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!

Nuts Nativity

As promised here's me being a bit more up to date with my postings of jobs, and this is pretty up to the minute as this illustration hit the shelves today!

Simon Freeborough Art Director of Nuts magazine called on a Friday afternoon to see whether i'd be available for a job he had in mind, unfortunately I was down the pub... I should point out I'd earned my afternoon down the boozer, as I hadn't had any time off in two weeks.. I thought i'd be safe to go for a quick pint, I mean who's gonna call past 4 on a Friday... er...how wrong was I?!!

Luckily I got the message at about 5-ish and got in touch, Simon then went about setting a brief for a Christmas TV themed Nativity image, which I got at about 7 that evening.. probably the latest i've received a brief.

The turnaround on this image had to be very quick, to top it off I was also finishing up on another image (that'll be posted here when it sees print) I started a tight line drawing on the Saturday, finished up my other job on the Sunday, then on the Monday sent in the line drawing above.. luckily very few if any changes were asked for, I then went on to colour and sent that in on the Tuesday... all this while making an emergency alteration to the other job I had on the go!

Even though I didn't necessarily have the time to enjoy this job as much as I would have liked, I think the final is a solid image and printed very well, and is certainly I believe what the nice people at Nuts wanted.

It was great to get to work with Simon again, I think if you were to ask anyone that knows me which clients makes a good match for both my style of work and sense of humour, then me and Nuts are a very good fit... hopefully i'll get further opportunities to work with them in 2011!

Illustration above shows Matt Lucas and David Walliams as Mary and Joseph, Harry Hill as the baby Jesus, Top Gear fellas as the three wise Men, Jimmy Carr as the innkeeper, Mitchell & Webb as a goat and sheep, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer as a donkey and cow, James Corden as a moon and Doctor who as the angel.. oh and a TV playing the Christmas premier of Avatar.

Blimey! It made for a tiring weekend juggling all those figures and two jobs at the same time... still I should be pretty much done now until the New Year!