Director of Ultramarines

Martyn Pick,  has directed his first feature length film, Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie. 

Martyn’s 24 years of experience as an animator and his individual visual style was key to creating the specific look of the film. Producer Bob Thompson commented: “We worked very closely with designers from Games Workshop and we really tried to make not only the look and feel of the film authentic, but also the mood, the atmosphere and the experience. Having worked with Martyn on promos before, he was a natural choice. He’s extremely skilful with a great deal of expertise in this area, and his style is angry with a fantastic painterly quality that I just found really natural for making this movie. I think he’s really brought the game to life.”

Martyn studied film and fine art at St. Martins School of Art and the crossover of painting and cinema has driven his work ever since. Over the last two decades he has experimented with introducing live action CGI and digital compositing into the expressionist flow of his work. Most recently, he worked as animation director on Franny Armstrong’s highly acclaimed climate change documentary feature, The Age of Stupid and he was commissioned by Film London and the London Development Agency to make London, a five minute film which premiered at the Beijing Olympics to celebrate the capital’s diversity leading up to the 2012 Olympics. As a commercials director, Martyn has made numerous commercials, TV idents and promos for the BBC. He won commissions from Filmfour and Channel 4 and has been awarded with the Gold Plaque for Animation at the Chicago Film Festival. He joined Amazing Spectacles when it was formed in 2010 and Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie is his first feature length film.

“I’m not from a gaming cgi background, but I have a huge amount of experience in fine art and animation,” said Martyn. “This project was a fantastic opportunity to use that experience and develop it for a different genre. I’ve always been a big fan of action cinema and with such a quality script containing a strong sense of atmosphere and imagery, I could easily fit my visual style around it.”

The film which is set in the 41st Millennium at a time of total war, demonstrates contemporary face capture technology, which allowed Martyn and his team to film the actors and transplant their motions. This then enabled the animated movement. The result is very life-like performances created by Martyn and the production designers. The project was completed in 14 months by global teams. 

Martyn said: “This was a really was a fantastic project to be involved with both creatively and in terms of the complicated technology that we used so effectively”

www.martynpick.com

martynpick@hotmail.com