The signage-related contributions of Martin T. Charles to Hollywood movies recently earned him an invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). This exclusive membership allows him to vote for the high-profile annual Oscar Awards.

“It is such an honour to be part of this industry and, especially, to now be a member of the Academy,” says Charles (pictured), graphic designer for SagaBoy Productions. “I get to work with many exceptionally talented people and to experience each day as a creative adventure.”

Charles credits advances in digital inkjet technology for shaping his successful career, as he has used wide-format graphics to decorate movie and TV production sets, including several honoured by the Art Directors Guild for excellence in production design. He describes today’s printing systems as “nothing less than magical” for enabling graphic production techniques that were impossible a decade ago.

“Not only can we now wrap an entire room on demand, but we also have specialty inks for special effects and finishes that used to require hours of rendering by hand,” he says, “and we have new materials to print on, including fabrics that add elegance, richness and texture to graphics and can withstand the elements.”

One of his latest projects was the hit baseball film 42, for which he designed highly authentic 1940s-era backdrops. He used two large-format inkjet printers to produce hundreds of graphics for the shoot, including full-scale replicas of vintage billboards—each measuring an average of 9.1 x 6.1 m (30 x 20 ft), but some spanning more than 12.2 m (40 ft) in width—displayed at Ebbets Field in New York, N.Y. (pictured left), and other famous ballparks. Charles helpedrecreate 10 stadiums, streets in five cities, airports and train stations of the era.

“In all my years of working, 42 stands out for the sheer number of huge graphics needed in an extremely short time frame,” he says. “We printed miles of graphics for this film.”

Charles began his career in the early 1990s and has served as graphic designer on more than 50 feature films to date. His credits include other period fare like The Artist, Public Enemies, Catch Me If You Can, Seabiscuit, Leatherheads and That Thing You Do!, but also the more futuristic esthetics of Minority Report, AI: Artificial Intelligence and The Avengers. Next up is Saving Mr. Banks, starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney.

On TV, Charles is known for his work for HBO’s The Newsroom (pictured left), including a wall mural that won a 2013 Specialty Graphic Imaging Association (SGIA) Golden Image Award in the building graphics category.

“It has been a wide ride so far and I look forward to all that the future holds,” he says.

With files from Roland DGA. For more information, visit www.rolanddga.com.