Mac Format- Steve Jobs

So here's another illustration for Mac Format that hit the stands last week, again this was yet another great brief by the Art Editor of the title Alex Thomas.

The article is about whether Apple has sold out, the brief asked for a depiction of Steve Jobs; one half being the young idealistic computer nerd that grew up in California, the other side showing a more hard nosed, money driven version of the Jobs of today.

On one side I was going for a psychadelic poster style, hence all the halftone stuff and on the other side I wanted to give it an ever so gentle feel of the US Dollar to suggest that corporate materialistic side.

This is one of those that really comes alive in print as it is bold composition..how many times do you see a headshot like that take up a full page?! And also there is some quite subtle line work on the corporate half that really comes through in the printed version.

I'd like to point out that an illustrator's work can often defined by the person/people he works with as much as any brief, or deadline and luckily working with Alex is a joy, he's one of those really good AD's; (a) Because he gives great briefs (b) He always sets a reasonable timescale, and (c) Alex is one of the most visually aware AD's I've met, if I say that I've been looking at this artist/movement/film/comic/TV series as reference or influence, then he totally gets what I'm talking about... it just makes things so much smoother when the guy you work with knows his stuff!

I've done two images for this magazine so far and they've been pretty solid illustrations, but I know if I'm given the opportunity and with these kinds of briefs I'm going to produce something pretty special soon.

Wired!!

Here's a job that I did for the UK edition of Wired magazine, I actually did this quite a while ago.. in fact the World Cup may very well have still been on! however it didn't see print until the end of last week, each magazine has a different schedule; some images see print literally the next day and others take a while like this one.

Wired like the Mojo gig earlier in the year are one of those clients on the list of every illustrator in the land... not only that but I'd tried on numerous occasions over the years to work with the art directing duo of Andrew Diprose and Gary Cadogan on another title, each time my approaches were spurned.

Luckily i'm patient, and as the saying goes; "Good things come to those who wait" so Gary get's in touch having received one of my 'World Cup Wonder' trading card sets with a really lovely brief about Zombies; which is fast becoming a bit of a specialty subject for me, and of course I take it without hesitation.. if truth be be known I'd have drawn anything they told me to!

Tricky job this, in that there were a lot of characters to draw, and they had to be grouped in a particular way, and to take into account the gutter, but I was given a decent deadline so I got to work.

The thing is with this; after years of waiting and now having finally got the commission from Gary, it turned out that Gary was going on to pastures new, so I would be working with Andrew for the completion of the image... I like to think it's like Dragon's Den where you get two for the price of one!

Luckily the reason these Art Director's have such a great reputation was completely justified and I found working with Andrew to be very smooth and professional, which is just as I would have expected.

To be fair I thought if I ever worked with Wired it would be on some of their spot illustrations, in the end I got a big one running over two pages, which was lovely! I still however have my eye on doing some spots for them, check out the magazine as I think they are one of the few magazines on this side of the Atlantic that really know and value the use of the humble 'spot'.

Above are the rough, which is again detailed (there was a lot to work out!) the pinks on this are telling the AD where i'll be putting other stuff, and the other two images are the final and final in print.... Oh yeah, and the Zombie bottom right is me sporting the hairline i'll have in about twelves months from now...