New Men's Health Illustrations!

Again been slow in putting up new stuff; busy, busy at the mo, to make amends here's a batch of illos that have graced the pages of Men's Health over the last couple of months.

To kick things off I thought we'd start with the latest 'Snack Off' spot illustration, now I'd posted earlier that I thought this series had been cancelled, so imagine my surprise to get an email from MH Art Editor Extraordinaire Rob Milton, asking me to come up with an image for Broccoli vs Spinach, not only that but Rob gave me a bit of free reign to come up with possible ideas.

After some thought, the idea that Broccoli would probably work best as someone with a 'fro played a major part in choosing the concept for this; with this in mind my best ideas were 80's footballers, so Broccoli would have either been a German player of that period or perhaps our very own Kevin Keegan, which I think Rob was already to go for, until I suggested Tom Baker's Dr Who and a Dalek Spinach... which happily got the thumbs up, I drew it in between other jobs and luckily it all went smoothly.

I'm hoping that there's still more of these 'Snack Offs' to do for the magazine as they're great fun... we've covered most meats by now, but we still haven't done anything with Turkey.. and i'll not feel we've completed the series until we tackle Turkey!

Above is a great little image I was able to come up with for Deputy AD Kerem Shefik at the magazine, he wanted a spot illustration for a feature titled 'Rise of the Machines' in which he wanted Arnie's Terminator using a bit of gym equipment called the Roman Chair, this is another one that was quick and fun to do, in fact I offered two different versions of the scene, and he chose the one above (the better of the two!)

What I liked about this image was that it was printed absolutely tiny, maybe the size of a 50 pence piece in the magazine; I thought it looked kind of cool being such a dinky size, alas I was hoping this would become a series; either with different Terminators doing different exercises or maybe other 80's Movie characters using gym equipment; Robocop lifting weights, Rambo doing press ups, Gremlins doing squat thrusts?! Maybe that's a series I should do in my own time!

This is an advertorial image that ran in last issues Men's Health for Gillette, David Godfrey the promotions AD at MH got in touch to ask me if I fancied producing a spoof of the 'Your Country Needs You' poster artwork, the brief was simple; we want a drawn copy of the image, but want you to remove the 'tache. Easy! I thought... "You've got two hours to get it to us" said David... er...

I got my backside in gear and came up with the above, I actually provided a few versions and the above got selected. I never saw this in print, but it ran full page and I imagine running with the right text would have come out well in print.

This is yet another advertorial (I've had a lot of these of recent!) this was again commissioned by Promotions AD at MH David Godfrey, a very simple scene to draw for the hair restoration product Regaine, I came up with a series of roughs and the above one got chosen, I was expecting for David to get back to me with regards to producing a final, but they liked the rough above so much they actually ran it.

Okay, so that's a little catch up, what I can say is that some big illos are on the way soon, one is proving particularly epic, but more on that next time.

Nuts/Census 2011- Office of the Future!

Here's a new double page illo that can be found in the latest issue of Nuts... and a fun one to draw it was too.

This image is what's known in the business as an 'advertorial', here's a quick definition for those not familiar with the term, an advertorial is a promotion running in a magazine that runs and feels like a regular feature, but is of course advertising a brand... it's quite a clever way I think of advertising to a specific readership.

The image above runs in Nuts and promotes the Census 2011; the brief was to create a Nuts office of the future, and I was given a set list of things to include; cyborg delivery man, 3D printing, hologram PCs etc..

This was art directed by the great Simon Freeborough and then later overseen by the equally great Barney Hammond at the magazine, these kinds of jobs are a potential minefield as not only does the image have to meet the approval of the magazine, but also design and advertising types for the actual brand... often when you do this stuff, it means it's going to a committee..and of course everyone has an opinion!

Luckily this illustration went surprisingly smoothly, with hardly any changes. Yay!

I really had fun with this image, but I did admittedly make things a little tough on myself by deciding this was the best place to try my hand at isometric drawing.. talk about jumping in at the deep end! In the end I learnt a great deal, it's a far more technical approach than how I usual work, everything has to correspond with this 45 degree axis... it's certainly a way of drawing that i'll use in the future, and considering this was my first attempt i'm pleased with the results... just imagine what i'll turn out next time!

Strangely enough i'd never previously done any advertorial stuff since I've been working, but including this one I've completed 3 in the last month! The other two i'll post here once they've seen print.

Nuts: Spots, I see Spots!

Here's another job for the fine fellas at Nuts magazine, which is in the shops now, but only for one more day, I intended to post these up last week, but again my busy streak continues!

These illustrations were created for the feature '20 Great Things only Blokes do', I got the brief on Friday evening from AD Simon Freeborough asking whether I fancied doing these twenty spot illustrations, now at the time I thought I was just getting over a bout of the flu, and I'd be fit and raring to go on these over the weekend... turns out I was wrong!

My flu symptoms flared again up, and it laid me low over the weekend period, and I didn't get really going on these until Sunday afternoon.. now twenty illustrations in an already tight period of time is difficult, but doing these when you miss a day and half and feel awful throughout makes it like mission impossible.

Unbelievably I managed to have the first twelve completed by five o'clock Monday, which left me with eight tricky ones to get in over the next couple of days.. the original plan was these were not suppose to have backgrounds, they would be just sitting on flat colours, which meant I had only to concentrate on the figures, however the AD's thought they would look better on very simple backgrounds... which scared the hell out of me at that point, as it meant even more work in an ever dwindling frame of time.

I worked with Nuts Art Editor Barney Hammond for the first time on this series, and I think he was justifiably right in wanting some background info in there, even though simple in some cases it makes them look a ton better... and despite my illness and stress I actually like the finished series and feel like a stronger artist for having been pushed to my limits on these.

Some of the subjects for the images were; "Defacing a sleeping friend" "Growing a 'Tashe"

"Morning Flatulence" "Eating Stupidly Hot Curries" & "Competitive Urinating".... all for the most part enjoyable to draw, and who else but the guys at Nuts will pay me to draw such things!

The image at the bottom is just a selection of the twenty images, before we put in any background...which I think look nice cut on white!

The next middle two are a selection of my favorites of the series with backgrounds.

The top two are the full 20 images in print.

Ha, in the past I can be quoted on how I love my spot illustrations, well after producing these twenty in next to no time, I am now looking forward to producing some nice big full page and double page images.

15 Seconds of Fame!

So Andy Warhol reckons we'll all have our own 15 minutes of fame, well on Friday night I am thrilled to say that I had somewhere between 15 to 45 seconds (maybe longer!) of my alloted time!

I was minding my own business on a Friday night watching The Graham Norton Show, who's guests included; Matt Le Blanc, Mary Portas and David Mitchell, and when it came to the interview with David Mitchell, Graham Norton very kindly informed him he'd be voted one of Nuts Magazines 20 Greatest Blokes, now at this point my ears pricked up.

If you read the previous post then you'll know this is a recent feature I illustrated, anyway to cut a long story short Norton only goes and whips out a copy of the magazine, at this point I'm getting a little excited shouting "Go on show the illustration!" and as you can see from the pictures above he did exactly that.. that's right he only went flashed up my illustration to an audience of millions!! Ha, yeah, I was dumbstruck!

The clip can be found on Youtube here and the section with the Nuts illo starts around the 6 minute mark on this video... check it out, if not there's the snaps above to prove that it did happen and wasn't the product of my feverish mind!

I think if you watch Joey from Friends face you can see that he's absolutely blown away with the illustration, he has the look of awe and wonder that I imagine Renaissance people did upon the unveiling of the Sistine Chapel! No? Must be just me that saw that.

Above are snaps of Norton with the mag illustration and below that is a quick snap of the illustrations as it saw print.

Obviously now that i'm famous, i'm available for public appearances and autograph signings just get in touch with my PA to arrange something, i'll be in my trailer... next up I expect to be on QI, Mock the Week and sometime by the end of the year being interviewed by Jonathan Ross, obviously long term I intend to crack the American market, maybe a couple of Grammies, an Oscar or two..

Nuts: Greatest British Blokes!

Here are a couple of large scale illustrations that can be found in this week's Nuts magazine for the feature 'Britain's 20 Greatest Blokes' this was an incredibly fun, if labour intensive job! This job was commissioned on the day before Christmas Eve, I assumed I would be having the Holiday period off, which happens most years as my editorial clients close shop over this period... How wrong was ?! It seems AD Mr Simon Freeborough puts even more hours than me!

This job posed a few problems; The order in which the characters would appear was pre-determined so I couldn't play about with that, also I rarely get to do one image at this size never mind two, so I was maybe a little out of practice, plus I drive myself crackers with little details which can slow me down on these big one's.. in fact these images only came together towards the end of the job, just a few days before deadline.

I'm not going to go through the list, click on the images for a close up and hopefully all are quite obvious, good to see Stephen Hawking at No1 though!

Having seen these in print, which is how I recommend these be viewed, as it plugs in some of the gaps I left for the text I can honestly say I'm happy with the final images, these were quite epic to draw and compose and came about not long after the 40 portrait monster Mac Format job of the last post, if you're in a News Agents check these bad boys out!

Hopefully i'll get the opportunity to work with Nuts on other jobs throughout 2011, their briefs are always fun and more often than not allow me to tap into my more comedic qualities.. which is what it's all about, I think every illustration should have a stamp of the creator's personality... and I think anyone that knows me, would say these are a good reflection of my own humor.

Mac Format- Sgt Pepper Homage

Here is a full page illustration that's just seen print in the most recent copy of Mac Format, this was completed just before Christmas and was quite the epic undertaking!

Alex Thomas the AD of Mac Format had given me some truly great briefs throughout 2010, the results of which can be seen in other posts, however I think he was leaving his very best until the end of the year with this one.

With the whole Beatles catalogue now being downloadable from I Tunes, Alex came up with this truly great idea of doing a homage/parody of Sir Peter Blake's iconic Sgt Pepper artwork, I think that left to my own devices at some point or other I was destined to re-draw this image at some point, it's one of those that I would do as a personal/promotional image... so to actually have this brief fall into my lap was a real gift!

The concept for this was as simple as it was complex to draw, fill out the crowd of people with a list of Apple's most famous employees and devotees, with the list in hand; made up of a lot of CEO types, celebrities etc... I then went about the mammoth task of drawing over 40 portraits in one image!

The black and white line underdrawing if I remember correctly was created surprisingly quickly, something like 3/4 days, the colouring and fine tuning of this took a great deal longer, it became quite exhausting if i'm being honest, but sometimes your best images are like this, there needs to be a little struggle along the way.. I dare say some of my favorite pieces are often hard fought affairs, that extra hardship can often bring about the best results.

The middle line drawing is a key to all the characters drawn, this was also printed in the magazine.

The resulting final colour image is one of my personal favorites to see print over the last twelve months; this in terms of both the actual illustration, the concept and I know how much work I put into this, while also trying to juggle other jobs... it was a very busy period there, and I came out I think with some really nice work, and a reputation I hope enhanced from the experiences of late November through to December 2010.

Hold on, because some more biggies are coming to this page soon!

Men's Health Spots!

Here's a round up of just a few of the spot illustrations I've been fortunate to produce for Men's Health UK throughout the latter part of 2010, I've been very slow in putting these up (no surprises there!)

The image above is the most recent from the 'Snack Off' series (*see older posts for more!) and unfortunately probably last, as I think the section has been killed, which is a shame 'cos i've had a ball producing these images for Rob and Graeme at the mag.

Still I think we went out on a high; they wanted something for Oats vs Eggs, and asked me if I had any ideas kicking around; so I suggested Oats Ghostbuster vs Ghost Egg.. I think the fellas there trust me now and so let me roll with it.

Strangely enough the Oaty Ghostbuster, which i'd have assumed would be difficult proved in fact to come very smoothly, the Eggy Ghost however proved tricky; originally it was just a random Ghost with two yolks for eyes; but was given the thumbs down for being too cartoony.

"How about an Eggy Slimer?" suggested AD Rob Milton. Genius!, D'oh why didn't I think of that.. so I drew a yellow/yolky slimer at the request of Rob, however this got turned down on the basis of it not looking "eggy" enough, this was replaced with a fried egg version, which while not being turned down had to be tweaked, I moved the yolk further up into the centre of the body and then had to give it a more subtle yolk, more poachy (that's a word!) than yellow fried.

Still while I may prefer the original yellow yolky Slimer, I can't fault the alterations we made as I was very happy when I saw the printed result!

Here's the second to last of the 'Snack Off' illos; Venison vs Beef in the shape of Mods vs Rockers, Rob's idea this one and a great one too! I decided to put them on bikes, really enjoyable an smooth one this.

Brocolli vs Cabbage, in the form of McEnro vs Bjorn Borg, I had trouble with my Cabbage Borg, I was a little unfamiliar with the Cabbage texture and trying to marry that to Bjorn's angular features, the orignal head was scrapped for not looking Cabbagey enough... I came up with this replacement very quickly, which I like, but had I more time then I would have slightly resized his proportions to match Brocolli McEnroe and gave him a cabbage beard to finish him off.

Here are some military style badges I came up with for a army fitness training supplement for the magazine, these are only small, but were really enjoyable to do. I think people see some of the more complex and intricate images I produce, and then forget about me for these smaller icon based images, but the reality is I'd love to do more icon and infographic stuff to run alongside my other work.

Coming up soon, so watch this space over the next few days are some of that more detailed stuff I was talking about, in fact they're quite epic!