Richard Dolan, North Yorkshire to Hobbiton

Here's a bit off the New Zealand Government site looking at Case Studies of people who are moving to New Zealand to live. My old mate Richard Dolan is off to the other side of the world soon to work on The Hobbit.

Domestos - Grotbuster

My mate Richard Dolan designed the characters and did the storyboards for this new Domestos commercial that's on UK TV now. You can find out a bit more info on the ad at the blog of Boris Hiestand

Richard Dolan -- 2000AD Cover Art

I was looking through an old drive the other day and I found these pics of 2000AD cover that my mate Richard Dolan did many moons ago. The bottom 2 pictures are from a story entitled Travels with muh' Shrink, myself and a few other friends appeared in this story as various characters, and the character that I posed for gets headbutted by Mean Machine. :)
All these pictures were painted with Oil paints on board.

Creature Haus & Richard Dolan

Creature Haus is a new studio founded by Michael Asquith and Jamie Beswarick, two of the lead creature designers and sculptors on The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong.
My mate Richard Dolan has worked with them recently on a Domestos advert and has a number of his illustrations up on their site. Check out Rich's and the other guys work in the Images section on the site here Creature Haus

Richard Dolan Artwork

When I first met Richard Dolan in 1983 at Sixth Form College I knew he was going places, first he said he was off for a piss then it was lunchtime. He sat near me in Art class, I remember one of the tasks set by the art teacher was to do a picture entitled 'Tea on the Lawn' now I suppose people might envision Victorian ladies sat in the park sipping Tea from China Cups. Richard's picture was of an old man's corpse laid on the grass being pecked at by crows, tearing out eyeballs and flesh. It was when we were given the task of 'Mechanical Operations' that I first remember talking to Richard, I'd started drawing a line up of robots whilst most people were drawing Cranes and Engines, and Rich said "Those are neat, do you like Star Wars ?" This was at a time when it was cool to be a Star Wars fan. :)

The thing that's always amazed me about Rich is he can turn his hand to anything art wise, draw, paint, sculpt etc... all with what looks like no effort at all, though if you look closely sometimes a small bead of sweat starts to emerge just below the hair line. Back in the 80's Richard was a fabulous cartoonist, winning the Young Cartoonist Award I think 3 times, eventually they told him to stop entering and give someone else a chance, either that or Boss Hogg would be sent round to break his fingers. He also had a fascination for Horror movies and made Super 8 gore pics which surprisingly are pretty gruesome even by todays standards.

The reason I've posted these here is it's a crime that Rich doesn't have a Blog or a Website, so I've took it upon myself to spread the word. When he's not missing somewhere in the wilderness shitting behind the nearest bush Richard works on Film, TV, Advert concept work and also does his own original pieces if he has time. Rich's film work has included working on The Frighteners for Peter Jackson, some of the work from that can be seen below.

The piece that a lot of people remember by Richard is the cover of 2000AD comic featuring a mate of ours from college called Dean Roberts, see his Blog here http://tinyurl.com/2plflw

I suppose like a lot of concept artists Richard has worked on many projects over the years that have never seen the light of day, due to creative, financial reasons etc... But a website or Blog would be a great place to finally get this work shown.




I really love the Domestos pics that Richard has been doing recently, this little fella fishing in the painting below is great. Rich still tends to sketch these pics in pencil but then scan them in and paint them in the computer. I got these pics of Rich especially to post here on my Blog, so I want some pestering here for Richard to start his own Blog. He really is possibly one of the most talented artists I know, and he won't chuck me out of a moving vehicle on the A19 Motorway when I fart in his Caravette, that's a mate for ya !



All artwork here is Copyright 2007 Ricard Dolan