Chris Foss

"If Alejandro's Dune could have been made, it would have been bigger than 2001."

―Chris Foss^[src]

Chris Foss (1946- ), a native of Guernsey in the Channel Islands, is a British painter, book cover art illustrator and general illustrator, specializing in modern historical illustrations and science fiction illustrations.

Foss has been a freelance artist since his teens, beginning with developing signage for various companies on Guernsey. In the 1960s, he attended a boarding school in Dorset, where he was encouraged to train for an art scholarship. He later studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and began pursuing professional magazine commissions. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, he has also worked as a book cover illustration, focusing on modern history and science fiction themes, particularly vehicle and machine designs. His 1970s and 1980s illustrations.

In the 1970s, Foss was invited by Alejandro Jodorowsky to work on pre-production concept art for his planned, famously overambitious film adaptation of Dune, along with a number of other concept artists (including H. R. Giger and Jean Giraud).

Foss was responsible for all the spacecraft concept designs for the planned film, for a number of factions of the Dune universe, including the Spacing Guild and the smugglers of Arrakis. These designs were also featured in the 2013 documentary about the 1970s effort, Jodorowsky's Dune.

Works[]

Artbooks and artwork publications[]

21st Century Foss, publ. by Dragon's Dream, 1978, ISBN 0-906196-09-4.
Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss, publ. by Titan Publishing, 2011, ISBN 0-85768-559-7.

Film concept art[]

Flash Gordon (1980)
A. I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - pre-production period before Stanley Kubrick's death in 1999
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Unused concept art[]

Dune (Jodorowsky's cancelled 1970s film adaptation)
Superman (1978) - unused Krypton designs and set designs
Alien (1979) - unused spaceship design

Album covers[]

Clear Air Turbulence (1989)

Tabletop RPGs[]

Traveller (4th edition) / Marc Miller's Traveller (1996) - the game's first supplement, Starships

Influence[]

Foss' memorable and distinct style of illustrations has influenced several later generations of artists and illustrators, and even film directors and video game developers. In 1999, Canadian developer Relic Entertainment used Foss' style of illustrations as a reference point for the concept designs of the spacecraft in their space opera game series Homeworld. In 2014, James Gunn invited Foss to work on concept designs for the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Guardians of the Galaxy, Foss being a favourite illustrator of his since childhood and considered capable of capturing the spaceship esthetics he was looking for.