(Above) Another sample of Chris Foss’s uber cool space hardware design style. This Example is especially interesting as it shows Foss’s style at it’s most minimal and therefore abstract, and as with all of his work has tremendous sense of scale.
See more of Chris Foss here http://www.chrisfoss.net/
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Quick Addendum Sept 2009 – Note that the Elite Poster Below is actually by Philip Castle NOT Chris Foss !!
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Looking at this piece made me wonder how much of an influence/inspiration Chris Foss’s Art must of been on David Braben & Ian Bell’s legendary 80’s computer game Elite. Original 80’s Elite Poster featured below, It’s not another Chris Foss By the way, but in fact another Airbrush Legend – Philip Castle, more on him soon… (thanks for the tip Jim!)
Oh!
I didn’t know the Elite illustration was by Chris Foss. I love the covers he did for Asmiov. Those big headed robots are great.
David Brabens my boss! How about that?
<3 this blog.
Cheerio
Jim
Comment by Jim — September 3, 2008 @ 11:41 am
Hey Jim, Actually Chris Foss didn’t do the Elite artwork (not sure who did) Foss’s Minimal image reminded me of the Low Poly Ships from Elite – hence the comparison – mind you most Sci-Fi bears a resemblence to Chris Foss!
So you Work for David Braben? thats Cool – whens Elite 4 Coming out?
Comment by admin — September 3, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
Yeh sorry I made the mistake!
Oh and even I’m not sure about Elite 4’s release date, Sorry
I asked David about the illustrations he said it was a great artist called Philip Castle.
Comment by Jim — September 3, 2008 @ 3:18 pm
Cheers Jim that Great!! – I stick a poster of Elite and you ask one of the co-creator’s of the game who the Artist is! – Pretty amazing this internet stuff -
I will be on the lookout Philip Castle!
cheers!
PS: top animation Showreel
!
Comment by admin — September 3, 2008 @ 3:43 pm
Seeing the poster for Elite brings back many memories of gaming on my Atari ST
And thanks to Jim for identifying Philip Castle – I had no idea he did the Clockwork Orange poster (and many other great designs!)
Comment by Kim — September 6, 2008 @ 6:30 pm
Yeah Elite was truly great, and I wasted days playing the Elite 2 “Frontiers” and yeah Philip Castle’s work is superb – will stick some more of his stuff up here soon!
Comment by admin — September 6, 2008 @ 7:17 pm
Did Cris Foss do illustrations for Spacebase 2000? The linked images strongly reminded me of that book. I still have it somewhere and might scan it for internets some day.
Comment by onehalf — November 24, 2008 @ 7:41 pm
Hey, I’m not sure on that onehalf – I know he’s done a hell of alot of work – check this gallery: http://astrona.blogspot.com/search/label/Chris%20Foss
Comment by Kie — November 24, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
The main reason elite looked the way it did was more to do with technology and the limitations of computer graphics of the day. The simple wireframe rendering didn’t allow for a lot of detail and combined with the procedural solar system, open ended gameplay, trading and what have you all crammed into a 32 kb and I think 2mhz cpu.
Was Elite that got me playing on home computers, on the BBC B when it was first released. The computer was heavily used in education and Elite was one of the groundbreaking games for it that changed gaming on so many different levels.
Comment by Adrian — May 31, 2010 @ 10:46 pm