Bill Pearson's Online Portfolio, Projects & Showreel

BILL
PEARSON'S

online portfolio, projects & showreel

Bill (William) Pearson was a British modelshop supervisor and model & prop maker working in the film & TV industry around the world for nearly fifty years. He unfortunately passed away in 2020. You can see his IMDB Entry here.

Bill entered the film industry in 1978 after graduating with a First Degree BA in Graphic Design, progressing to Special Effects Modelshop Supervisor on Alien, Flash Gordon and Outland. In 1982 he joined BBC's Visual Effects Department as Assistant & Designer on Dr.Who, The Young Ones, Top of the Pops, Tenko, Blake's 7, Horizon, Squadron, Shackleton & Tomorrow's World.

In 1984 he moved to Denmark for 18 months, working as Special Effects Model Designer & Director for D.R. - Danish Television. On returning to the UK, he supervised Model Construction on Roger Christian's 2084 (Lorca and the Outlaws). Then joined Commercials Modelmakers Robert Seaton Associates, while also working as FX Model Design Consultant for Filmaster (Rome) on Fiat, Lancia and Kodak commercials in Italy.

Over the last 50 years he worked freelance in Special Effects, Models and Props Design and Construction on commercials for Barclays Bank, Proctor and Gamble, British Telecom, Samsung and Lego. On TV programmes Taggart, Crystal Maze, Comic Strip, The Big Breakfast, Murder Most Horrid, You Bet, Red Dwarf Series' 4, 8 9 & 10, Bugs Series 2 and ran the Model Design/Construction shop on Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct.

Bill's feature Film work included, Hardware, Double X, Project Shadowchaser, (Zefferelli's) Hamlet, The Borrowers, The Pope Must Diet, Roy Chubby Brown's UFO, Masterminds, Lost In Space, The Astronaut's Wife, Wing Commander, Battlefield Earth, Die Another Day, Thunderbirds The Movie, Alien Vs Predator, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Casino Royale, Moon, Gravity, Prometheus, and most recently props for The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

You can download extensive examples of Bill's work below, along with a number of other projects & files. Each download has a short explanation, along with some thumbnail images. All the scanned/printed material is available in either 'Full Resolution'; high quality & large filesizes useful for interview source material & replica reference, and 'Low Resolution'; with smaller filesizes for simple viewing. Although they're locked together in PDF format for ease of viewing, the original 1:1 size/quality JPEG images/scans can be extracted back out using an application called Some PDF Image Extract (also mirrored here), just be sure to set the Jpeg Quality (%) to '100' and Jpeg Grey Scale to 'False'.

Email the webmaster -

If you want to contact the person who runs and maintains this page; Rob Mclaine, you can do so via the link above. In the 10 years I knew bill, I'd never known him to refuse a request to for anyone use any of the material below for videos, websites & articles; he was simply happy people were interested in his work. Further, if you want to know more about how this page came about, you can read about that here

PORTFOLIO

Within this download; 'Portfolio Folder 01' (12 Pages) is Bill's older A4 showcase. Many former contents have been recycled into 'Portfolio Folder 02' (136 Pages); Bill's A4 showcase as of his passing, all scanned at 600dpi in PDF format.

DOWNLOAD - FULL RES (901MB) LOW RES (85MB)

LOOSE PHOTOS

This download contains 2,142 35mm photos, transparency slides, and digital photos, all arranged alphabetically by film title, covering the entirety of Bill's working life. The physical photos were scanned at 600dpi, any slides/negatives at 7200dpi, and digital photos copied 1:1 from the originals. Please note that a small number of the photos may show items partially or entirely made by others, these are simply Bill's photos.

DOWNLOAD - FULL RES PT1 (1.27GB) FULL RES PT2 (1.45GB)

LOW RES PT1&2 (333MB)

BILL'S LECTURE DVD
JUNE 2013 2 HOUR LECTURE AT 'THE CITY OF GLASGOW COLLEGE'

This contains Bill's June 2013 Two Hour Lecture At 'The City Of Glasgow College', which covers the majority of his life's work with slides. This is the full DVD version.

DOWNLOAD - FULL DVD (1.35GB)

DVD VIDEO FILES
CASINO ROYAL FOOTAGE, DOG STAR, & RED DWARF CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

This download contains 15mins of Casino Royal behind the scenes footage of the 2006 model shoots, a 2005 Dog Star Promo, intended as a fund raising tool, a 2005 Red Dwarf Christmas Special Promo to raise interest in new episodes, as well as an official Red Dwarf Series 8 DVD featurette on Bill's work, and finally a Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct Model Promo Reel.

DOWNLOAD - DVD MPEG FILES (1.81GB)

BILL'S SCRIPTS
THE ZONE, DOG STAR, & RED DWARF CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

The Zone, Dog Star, Red Dwarf Christmas Special, Starturn, Tales Of Tomorrow & Timequake, were Bill's own scripts available here in PDF format, some come with design notes & images. As of his death in 2020, none had been realised into films, but he'd invested a huge amount of spare time designing concepts and creating models & props for each. 'Full Res' Starturn includes an MP3 musical score.

DOWNLOAD - FULL RES (341MB) LOW RES (90MB)

BILL'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

In 2016, Bill decided to record an autobiography using a handheld Dictaphone, with a view to getting it published. While he could never get any interest, presented here in chronological order, are his recordings up to August 1, 2016, totalling 61h 21m 08s. Bill was an excellent raconteur, and always had a story from years past when we met for lunch, and there are some crackers in there!

DOWNLOAD - MP3 FILES (3.14GB)