Surreal digital illustrations take influence from prog rock album covers and dreams

He explains: "I've been working with a very talented 3D designer called Tamas Arpadi for a while now and knew he'd be perfect for the project. The brief was really open to interpretation, basically to illustrate your dreams. So with that, because I very often end up dreaming about my work in some way or another, I wanted to create a literal doorway and build the piece up with segments from my work around it and bring them to life with beautiful 3D rendering.

"For this piece, I was inspired by all sorts of surreal pictures, anything from prog rock album covers to illustrations. Tamas' work inspired me greatly too and I wanted to make sure I gave him freedom to play and add in some of his signature pieces too, so it was a mixed bag of influences."

In terms of his creative process, he adds: "When I'm not blagging it, I sketch everything out first, get it all right in my head using either isometric or graph paper, I then digitise the pieces once I've got it all worked out. For this piece I gave Tamas a couple of drawn guides so he knew what was coming, then got everything coloured and gave him a big suite of vector illustrations to work with. We then chose a solid colour palette and went 3D!"

The Art Director has recently launched a new website featuring his portfolio and some nifty merchandise. You can check it out here middleboop.com.