BEN MAURO is an accomplished author, illustrator, and creative visionary known for his exceptional contributions to the entertainment industry. With nearly two decades of experience in concept design and world-building, his work has shaped some of the most iconic films, video games, and projects in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Ben is the creator of HUXLEY, the acclaimed graphic novel series that is celebrated for its rich storytelling, intricate visuals, and immersive universe. HUXLEY has captured the imagination of readers and industry professionals alike.
He has worked with leading studios such as Weta Workshop, Microsoft, and Activision, contributing to blockbuster titles including The Hobbit Trilogy, Elysium, Chappie, Valerian, Mortal Engines, Lucy, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Halo Infinite, and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare as well as Black Ops 3 and 4, among many others. Ben’s unique ability to merge cutting-edge technology with timeless narrative themes has established him as a sought-after talent in storytelling and visual design. When not creating, Ben is passionate about exploring the intersections of art, technology, and innovation, pushing the boundaries of how stories are told across mediums.
Ben stopped by to chat with us about Huxley.
We’re going to be talking about your new graphic novel, Huxley. You’ve been working on this for some time, but where did the idea come from initially?
It started probably 11 years ago after I drew the first, the orange robot Huxley, and I felt like there was something there and I really wanted to define who this character was, what the world he lived in, what’s his story, what other characters would be in this world, and it kind of all started to grow from that, kind of organically. Then took it more seriously as a graphic novel and started to develop it slowly over many years.
I saw the cinematic on YouTube, which is fantastic, because it just helps to create the world. Can you talk about putting that together and creating the visual style for that?
Yeah, well, since my background’s in film and video games, I’m used to adapting other people’s work for big movies and stuff. So, once the book was maybe 60 or 70 percent done, I was hoping, kind of planning a year or so ahead of time, where, oh, it would be great if we could showcase how this looked; if it was a short film or an animation, and I found a small team. There was maybe seven people; it was a very, very small team, and we started adapting my own work. So, since I’m used to that in my job, it was really fun to adapt my own work. Since I didn’t have a lot of time to really detail everything in the book or it would take too long, I was able to work with the character sculptors and artists to really figure out every piece of detail – what it would look like in live action or very realistic. So, it was a really fun process to make that. And also long-term, just sort of a proof of concept of, hey, this graphic novel is really great, but here’s how it could look if we turned it into something else.
What’s the most exciting part of world-building for you?
I think, because I’ve done it multiple times on different movies and things, and I think a lot of it is designing everything that feels cohesive and, like, it’s connected. I feel like the movies and the stories and the worlds we fall in love with all feel very believable because they all are kind of consistent. It’s the ones that maybe are all over the place where you don’t really believe that it could be a real place. Like, go watch The Lord of the Rings again and you just fall in love with everything because it’s so… The authenticity of everything in the movie is, like, so consistent. So, a lot of it is just the challenge of keeping that consistency across the entire world. And for me, just trying to do it for myself, like, how do I do that in Huxley and make sure it all feels like a consistent, believable world for people.
What would you say were sort of major inspirations behind it?
I think the bigger influences are very, like, a mixture of Japanese manga and anime and, like, French-European graphic novels and things. It’s kind of like a fusion of that mixed with a lot of American sci-fi and kind of a big melting pot of all my influences.
I’m a huge fan of, like, Otomo who made Akira, Masamune Shirow who did Ghost in the Shell, Miyazaki who did a lot of animated films like Nausicaa, and Mobius who did Inkal and a lot of his own personal stories. And also the Meta-Baron’s artist Juan Jimenez is a big influence to me. And a lot of… I mean, we can’t avoid growing up with Star Wars and all these amazing things that happened in the States, like Terminator and Matrix and all this stuff.
For sure, yeah. What was the actual process for putting it together? How do you start off with a project?
Well, Elysium was the first time I worked on a movie from start to finish. Initially we got, like, maybe almost a couple of words on a page, here’s the general idea of what I want to make while he was writing the script. And then we were coming up with ideas and designing robots and designing this whole universe. And then we got a script and then developed it even further. And so that was the first time seeing the seed of an idea turning into a final product that I sent to the movie theater. And it was a four-year process. So, for me it was kind of similar, where I had my main character, Huxley; when I drew him, and then kind of a similar process of, like, what is this going to be? I need to figure out the story. I need to figure out the world. But for me it was okay that I didn’t have it all planned out at the start. I knew how it started. I knew the first five or so pages, so I would do things in chunks of five to ten pages at a time. And because it took so long to make each painting and make each page, it gave me a lot of time to start plotting out the entire book story I wanted to tell. I had all the major story beats, but I would figure out exactly how it happened once I got there. But it’s like, I want them to go here, I want them to meet this person, here’s the villain and this happens, and then they need to go over here. And I kind of had those bigger story beats figured out pretty early, but how exactly it happens, like, oh, I want the action scene to be like this, or really figuring out, I would do once I got there.
What do you think is the enduring appeal of the post-apocalyptic genre with audiences? We all love it for some reason (laughs).
(laughs) I think in the back of our mind we’re all… I don’t know, it’s like a bit of survival… We all have a bit of survival instinct in us.
Hunter-gatherer instinct kind of thing…
Yeah, or even a lot of zombie movies and things. It’s very appealing because we all think in the back of our mind, maybe something will happen. If it does happen, what would I do? And we can kind of project and play out these scenarios of, in these movies, if this happened, say, 28 Weeks Later, 28 Years Later, that just came out, if this happened in England, how would they survive? It’s very fascinating to understand. And in post-apocalyptic, like a Mad Max or something, or Fury Road, it’s like, if it happened in the desert, what would it happen? What resources would you have? How would you survive? Would the world go completely crazy? Would some things stay the same? I think there’s a lot of fascinating projections of how would humans adapt and survive in that world? What would they do? And we can kind of… I don’t know, I feel like it’s very relatable to see those kind of stories play out. I know, for sure.
Thank you very much for taking the time to chat. All the best with Huxley.
Thank you!