Early work Born in 1946 in
Guernsey, Channel Islands, He went to a boarding school in
Dorset; his master encouraged him to train for an art scholarship. While studying at
Magdalene College, Cambridge, he started pursuing professional magazine commissions, including the then recently launched
Penthouse magazine. In 1975, Foss was hired by director
Alejandro Jodorowsky for an intended film version of the science-fiction novel
Dune by author
Frank Herbert. He delivered several conceptual studies published in the book
21st Century Foss, , containing a foreword by Jodorowsky. The project failed. In 1977 Foss worked for several months on studies for the movie
Alien (not being used in the movie) and also did some designs of the planet Krypton for the movie
Superman. Some of his crystal structures for the planet were realised in the movie, although they were used as ice-structures. During this period Chris Foss illustrated the sleeve of the album
Clear Air Turbulence for the
Ian Gillan Band. Painter
Glenn Brown controversially appropriated individual space scene paintings by Foss and in the one case copying and altering it (
Exercise One (for Ian Curtis), 1995) and in the other, leaving it entirely unchanged (
Dark Angel (for Ian Curtis), 2002). Chris Foss created much of the colour concept art for Sweetpea Entertainment's
Traveller franchise, as produced by
Imperium Games. He produced 12 pages of artwork for the new
Traveller edition's first supplement,
Starships (1996). He also illustrated a number of covers for Imperium's
Traveller.
The Joy of Sex In contrast, Foss's numerous illustrations for the
sex manual The Joy of Sex are done in a soft, natural style. The illustrations were based on photographs taken by Chris in his studio in Fulham, London. == Film work ==