MacUser Interview!

So just come off another busy spell, and crossed fingers i've got a break today, which gives me just enough time to sneak this little post in!

So at the end of last year I was approached by MacUser magazine, to appear in the pratik/portfolio section of the title, this for those not familiar with the magazine, this is where they run a five page interview about a creative professional.

I was delighted and more than a little honored to be asked, knowing that i'd be in the company of many great illustrators that had appeared in the title down the years.

The issue that my interview appears hit the shops on the Friday and will be on sale probably for another fortnight, so if you like my work, and want to know what makes me tick, then have a wonder to your nearest shops, or alternatively there are digital editions to be downloaded.

I'll post up the interview in it's entirety no doubt, once the title has been taken off the shelves, although I do recommend buying the mag, as it does showcase some of my better works, some making their debuts in a printed magazine (Last Supper, Robots & Aliens, etc)

Anyway big thanks to the lovely Camille at the mag for inviting me to take part, and for later offering me some very nice commissions! Always nice to get to work with new people and Art Directors who's work you've admired for some time!

Lots of new stuff to post up, which i'll put here once they've all seen print, so until then maybe get buying that magazine!

Goodbye 2012.. Hello 2013!

Okay, Okay... really should have done more posts throughout 2012, it was by far one of my busiest years to date, so to make amends here's a giant sized posting of just a fraction of the work I produced throughout the latter half of the year.

Above is a really rather nice cover illustration for Insurance Age... enjoyed myself with the textures on the 'run down' half of the image with this one.

Here is another IA cover, when I got the brief through, it's one of those that seemed impossible to illustrate, and it gave me a real headache this one, what with the composition, scale changes etc, it's been a few months since I completed the job, and now looking back I actually quite like this one, only thing I would change is the main guy's face, a bit too superhero/comic book looking for my liking.

A rare job for Men's Health, my only one in 2012 in fact, hopefully i'll have the opportunity to do more this year. This is a 'Pumping Iron' era Arnie workout... always fun to draw Arnie, I think i've drawn him more times than almost any other celebrity!

 This one was an incredibly quick turnaround job for Women's Health Australia. WH Aussie got in touch as they were rerunning a feature I had drawn for the UK edition (see the post in 2012) in order for it to cater more for the Australian market, they wanted one of their homegrown stars to be illustrated as an action figure like I had done for their British/US counterparts.

So I was commissioned to draw Chris Hemsworth as a Thor action figure, now this proved to be a bit stressful, the actual illustration was the easy bit, and was created over a weekend. What proved stressful was that I would be away from the studio for a couple of days as I had a long standing engagement in London attending the AOI Images Awards ceremony... to add to the confusion, there was also an Australian public holiday, the person that commissioned me was also on leave, and of course their is a considerable time difference between the UK and Australia, if you are not aware; it means when I was starting working at between 7/8 in the morning, it was the end of their working day down under.

Having said all the above, I think the illustration came out well, and of course I would love to do more drawings for the mag in 2013.

Here  are some info based spots for my friends at Empire, the first set of images are for a piece about the most unconventional weapons in films of that year.

The second set was to illustrate the steps of the dance craze the Sambolo, as seen in the movie Damsels in Distress... I can't tell you how many times I watched the youtube clips, in order to get this right!

So the fellas at Nuts mag kept me incredibly busy throughout 2012, Ha, this may be an understatement!
Above is an illustration celebrating 10 years of Top Gear, which was drawn in 3 days... it was a toughie, as I had this main one, 3 spot illustrations and my regular Kama Sutra illo to draw also for the title!

Illustration dealing with the dodgy dealings of the Premier League, the Art Ed Barney, suggested I change things up and maybe digitally paint this one... it wasn't without it's problem's this, as i've been drawing in line for so long, that it's hard to not think in those ways... still came out okay I think!

Bit more infographic stuff, this is actually a re-do of an image I did in 2011 (I think!) which is a scale chart of the world's largest Buildings, really enjoyed myself with this, I was able to make a far more cleaner drawing this time around!

I think this goes down as one of my fave drawings of the past 12 months, the AD at the mag Simon had the genius idea of creating a rather gory table that showed how long manager's kept their head running Chelsea football club, Roman Abramovic being illustrated as the executioner, with each manager having his head on a bloody wooden stump, a table was overlaid over the drawing, and the length of each stump shows how many months they stayed in the job.

Such a fun job, great concept, and it printed like a dream!

My now annual Christmas TV drawing for the magazine, left plenty of room for test at the top, this also was a stunner in print!

Here are some Santa spots also created for the Nuts TV section, these were actually drawn in one morning, I was completely shattered, after these and all the other jobs I was drawing at the same time! Christmas was more hectic than usual for me!

This was my final published illustration of 2012.. this one was also tricky, I think in my mind, i'd already gone on holiday, and this one came out of nowhere. This was an image for a feature about the 50 greatest comedy movies as voted by Nuts readers.

I should point out this isn't every job I did in the latter half of the year , just a selection... as you can imagine I was very tired, and I hope this goes some way to explaining why illustrations hae not been so forthcoming of recent.

What I can say about the upcoming year is this; 2013 officially marks a decade in the business, to celebrate I will be creating 10 projects to send out to current and prospective clients over the coming 12 months... these are going to be very exciting indeed, i'll not say too much now, but the first one is due for completion at the end of this month!