MARTYN PICK Film maker and artist
Martyn Pick is a director and artist recognised for a distinctive fusion of live-action and animation. In feature films, commercials, and shorts he applies his fluid, cinematic storytelling working across pure live-action, computer, and hand animation. He directed the CGI action feature film “Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie” (2010): starring the facial acting of Terence Stamp, Sean Pertwee, and John Hurt. Credits also include the 2009 film “The Age of Stupid”, Film London's promotional short for the 2012 Olympics, BBC’s trailers for Euro 2004, Budweiser's 2001 NBA commercial, and the Channel 4 commissioned short “Plaza” (2000). Martyn studied Film and Fine Art at Saint Martin's School of Art and his work has been continually driven by the crossover between painting and cinema. In live-action, he has directed the short “Green” (Film Four) and the supernatural thriller feature “Evil Never Dies”(2014). He was the animation consultant on Brett Morgen’s “Chicago 10”. Horror short “Blue Moon” screened at Screamfest LA in Nov '16 and he created animated sequences on the award-winning US feature documentary “Women of 1915”. In CGI he has developed a UK/Chinese animated franchise and was Head of Story and Voice Director on 40 half-hour episodes of the Netflix ITV series “Robozuna". For Penguin he has illustrated the books “Witchcraft” and “Beowulf” bringing his art style to publishing. His live-action “Heckle” debuted at Frightfest in 2020 and was picked up for distribution including on Sky TV. In 2019 the animation sequences he directed in “Coup 53” (dir Taghi Amirani), edited by Walter Murch, were a great use of his approach. “Coup 53” opened to excellent reviews in 2020 and has the rare distinction of a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes! He co-directed the 10 half-hour episodes of the CGI animated kids' superhero series, “Kitti Katz” which was globally released as a Netflix original in 2023. With live-action, he has recently directed commercials for “Magic the Gathering” and “League of Legends”. He did the world-building concept art for Charlie Higson’s epic series “Rise of the Witches” (MBC) and in 2022 directed and produced a painterly TVC campaign for Tata Steel (JWT). A graphic novel of his is being developed as a feature film with him as director. He continues to work on projects that build on and refine his visual storytelling.
AWARDS:
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Certificate of Excellence, Cork Film Festival for BFI New Directors film: “Signature”
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Process Award for Visual Excellence for Channel 4 film: “Plaza”
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Gold Plaque, Chicago Film Festival for the “ADM” commercial campaign through DDB Chicago.
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Silver Promax award for the BBC Euro idents.
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Nomination for Regional Emmy Award for the animation sequence in “Women of 1915”
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ARTICLES ABOUT HIS WORK:
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
Dr. Janina Ramirez
Historian, TV Presenter,
Author of Beowulf for Penguin Books
“Martyn is the most incredible illustrator. For Beowulf he was able to, not only take my text and turn it into beautiful, evocative, powerful images, but more than that - to almost get inside the world I was trying to create.”
Alex Cameron
Senior Producer on Robozuna S1 & S2 ITV/ Netflix Kitti Katz for Netflix Originals
“I have worked with Martyn on multiple animated CG series since 2016. He has been instrumental in creating a unique style for the series he has directed for me, across two very different distinctive genres. His professionalism and dedication are evident in the end result and he never missed a deadline. He is a talented, hardworking director who approaches his work with enthusiasm who can manage the demands of production and the client effortlessly. He’s also a lovely person to share a lunch with.”
Bob Thompson
Producer of “Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie
“Martyn directs films with an energy and tension that wants to rip the screen apart and turn it into something far more powerful than simply light and pixels. Yet despite all that directorial energy he remains a charming person to spend two years making a film with.”
Lizzie Gillett
Director of Feature Doc Department, Passion Pictures
“Martyn’s work on “The Age of Stupid” was crucial to helping the film land with audiences”
Dr Suzannah Lipscomb
Professor, Historian, TV Presenter, Author
“I was thrilled when Martyn Pick was chosen to illustrate my Ladybird Expert book on Witchcraft. The pictures he created for it were clever, evocative, and atmospheric: beautiful images that told powerful stories.”
CLIENTS / BRANDS
The Wheel of Time, Wunderman Thompson, Tata Steel, Middle East Broadcasting, Rise of the Witches, Penguin Books, Netflix, League of Legends, Kidscave, Amirani media, ITV Studios, League of Legends, Magic the Gathering, Warhammer, Games Workshop, Prime Focus, Thatchers Cider, Liz Laine Reps, JWT, Passion Pictures, BBC, Participant Media, DDB Chicago, FCB Chicago, Film London, The British Film Institute, the Arts Council of Great Britain, Channel 4 TV, Film Four, Budweiser, American Express, Gillette, Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones, Siouxsie and the Banshees.
REVIEWS
COUP53
“Towards the end, lovely animation, created with oil paints, brings the actual coup to life. Coup 53 is stranger than fiction and a terrifying reminder that the past never goes away”
EVENING STANDARD
“stunning animation that enhances the narrative without diluting its authority”
WALL STREET JOURNAL
“Look out, for some innovative and effective animation telling key parts of the story.
MORNING STAR
“surprising and exceptional animated sequences fills in footage of the coup d’etat itself”
THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE
“….vibrant new animation to fill the gaps where no footage exists of key moments.”
TIME OUT
“….thrilling animation of the bloodshed and the executions that followed.”
EMPIRE
"We were lucky to find Martyn Pick, the animator who does this kind of stuff. He's Mr Oil Paint Animation in London."
DIGITAL FILMS: Interview with Walter Murch
“We were introduced to the amazing animator Martyn Pick, who’s incredible because of the hand-printed look of his animation, but I had never worked with an animator and was scared of them because they’re into precision where everything is specific to seconds and frames, and I was thinking, I’m a documentary maker where nothing is planned. But it was amazing.”
THE MOVEABLE FEAST: Interview with Taghi Amirani director of Coup 53
Pick’s team achieves extraordinary results which at once look like moving oil paintings and make the viewer feel as if they’re present.
JEREMY C PROCESSING
PLAZA
“Martyn Pick's 'Plaza' is a very exciting piece of animation, an iconoclastic disruption of shopping mall placidity!”
TIME OUT
HECKLE
"Director Martyn Pick dishes up a weirdly hypnotic style, gritty, cool, and left-of-center"
"Shot in neon-lit hues, reminiscent of Italian giallo (in particular the work of Dario Argento); Heckle is a superb diatribe on perils of fame, personality and neurosis !"
Phil Wheat, NERDLY
ULTRAMARINES: A WARHAMMER 40K MOVIE
“When the violence ramps up, it is bloody and brutal in all the ways you expect 40K to deliver. At its best, it is everything you’ve been hoping to see in a 40K film.”
AINT IT COOL NEWS
“It is chock full of action and intensity… the battle scenes are so immersive, you can almost feel the slugs as they whiz past your head.”
BOXOFFICEBUZZ.COM
TABOO OF DIRT
"Many of the best movies at Edinburgh - once more defying the reigning orthodoxy at other festivals - were the shorts. Surging into view from diverse sources they were often far superior to the features they supported. Best of the ones I saw were Martyn Pick’s Taboo Of Dirt, an animated phantasmagoria putting cartoon animals through some unlikely erotic paces..."
Nigel Andrews, FINANCIAL TIMES
"Martyn Pick's Taboo of Dirt (finished upon leaving St.Martins and recently bought for screening by Channel 4) dealt in subjects- sex, degradation, sloth- that many would rather sweep under the carpet: brilliantly drawn in a style that meshed the expressionist bile of a George Grosz with the charcoal starkness of the German artist Kathe Kollwitz. Looney tunes it wasn't. "
Steven Bodes, VIDEOGRAPHIC