car had just been invented. He had a huge American Buick and I used to sit in this and we'd talk and talk."
Chris was definitely in the right place at the right time, in an era where publishers of science fiction relied on geometric or squiggly shapes on the covers.
Chris was encouraged by his Buick owning friend to go see a film called 2001: A Space Odyssey.
"I found it compelling for the clarity of the concept. Conversely, twenty five years later I ended up working for Stanley Kubrick for six months up in his house in
"It became some sort of manipulation game between me and him. It was so immensely sad, because I think he is truly a genius of some sort, and it seems such a waste of my virtues and his virtues when we should have been reaching agreement."
The earliest film Chris Foss worked on has gone down in sci-fi movie history as the Greatest Movie Never Made; Alejandro Jodorowsky's version of Dune. Chris got to work with Jodorowsky ("He's a sort of guru, the most extraordinary personality") and Frank Herbert in designing the project. Destined to be an immense wide screen presentation, there is now a book somewhere in
The production team went out from
"I still remember! They phoned me up and said they were going to make a film of Superman, and I thought how stupid, that's a cartoon. It'll never work but, what the heck, let's do it. I did a huge amount of the design and conceptual work on Superman."
Meanwhile, two events occurred that were to keep Chris firmly in
Fox executives, still looking for more films to cash in on the sci-fi 'craze', latched on to O'Bannon's project and turned a minor, two million dollar film into a fully fledged main feature. That film, destined to be a cult classic, was Alien.
In the meantime, Chris had finished on Superman, and had gone off to work with Dino De Laurentis (who later bought the Dune rights, and who's daughter made the film). Chris was doing conceptual work on Flash Gordon when Dan O'Bannon (who had been sleeping on someone's sofa in
"They brought Dan in because Doug Trumbull was too expensive. Alien was a direct result of Alahandro's really quite inspired creation of the early Dune."
Eventually, Chris returned to O'Bannon's world by designing, amongst other things, the power-loader for Aliens. After all of this, Chris went off to work on a great many smaller scale films. These allowed him to explore the art direction side of film making. One European production even had him building plastic kits as there was no-one else to do the job. Just as well model building is a hobby of Chris'.
At the moment, Chris is working with a company in
"It's not really science fiction. It's time fantasy. I can't say too much. Just watch this space."
The animation work is very important to Chris. It allows him to acknowledge old friend and mentor, Steve Addis, who had said to a young Chris Foss that he should try to marry his pictures with animation. Belatedly, Chris is now tearing after that goal.
To further this desire, and to carry on the re-invention of Chris Foss, he is intending to team up with artist Steve Stone and Steve's company Nexus DNA. Steve is one of
In the longer term, Chris is continuing work with the Traveller people. The role playing game is to become a film, and Imperium are keen to have Chris conceptualise that also, to keep an over-all design cohesiveness. The promotion of the film idea is being handled by Sweet Pea Entertainment of California (who own Imperium Games). Traveller is their big push, through an Internet site, comic books, novels, press coverage and so on.
However, the frustrating side of film production is already becoming evident, as the producers take over. It is an aspect Chris Foss knows well.
"This is the problem at the moment. The producer in
Traveller had, in previous incarnations, gone off track and died because it strayed from what the huge fan base wanted. Now, in the same way Judge Dredd went so badly wrong, Traveller is in danger of going the same way. As Chris says, there are stormy skies ahead. Dredd was another production that Chris had worked on in the past. As with Traveller, Chris went through a crash course in the character background. He found the character ingenious in its original design, and was disappointed (to say the least) in the casting of the lead and the end result
Ken sums up the process.
"Working in
Having known role-players all his life, and having worked on the Traveller game, Chris finally got to join in with a live-action game at Euro Gen Con '96.
"I found it absolutely intriguing. It's no criticism of television, but I think electric screens are really boring, and real situations are really very exciting. I can see terrific potential in this. It beats the shit out of projected images!"
On a final note, Chris has one other project he is enthusiastic about.
"Tits In Space; it's my forth coming block-buster. It opens with the biggest steam powered space ship hammering through space, with the engineer hanging out, you know. The boiler room has about three hundred topless amazons shovelling coal."
Yes, well. Moving on swiftly. The future?
"I'm intrinsically a very lazy person. I would like to sit on my backside, lie in the sun, look at the sky and say this is fun. Years ago there was a wonderful film called the Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film, something like that. It was Spike Milligan and all the people like that. Always, in the distance, was this man on the horizon, looking. In the foreground, this big finger comes and beckons him towards the camera. That's what I see my life being like. Always, when I just want to lie down and forget about the whole ghastly business, it's the big finger; you're prodded, you're pushed forward."
"Sadly, in the film, when the guy finally comes up to the camera, he gets punched in the face. Is that how life's going to end? I don't know. I'm very philosophical, fiendishly optimistic. I never know what's around the next corner. Life has become more and more exciting."
That excitement can only be a good thing. As Chris said, watch this space. There's a lot going on.
--------------------------------------
And there still is! Go have a look at Chris' website. He was, is, and will always be truly remarkable.
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