Dominic Corry: The genius of Chris Foss

A scene from 'Jodorowsky's Dune'.

Dominic Corry examines the career of English science fiction artist Chris Foss.

Of the many and varied joys I experienced while watching Jodorowsky's Dune at the film festival this week, one of the more unexpected was provoked by seeing subtle animation applied to various works by renowned English science fiction artist Chris Foss.

Science-fiction fan or not, anyone who's ever entered a book shop has found themselves at some point captivated by one of Foss' stunning cover illustrations. His wildly imaginative and technically precise paintings continue to define the visual side of literary sci-fi.

I recall spending hours upon hours in The Book Corner as a child just staring at the eye-popping covers he painted for a raft of classic and contemporary sci-fi novels. It eventually occurred to me to actually read one (Foundation), and I wholly credit Foss.

If you've never picked up a sci-fi paperback, some of the naughtier amongst you might know Foss' work from this book.

In 1975, Foss was drafted in by Alejandro Jodorowsky to be one of the director's "spiritual warriors" for his proposed adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune, and Foss helped design the look of the ultimately unrealised project along with Swiss virtuoso H.R. Giger (recommended to Jodorowsky no less of an authortity than Salvador Dali, Giger of course went on to design Alien) and French genius Jean Giraud (aka Mobieus).

The 'spaceship' work Foss did for Dune remains some of his most iconic, fusing his technical accuracy and boundless creativity in particularly mind-blowing ways. The film presents some of these images in a gently 3D-fied fashion with mild animation - on a big screen in a darkened theatre, it gives life to Foss' work in way I'd never seen before. Try to imagine this work with moving bits.

Along with Giraud's amazing extensive, storyboards and what would've been the first taste of Giger's now familiar aesthetic, it provides a tangible cinematic taste of an amazing film that doesn't exist.

In addition to inspiring legions of filmmakers with his paintings, Foss has designed for other specific films, including the original Superman, Flash Gordon and Artificial Intelligence. The epic nature of most of his artwork means that filmmaking is only really now catching up to Foss' aesthetic (it was all over Elysium) - James Gunn hiring him to work on Guardians of the Galaxy is highly encouraging indeed.

A scene from Guardians of the Galaxy.

The simply wonderful Jodorowsky's Dune is about a lot more than Chris Foss, but his contributions are worth seeing the film for alone. Also for the bit where Giger describes how he felt the first time he saw these guys play live.

The film screens once more on the Auckland leg of the festival, this coming Monday, July 28th at 6.15pm at the SkyCity Theatre. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Foss fan? Seen Jodorowsky's Dune? Comment below!