ford

Stuff that has influenced me

  • superheroes, superhero fingerpuppets
  • record sleeves (beatles)
  • pop art imagery
  • comics (archie as purehart the powerful) colours, print, ragged edges of pages, poor print quality
  • walt disney

blake and mortimer Belgian comics (Blake et Mortimer). Belgian comics are very much unlike American ones. They are beautifully printed, hard cover books with serious stories and very high quality drawing.

gil jourdan Maurice Tillieux: Gil jourdan

kirby Jack Kirby’s Marvel comics. Amazing futuristic scenes, machines, ridicolous stories like superman vs frankenstein

  • Children’s activity books. Reduced shapes, limited colour palette, leaves a lot up to the imagination
  • Comic lettering. Huge drop shadows, conveys excitement

men only Men Only magazine covers (1940s). Loose linework, flat colour

sex pistols Never mind the bollocks, here’s the sex pistols

Saul Steinberg: The Discovery of America

tintin Hergé: Tintin, End Papers

record Go 2 Record Sleeve. “This is a record cover. This writing is the design upon the record cover […]”

My own work

  • Mostly editorial illustration

gravitylight

  • Advertising for Ben and Jerry’s Foundation
  • Gravitylight, We walk the line
  • Own work as a break from comercial work
  • Editorial jobs give you all sorts of different subjects to work on, most random stuff

Stuff I look at

  • Shop signage
  • Lettering
  • Ice cream vans
  • Neon signage
  • Random stickers
  • Lettering with snow on top
  • Straightforward shop names

Process

process

  • Pencil drawings
  • Brush and ink black line art
  • Digital colouring
  • Very rarely meet my own clients (all through email, agency)
  • Work from a shared studio

Super Book for Superheroes

  • workshops with kids
  • book has developed into its own thing

hero

  • The Superhero Comic Kit
  • Coming up: Superhero Adventure Playset (paper engineering, pop-up book)

Questions

Do you have any advice for finding a good workspace?

  • We just replied to an ad
  • The market is getting more competetive
  • Renting a place is definitely a learning process
  • Find a group of people you like working with and set up a studio with them
  • People will change over time
  • Split the rent between a number of people