(interview conducted for the www.mk1comics.co.nz website)

My first exposure to the fantastically fantastical work of Mr Greg Broadmore came from Weta Workshop’s “World of King Kong” book  – which I mainly bought because my old workmate Christian (Pearce – see interview with him here: link) had some pictures in it. As I perused this folio of fine illustrations, certain pictures stood out and I kept noticing this “broadmore” signature on them. Fast forward a while and I’m at the Armageddon expo in Auckland. It’s towards the end of the day and the Weta booth that I’ve been meaning to check out all day but has been crowded finally looks pretty clear. I go over to check out some completely outrageously rad ray gun props (honestly the coolest thing that you never knew that you always wanted) they are selling there and find out that the dude manning the stand is the very same Broadmore (and creator of said outrageously rad ray guns).

 Greg recognises my t-shirt (from my old ‘brawla’ clothing line and featuring a design Christian had let us use), I let him know that it was my business which lead onto an in depth discussion of our shared love for fight sports. Anyway, an hour or two later and he’s sold me a copy of his book: “Doctor Grordbort’s Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory”, and I’ve somehow got him to agree to let us use a couple of his designs on our shirts). Never met me before, doesn’t know me from any of the thousands of others who had passed through that day, no contracts or fuss. Just a “sure, man!”

 Greg’s pulp sci-fi world of Doctor Grordbort and his Infallible Aether Oscillators (that’s outrageously rad rayguns to the uninitiated) has caught many imaginations and long outlasted my business venture but what I learned from that exchange (that I’m sure Greg has completely forgotten) and my subsequent dealings with this Doyen of Dodgy Designs is that he is a super cool dude who draws and designs super cool things and is totally super cool about it.

 So, thus ending this latest iteration of my endlessly rambling preambling, may I introduce to you Mr Greg Broadmore: Conceptual Designer on movies such as King Kong, Avatar, District 9, Chappie, Adventures of Tintin, and Godzilla; creator of outrageously rad rayguns (and the visceral and endlessly inventive pulp sci-fi world they inhabit); muso, and Computational Game Designer of The Thing That is the Coolest Thing in the History of Cool Things But He Can’t Tell You About Without Killing You Afterwards (But It Really Is Cool).

 When did first you start to think that art might be your “thing”?

I can remember drawing being my ‘thing’ since I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. It was all I ever did – draw pictures of dinosaurs and tanks.

What comics did you read as a kid (based on your work I’m going to take a fairly obvious stab and guess 2000ad? Commando comics? What else?)

Yes and yes! 2000AD, Commando comics, MAD magazine for sure.

I think the very first comics I read were Batman and Spiderman along with some Archie and Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Later I found Starlog, then 2000AD and Judge Dredd I knew I’d found something for me. Those stories were darker, funnier than the US comics I’d read, and satirical in their own way, plus they were sci-fi. I loved that. I never really connected with the super-hero thing.

My Grandad worked at a paper mill and would bring me home comics that were going to be recycled, and reams of cardboard and paper to draw on. So I was lucky and got to see a ton of different stuff.

I also remember seeing Captain Sunshine, and when I found out it was made in New Zealand that flipped me out. Everything I’d ever seen was made overseas.

I read comics for years as a kid before I realised that someone actually wrote and drew the books I was reading and that the reason a lot of my favourite books were my favourite books was because they were drawn or written by the same guy. I don’t think I twigged to that until I read 2000ad and noticed that it had the “art droids” names on each story and I then realised that the Judge Dredd stories that had Brian Bolland’s name on them looked better to me than some of the others. At what point did you become aware of particular artists and their styles and start trying to emulate them?

I think I realised that very early, cos I drew myself.

I remember looking at Commando comics and they never credited the artists (that I noticed), but I definitely had favourite artists – one in particular. So I would search for his comics and get them before I got others. I got into Mad magazine very early too, and that had such a diverse group of artists – the styles were so different. Having Sergio Aragones next to Mort Drucker or Don Martin… it was so eclectic, from super cartoony to really hyper-realistic caricature.

I didn’t try to emulate anyone though. I knew an artist’s style made them stand out, so I tried not to copy anyone. I did go through an ‘obsessed with Simon Bisley’ phase though. And I know that rubbed off on me. Hard for it not to, he changed everything.

What do you read now?

I am re-reading a lot of Judge Dredd actually, along with Charlie’s War, which I never read as a kid.

 You spent some time living in Hamilton – do you have any memories of MK1 from that time?

Oh yeah – I loved living in Hamilton. To be fair, it was a munter-town in so many ways, but there’s a special place in my heart for it. I met a lot of mates there, like Christian Pearce – we played in a punk rock band, Ghidrah while we lived there, and made comics. Now we work together at Weta Workshop making movies and games.

Mark One was one of Hamilton’s saving graces – without that comic shop it would have been a bleak place for me.

 You’ve known Christian for years, work with him and you both play in Ghidoragh – is he really the Nicest Guy on the Planet or does he have a hidden dark side?

He is nice to your face, but behind closed doors he is a violent racist and homophobe who hates women. And dogs. Especially dogs. And the elderly – he complains bitterly about the elderly.

Nah, I’m joking. He loves dogs.

Obviously you’ve left your mark on the ‘Tron with your Riff Raff statue – how did that come about?

I think I’d been at Weta Workshop for a year or so, and Mark Servian got in touch with Richard Taylor about the prospect of putting up a statue to celebrate this iconic creative, Richard O’Brien who’d spent formative years in Hamilton, but the fact wasn’t embraced.

I think for Mark it was a chance to help give due credit to someone and something that was a hidden part of Hamilton’s history, but that was so much the opposite of what Hamilton normally represented. Me, I jumped at the chance to help put a gay and transsexual icon in a town that often stands for macho retardation. I was proud as f**k.

You also did the awesome tripod statue in Courtney Place. I did a few month’s work in Wellington a while back and my (then) 3 year old decided that it was the Iron Giant and that we had to drive past it every time we went anywhere in the car (regardless of whether it was on route or not). If he wasn’t looking and missed it we had to drive around again or there would be tears. How does it feel to have created something that’s such an iconic local landmark in the place you live?

That is my favourite story about the Tripod ever! I love that – Your son is my new best friend.

I’m really proud of that beast – I was super surprised that it got picked to be honest.  We designed more than hundred statue concepts, and took about 10 of them to a very high level, with mock-ups, sculptural maquettes etc… I was working on that one, along with two of Richard’s ideas. I assumed those ideas would be the ones, so I was stunned when the tripod was selected. Christian actually worked on that one too – he did heaps of the presentational work, showing it in situ etc…

When we started building it, I actually felt horribly guilty. Like I said, I thought some of the other ideas would go through, and I actually offered Richard my small amount of savings at the time to help offset the costs of making it. Luckily Richard said no.

How did you end up working at Weta?

I had moved down to Wellington, after getting fired from the dole in Hamilton (I was on the dole for about 7 years), and after selling everything I owned to pay rent, I got work in a videogame store and was trying to get work doing illustration.

I knew Peter’s Lord of the Rings was coming, but when it finally came out, I was just floored by it. I was excited for it beforehand, but it just blew me away. I had no idea that something so epic could be made in New Zealand. I thought, ‘Hell, I draw monsters and stuff, I love Dungeons & Dragons… I should work there!” I knew this was a ridiculous thought though, cos I had absolutely no experience in film and barely understood what concept design was. But I sent in a folio and heard back from Richard Taylor a few weeks later. I was giddy about that. I also felt like a total fraud.

He invited me in, showed me around the workshop, which was a wonderland of exciting stuff. Amazing artistry everywhere. Monsters in corners, silicon bodies lying in a corner, swords and axes and armour on every wall… and people beavering away making incredible things.

I had the gumption to ask “So, when do I start? He chuckled at that, but a few weeks after that I had a job. A two week trial actually.That was in 2002, and I’ve been here ever since. Still on my trial I guess.

Which movies have you most enjoyed working on and why?

Kong was my first big film, and as a dinosaur nut, that made me very happy. It was hard work though.

District 9 has to be my favourite experience though. The subject matter, the fact that we started with a blank slate (it came of the back of Halo in which we were basically re-designing an existing world, which is not much fun for me), and the fact that I was working with a director who I felt a great connection with, and who shares a lot of the same inspirations.

 Are you still involved in movie work or do your other projects take up most of your time now?

Nope. I almost never do film work anymore. I was just looking at some Mad Max: Fury Road work I did, and realised the art was dated 2009…. that might have been one of the last films I dabbled in, and Chappie.

My real love has always been videogames, and I’m now directing a videogame with a company called Magic Leap. It’s based on my Dr. Grordbort’s sci-fi world, and we’re building it with a new team based at Weta Workshop.

The first time I saw one of the Dr. Grordborts ray guns, I (old dude that I am) straight away thought back to the old Flash Gordon black and white serials they used to show on Sunday arvos on TV1 back in the day. I would have thought that you’d be too young to remember those but is that the type of old school pulp sci-fi vibe you were going for? The whole pulp thing seem to be a bit of forgotten era/genre ( well there is Steampunk, but that seems to me to be a pretty small corner of something previously much larger)– how did a young fella like yourself become aware of that type of stuff? What is it about that period/type of speculative fiction that appeals to you?

 I might be older than you think… I grew up on those old serials. Our first TV was black and white, and so all those old shows – the sci-fi serials like Flash Gordon, adventure serials like Tarzan, and old films of the 30’s and 40’s like King Kong, even though it was old by the time I saw it, it made no difference to me. I thought it was all just awesome adventure goodness… So I was infatuated by boilerplate rockets, weird rayguns and art-deco inspired scifi worlds since I was maybe 5 or 6.

I illustrated the rayguns as my own little personal homage to that era of science fiction, intending to just put them on my wall, but I showed them to Richard Taylor one day during the production of our version of King Kong, and he loved them. We were making them as collectibles in short order. Took em’ to Comic Con in San Diego, got a great response, and just sorta dived into it.

 Did you start with the rayguns (or rather “Infallible Aether Oscillators”) and then imagine and build the world around them or were they always conceived as part of the wider world (or rather, universe) of Lord Cockswain?

The rayguns came first,  then I needed an inventor, Dr. Grordbort, then someone to use them, Lord Cockswain, and the world of Dr. G grew layer by layer around that.

Is “Dr. Grordbort” a riff on your own name? His picture is always blurred out, would he look something like you if it wasn’t?

It is… but it’s not entirely intentional. I used to sign some of my artwork with stupid version of my name, like Grordbort, Brorgblort, Broadmoron… I especially used those if I thought the drawing was crap.

When I needed a name for the inventor of the rayguns, that silly throwaway collection of letters was just sitting there, so I used it. I didn’t think it would be connected with my own name, which just goes to show how much of a moron I actually am.

I hope we are nothing alike. Both of the main characters in Dr.G are no good – I know that’s weird, but it just made sense to me. I had no interest in writing about heroic characters. Dr. G is a functioning sociopath – someone whose only goal is wealth, and sees people as ants in an anthill. Give them what they need to destroy each other, as long as he profits.

Lord Cockswain is an aristocratic buffoon. A racist, a misogynist, a relic of his era. Someone born into privilege who has only ever seen themselves at the top of the pile. But his stupidity is his defense – he’s a mental infant on one hand – completely naive and oblivious to nuance. So he’s not necessarily mean-spirited. Just a massively self-infatuated idiot. I might have more in common with him….

How come there are not adverts for beard maintenance products in the Dr Grordbort’s catalogue?

Ha! Are you referring to the fact that I also have a beard? It never occurred to me to add beard related stuff. I only have a beard cos I hate shaving. I don’t really like beards per say – I’m just lazy in the mornings.

Someone asked me a while ago what “Victory” was about and the best I could come up with was, “Victorian man behaving badly…with rayguns… in space.”…

That’s a pretty good appraisal, although it’s probably ‘Edwardian men’.

The first book, Dr. Grordbort’s Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory was a Sears and Roebucks style catalogue of wild and wacky inventions, with the repeated message they they’re all a waste of money, or potentially dangerous or life threatening. It was a kind of commentary of the bullshit we buy – half the inventions in that book are kind of the ‘Ab-Flex’ of their day.

Victory was intended to be more of a ‘Boy’s Own’ adventure annual, and I styled it like that. But the statement I crafted it with, was ‘Propaganda for Children’. That guiding concept was present in my mind as I put the whole thing together. By that, I mean that it was Dr. Grordbort, selling a book to kids, that glorified war, glorified weapons, and glorified earth subjugating and colonising the solar system. That was his (barely) hidden goal if you like.

Triumph was my chance to focus on Lord Cockswain, as I found writing and illustrating him to be the most fun. Titan publishing has combined all three books, along with a whole book’s worth of new content into the latest release, ‘Onslaught: Excessive Space Violence for Girls & Boys’

How many times have you been asked if your ray guns actually work?

 I have had sooooo much grief travelling the world with them. I have an exhibition based on the Dr. G world that’s travelled Europe and China, and I would often take various rayguns on trips with me.

The worst incident was being dragged off a plane onto the Hong Kong tarmac by armed police, in full SWAT gear, MP5’s and all, and being made to open the wooden case containing the Unnatural Selector Ray-Blunderbuss. They made me open it, and stood over my shoulder, submachine guns in hand, watching me like hawks, and as it opened and they saw the raygun, they pushed me away so I couldn’t touch it (assuming I might disintegrate them I guess). I was explaining the whole time that it was a piece of art, and not a real weapon, but it’s tricky when you’re trying to not say the word ‘gun’.

That was scary in retrospect – they were dead serious, as you’d expect. But at the time I thought it was great fun. My only worry was that I’d be taken off the flight and get stranded. Stranded in Hong Kong wouldn’t be so bad though.

How did the “Onward to Venus” board game come about?

Martin Wallace of Treefrog games got in touch with me when he moved here from the UK. He’s an amazing game designer and has made a slew of award winning board games, and notably games based on Terry Pratchett’s work, Neill Gaiman’s work etc..

He sent us a white box version of the game, and wanted to to license the Dr. G IP. Making a board game is something I’ve wanted to do with Dr.G for many years (as well as tabletop games, Role-playing games etc.) so it was a no-brainer for me. It came out really well – really beautifully presented.

 Between that and the short film that the guys at Media Design School did (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSwNFVjCquU ), it must feel good to know that you’ve created a world that resonates enough with other creators enough that they want to play around in it…

Yes, absolutely. It’s really fun to have other people come in and interpret the Dr. Grordbort’s universe in their own way. It is a very open ended universe, and I’ve only scratched the surface of it. It’s a fun playground for sure.

What can you tell me about your involvement with the super-secret “Magic Leap” (without killing me afterwards) – Have you left the world of moving pictures to fulfil a lifelong ambition to design bouncy castles?

Ha ha! Yep, Magic Leap is purposefully ambiguous for sure – I’m very glad it could be interpreted that we’re making bouncy castles! I’ve been working with Magic Leap for coming up 4 years now, and it’s a lot of fun. We’re developing a game for their new system based on the Dr.Grordbort’s world and I cannot say much other than it’s gonna blow minds.

You play guitar in Ghidoragh – how would you describe your music?

I actually play bass and vocals in Ghidoragh, which me, Christian Pearce and Brian Holloway started in Hamilton back in 94 or so. Back then I described it as a rocket powered dragster going a million miles per hour down the strip with the wheels wobbling and parts falling off, heading for certain disaster.

We’re the same now but we go even faster and the wheels are even looser. (https://ghidoragh.bandcamp.com/ )

 How long have you been playing in bands?

 Hmmm, since maybe 89 or so? I started then borrowing a bass and playing in super-shitty but super fun punk and grindcore bands. Playing music (or noise that approximates music) was my real passion from when I was about 18 until my late 30’s. I all but lost interest in art during that time – it was very much something on the side that i dabbled in. Before Ghidoragh I had a band called Nihil that I formed in Auckland and brought down to Hamilton – even won a battle of the bands!

I got back into art when I moved to Wellington, which was partially inspired by meeting Martin Emond and Simon Morse down here, and realising you could make a career in comics.

I’m getting back into music in a serious way now – I play with Ghidoragh and have another band with Christian and Nathan from Beastwars called Wyrm Spyrm, which is super slow and sludgey.

I imagine being an artist would be a pretty solitary sort of thing where the work is produced byy ourself and the feedback and response to it could come quite a while after the creation was finished, whereas playing in a band is much more collaborative and the response is much more immediate…do they scratch different creative itches for you or is art just art for you regardless of the medium?

 Yeah, they totally do. Illustrating can be a much more solitary thing for sure, but design at a place like Weta Workshop is more collaborative, and you chat about ideas with other designers often. But nothing beats music for that. Playing in a band is all communication – it’s listening and reacting, continuously…And yeah, they do scratch different itches for sure.

I asked Christian what the best part about his job is and his response was, “The delicious irony of getting in trouble if you are caught NOT doodling spaceships and robots.” That got me wondering what you guys do if you were procrastinating work (not that you ever would, of course)? Do you have cunningly disguised maths books stashed under your drawing tables or something?

 Yes, math books. Full of wonderful maths equations. And porn.

What is the best part of your job?

The answer to this is incredibly corny – it’s imagining things that don’t exist; weird and wonderful things, characters, places, stories… then seeing them realised, seeing them come alive on screen or as props you can hold, sets you can stand within or virtual worlds you can explore. It doesn’t get much better than that. Other than porn of course.

Greg’s books “Victory”, “Triumph”, and “Onslaught” are all available right here at MK1 http://store.mk1.co.nz/doctor-grordbort-presents-victory-hardcover.html

http://store.mk1.co.nz/doctor-grordbort-presents-triumph-hardcover.html

http://store.mk1.co.nz/doctor-grordbort-onslaught-triumph-hardcover.html

 

Check out Greg’s blog here for visual stimulation and bloggery: http://gregbroadmore.blogspot.co.nz/

…and the Dr Grordbort’s site here to find out more about his finely crafted instruments of Death and Destruction that don’t actually deliver Death and Destruction (well, I suppose they could deliver Death if you hit someone on the head with one) but totally look like they could/should: http://drgrordborts.com/dr-grordbort-s-infallible-aether-oscillators-where-science-meets-violence/