Tim Gibson
Movie artist tells his own cinematic story in ‘Moth City’
After working for years at WETA Digital on movies like Avatar, District 9 and Tintin, artist Tim Gibson had a story of his own he wanted to tell — and he chose comics to do it.
Working on the project in his spare time (with a little funding assistance from the New Zealand government), last year Gibson debuted the innovative online comic series Moth City. Set in a fictional island off the coast of China that’s reminiscent of a 1950s-era Cuba, Moth City is a murder mystery wrapped in noir by way of South Asian comic stylings. It’s packed with shrewd tycoons, communists and a love story, laid beneath a veneer of soot.
WETA alum Tim Gibson breaks out with webcomic Moth City
We’ve seen many comic creators break out and jump into movies, but it’s more rare that we see people taking the opposite path. However, conceptual designer Tim Gibson is doing just that. After working for years at WETA Workshop on everything from District 9 to The Adventures of Tintin to even the aborted Justice League of America movie, Gibson set it all aside to develop his own concept, titled Moth City.
Mixing murder mystery with elements of noir and horror, Gibson’s Moth City is a story about a brilliant industrialist who;s left reeling after a close colleague is killed and the city he lives in is on the verge of a plague pandemic. Gibson will be serializing the story on a Facebook page set up for the comic. While this is the first comic Gibson is writing and drawing, he does have some unique comic cred to him, as he helped color the indie series The Red Star.
Here is a page from Moth City Gibson posted to give people a taste of what the series will look like: