BAD-EGG

Todays egg-based theme inspired me to doodle a egg wrestler. He's warped from years of performance-enhancing drugs, with a bulletproof shell and yolk-stained underpants:

Eggman. CooCooCaChoo.

Happy Easter you rascals.

Vikings!

Not many posts from me lately, as I've been racing to get work done, and also just got back from a entertaining holiday in the deepest countryside, where me and some friends hired a cottage, and a bouncy castle. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to live without one now.



Anyway, just before I went away I got a call to do an editorial illustration. I love nothing better than doing some doodles and seeing them floating around the world on bits of paper, but I've been turning down these sort of jobs lately, as I'm so busy animating stuff. But I decided I needed a change for a day, plus the brief specified an army of SWEDISH VIKINGS (two of my favourite things), so I sharpened my Wacom pen and set to work.

So I started off with the rough, I wouldn't normally do a rough for anything I do for myself, as I like to keep everything spontaneous, and full of those weird little ideas you get when "Ad-Libbing". But understandably clients like to have an idea what they are paying for before its complete, plus I needed to work with the designer on how it would fit into the double-page spread. Here it is:



Its really rough and sketchy, but I don't want to get bogged down with too much final detail at this stage. I drew the rough in one single pass, to hopefully keep some of that spontaneity that I'm trying to cling onto. Here's a close-up:



And having got that approved it was full-steam-ahead with the final, which I tried to incorporate a few new ideas into that weren't in the rough stage to keep it fresh, whilst not deviate too far from what the client had actually approved..

Which turned out like this.



Which is far too small to see properly here, So here's some closeups:







Personally, I think the sketch version maybe has something that the final doesn't, especially when reduced down the restrictive size of my blog. But I'm pleased I managed to combine doodley style (how I wanted it to look) with a slightly more restrained vectory style (how the client wanted it). So everyone is happy. Well apart from the Vikings themselves, who stay perpetually angry, like the crazy, fish-fueled pillage-mongers that they are. And we'll love them all the more for that.

Design Museum: Designs of the Year

My eyes are going funny. I've been spending the last few days designing and animating in a retro pixel-art style, and now the world around me is talking on a 16-bit 2D videogame appearance; I'm walking sideways and picking up roast chickens off the ground to regain "health" but at least I seem to have unlimited credits. Anyway, all will be revealed soon, here's a teaser:



Anyway, back in the real, 3D, realistically rendered world, the Design Museum has revealed its "Designs of the Year" Award / Exhibition - and the Orange GoodThingsWillNeverEnd site I produced with Poke is in it. Blimey. It was quite odd to see my animated doodles of vikings and sasquatches featured alongside the iPhone, the Nintendo Wii, Peter Saville's identity for Kate Moss, the Helvetica documentary and the Dior spring collection. But I shan't complain..

I was celebrating far too much to point a camera at anything on the opening night, but since then I've sneaked back and recorded some evidence:













It's a nice exhibition, and worth attending if you're in London, even if you just spend the whole time playing with the Tenori-On machine:

Best Creative Campaign of 2007 is...

....that GoodThingsShouldNeverEnd site I did with Poke, for Orange Unlimited, at least that's according to the Internet Advertising Bureau & Microsoft Digital Advertising who awarded it at its Grand Prix awards, so thats nice. I might buy a iced bun to celebrate.

Armful of Smack

Thanks everyone that came along to SmackIII on Friday, it was a load of fun. Merf, Brother, Superstar PJ, and Forward-Thinking-Tam all did fantastic sets, and I was able to doodle on everyone that was too intoxicated to fight me off. I'll try and collate photos from anyone that has any (let me know if you do), but here's a couple to start with:



I got a bit carried away, doodling on myself.




An innocent piano-playing child is approached by DEATH.

Smack III

There's a bit of an event happening this friday, the third in the successfully riotous Smack series. Once again some friends of mine are going to be DJing and playing some handsome mixes (Expect wonky-disco, electro, fidget house, ghettotech) and I'll be adding vaguely to the proceedings by bringing my pencil-case and giving a temporary felt-tip tattoo to anyone that wants one. So come along, dance around, get drawn on, make happiness.

Here's the venue:
http://www.westburybar.com/

Here's the flyer I made for it:



Here's the back, with all the details:



And here's a zoomed-in bit, so you can see just how excited that pirate is by the turntablism on display in front of him:



And in other news I just updated the banner at the top of the blog, so that the little Hairy Tooth now occasionally blinks. So scroll up and look! Now!

Grip Wrench Premiere

My secret animated series, that I've been working on for longer than I can remember, is going to start being revealed this week, at the Future Film Festival in Bologna, Italy. Funded by MTV's Qoob channel (which also brought us all Grant Orchards exceptionally fun Love Sport series) its a show based around fictional 80's action movie star Grip Wrench.



While Grip maintains a Hollywood career, and acts in various iconic movies from the 80s, he also struggles with the memories of active service in Veitnam, and once the camera starts rolling he starts confusing make-believe with his war-torn memories, causing havoc for himself, his long-suffering director and any other cast members. All of which has some similarities with the happy-faced carnage I filled my 2004 short "Violence" with.

There's 10 episodes in all, although I'm only showing the first 3 this week, based on Vietnam movies, on cult movie The Warriors, and Miami Vice. So if anyone is making a trip to Bologna, hope you enjoy it, and come and say hello. And watch this space for more details, and news on the next 7 episodes.

Here's the posters for the first 3:

Bats, Votes and Sites

A few random unconnected things to blurt out today.
Firstly, an image of mine has made it onto my favourite illustration Blog: Drawn which is nice. It's something I did a year or two ago, for a secret shadowy organisation of illustrators I belong to called Robotface, which decided amongst its members to put together a book of illustrated animals. I contributed a couple: Vampire Bat and Goat. I'd forgotten all about the project, but it seems you can now view it online, or buy a hard-copy (once a slight hiccup with the printer has been sorted out).

Here's my critters:



My personal favourites from the book are The Deer, The Ibis, The Nymph and The Squid. Good work shadowy-illustration-collective!

Also, while I'm here, the Orange Unlimited site I worked on a few months back seems to be picking up lots of attention in end-of-the-year best-of lists, Campaign put it in their top 10 pieces of digital creative work for the year, Contagious magazine has put it in their list of Most Contagious things of the year, and its one of the 12 finalists in the FWA website of the year - which you can vote on HERE!

Plus I've just started on the redesign of my main Rexbox site - it's going to be quite different soon...

Faceache

There's a new Rexbox fan page now up on Facebook - so if you enjoy doing pointless activities like biting people as a virtual vampire, or "buying" drinks for friends then join up here:

RexFace BoxBook

Pictoplasma

I sneaked away from the computer last week to attend the Pictoplasma festival in Berlin. And what a fine time it was. The work shown was of a very high-standard and there were some really interesting guest speakers to meet, like Aaron Stewart , David O'Reilly , TokyoPlastic and DouDouBoy.

David O'Reilly premiered his new short, which was about the closest example I've seen of animation and motion graphics becoming art. And TokyoPlastic previewed their new series of shorts, which have been commissioned by Qoob - in the same way that my new secret project has been, so was interesting to see what they've produced...

Plus it was a great excuse to explore Berlin, consume meat and beer and play ping-pong with teenagers.

Interactive Telly Ad

My little characters designed for the GoodThingsShouldNeverEnd Orange Unlimited website are now inhabiting a stop-motion ad on interactive tellyvision, in a handsome production put together by Weapon 7.



Video here.

I really like how this turned out, and the music is nice too. I must get into doing a bit more stop-motion again.

Thanks to Cookie for spotting this.

FWAH

I just discovered that ridiculous GoodThingsShouldNeverEnd site I did at Poke for Orange was awarded with the FWA (Favourite Website Awards) on the 5th of November, Bonfire night! This calls for some extra big fireworks to celebrate with!




Kaboom.

Orange Unlimited

I've been working closely with the lovely folk at Poke on the new site for Orange. Its a neverending webpage, because, as they say, Good Things Should Never End.

It's been a great project to work on, a really open brief to just make loads of crazy stuff, my favourite kind of work basically..

Plus you can take the content from the site and share it on your blog, myspace or wherever, just like this:

Sneaky Photos

Here's some photo evidence of the Sneaky Critters exhibition.
Plus, extra photos here, where you can also use cash/money to buy art/pictures.




Detail from my tiniest canvas.




A bigger one.




Lots of great stuff. Julies canvas in the foreground.




People. Artwork. Beer. A winning combination.

Sneaky Critters Exhibition

Residents of London may care to note - I'm taking part in an exhibition on the 22nd. Woo. It's called Sneaky Critters, and it being curated by Ms Sneaky Racoon herself. So come down to the Bodhi Gallery on Brick Lane and say hello, and I'll say hello back and everyone will be happy.

Here's the official flyer:

Computer Arts - Inspirobook

The latest issue of Computer Arts (141) comes with a sumptious supplement, called The Book of Inspiration. Featuring "57 of the worlds greatest illustrators" an elite squadron of crayon-botherers that they've included me in. Good heavens.

Here it is pictured on my similarly sumptious carpeting:

LittleBigPlanet: Tokyo Game Show

LittleBigPlanet, the game I'm working on with my friends at Media Molecule, for Playstation 3, just had its first proper showing in Japan at the Tokyo Game Show. So I needed to make a proper Japanese trailer to go with this.

It's a bit of a compliation of previous trailers I've made for the game, but with a new stop-motion intro (made using a glass table, my hands, some programmers piling up packs of paper as ballast, and some pens), and some motion graphics explaining the 3 key principles of the game: Play, Create, Share.

Little site update

I've done a little update on the main site just to add the recent illustration I did for Computer Arts Projects magazine. Here's a smaller version of it, right here:



And the only other update to the site is me sneaking in a couple links to this blog, as I reckon its about time someone actually sees it.

DesignersBlock / SecretWars

I went along to DesignersBlock: Illustrate last night, 40 currently empty retail units were transformed into a kind of doodlevillage, with over 70 artists involved. Plus a good excuse to drink beer with friends that were exhibiting, like Jon Burgerman and Cristina Guitian

Here's Cristinas wall:




And here's my drunken contribution from the end of the night: