Artist Profile | Cartoon & Caricature

Greg Broadmore

Greg Broadmore is a conceptual designer, artist, writer and sculptor based in Wellington, New Zealand. He is the creator of “Dr Grordbort's” and has worked as a designer, artist and writer at “Weta Workshop,” the award-winning special effects and props company from “The Lord of the Rings” film franchise director “Peter Jackson” since 2002. He was the lead conceptual designer for “District 9” and conceptual designer and sculptor for “King Kong,” “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Adventures of Tintin.” Broadmore was also one of the illustrators and concept writers for Weta Workshop's first publication, “The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island.” Broadmore was born in Whakatane in 1972 and grew up obsessed with comics, video games and “Star Wars”. He was rejected by two New Zealand art schools and spent the next seven years living on welfare while playing in punk rock bands. Broadmore moved to Wellington in 2000, where he worked as a children's book illustrator, illustrating more than 30 books. After the release of the first “Lord of the Rings” film in 2001, Broadmore sent his portfolio to Weta Workshop creator and director Sir Richard Taylor, who hired him based on the strength of his work. He began working for Weta Workshop as a designer and sculptor in 2002. Additionally, he designed a series of retro-futuristic ray guns, which he showed to Weta Workshop's special effects supervisor, Sir Richard. Taylor, who saw the potential for it as a line of collectibles based on his own universe. In an interview with science fiction blog io9.com, Broadmore says his vision was to "satirize pulp fiction spanning the era from the 1890s to the 1940s." “Dr. Grordbort” has been featured in other technology magazines, including “Wired” magazine and “Boing Boing.” In the interview with Wired, Greg described Dr. Grordbort's as "a parallel universe that uses the late 19th century to the 1930s as a starting point" in terms of inspiration for the world. In 2009, in association with Sir Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger, Broadmore launched an international touring exhibition, Dr Grordbort's Outstanding Exhibition, which has toured to Hong Kong, Chengdu in China, Germany, France, Switzerland and New Zealand. In 2011, Broadmore's World of “Dr. Grordbort” appeared in “White Cloud Worlds: An Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artwork from Aotearoa New Zealand.” He was one of the New Zealand authors chosen to speak at the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair keynote for his “Dr. Grordbort”, “Victory”, “Dr. Grordbort's Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory” and “Triumph.” Broadmore has co-designed pieces of public art in New Zealand, including the Rocky Horror Show/Richard O'Brien tribute sculpture located at the south end of Victoria St. in Hamilton. The bronze statue, named "Riff Raff," celebrates the birthplace of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and pays tribute to the former home of the Embassy Theatre, where screenwriter Richard O'Brien cut hair from 1954 to 1964. In 2006, co-designed and art directed the Tripod Sculpture in central Wellington which commemorates the local film industry. One of his other public collaborations is the design of the ceiling of the recently renovated “Roxy Cinema” in Wellington, which was reopened in 2011. He designed the ceiling, which was covered by a mural depicting a prowling robot, a group of flying rocket girls and The landscape of the planet Venus. “Sunday Star-Times” writer Grant Smithies described the mural as “a sepia-toned illustration from an old Jules Verne novel, or perhaps a long-lost dream sequence from the classic 1927 silent film by Fritz Lang, Metropolis. Broadmore also designed a “cloning machine” for “Bats Theatre,” which appeared as a main prop in a play called Gene Pool, his first theater collaboration. Here are some facts about Greg Broadmore: He likes dinosaurs and also robots equally, (actually, he likes dinosaurs a little more, but don't tell the robots). He works at Weta Workshop: he creates movie props, like swords, space weapons, and sweaty orc thighs. He is the creator of the science fiction world of “Dr. Grordbort”, which is mainly an excuse to invent ray guns. He has human-like features. He also works for “Magic Leap” on a top secret project that may or may not involve ray guns, (it involves ray guns). He is a designer of public art such as Riff Raff, the Richard O'Brien tribute sculpture in Hamilton and the Tripod display industry sculpture in Wellington.