Newtasty » Design and Promotion

Created in Brum

admin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:18:56 +0000

A shout out from Created In Birmingham, nice one!

Have a Soulful Christmas

admin — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:28:05 +0000

The serious lack of posts and warmup sketches is because I’ve been hammering away night and day on a couple of intense projects, one of which is with my favourite design team Fluid and new buddies The Character Shop. It’s a very cool project and something kind of new to me, I can’t share anything right now but Im looking forward to when I can.
Chances are I’ll still be in my workshop until Christmas Eve so in case I can’t pop in with some mindless ramblings I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Holidays, here’s a festively rebadged poster I did recently for a Christmas party!

The Two Of Us Need Look No More

admin — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 04:12:07 +0000

Another agreeable cover commission recently, did this for Pink Narcissus Press. Really great clients, a sweet and easy gig, and after I did this I had to download ‘Ben’ and watch it again (it wasn’t as good as I remembered)

Chinatown

admin — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 02:41:59 +0000

Recently did the cover for Area’s Chinatown guide (which is available in B’ham now), it needed to be along the same lines as the British guide I did earlier this year but, naturally, a Chinese theme! I love me some dragons but I got hung up on Tigers when started and then couldn’t back out. I did 2 colour versions because I couldn’t decide which Tiger I liked more. Another speedy and smooth project, my favourite kind!

The R&B of Membership

admin — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:00:55 +0000

Last year me and my ColdRice friends were asked to host a monthly party at a nice little cocktail bar in Birmingham. As our usual events lean more towards garage rock n’ roll we decided to make this party strictly soul music.

To promote the events I decided on a series of posters depicting some R&B giants in a pulp comic book style, to create an almost unreal image of characters that we are only used to seeing in TV footage or photographs, introducing these 2 things that (to the best of my knowledge) hadn’t met before.
I love the idea of these characters who I consider being larger than life having their tales exaggerated and immortalised in this format. My other reason for this approach was much more simple: Soul music and comic books, me and David Lee Roth both grew up on them!

Rise Of Nightmares

admin — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:11:00 +0000

Recently I have been lucky to work on a bunch of projects with my favourite design team FLUID. Most of the projects aren’t available to share just yet, but I think it’s ok to share these storyboards as the finished trailer is out there. I illustrated these for Sega’s ‘Rise Of Nightmares’ based on Fluid’s concepts and direction. I was impressed with how close to our storyboards the final video is.
Man, I remember when video games were all about bouncing on mushrooms, delivering newspapers and the occasional flight into space to blow up some meteors. You kids have got it tough.

Happy accident

admin — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 19:41:05 +0000

Just finished a new cover for Area magazine. It needed to be a wraparound cover with a kind of ‘remember you are British’ theme. I was uhmmming and aahhing about it for ages, changing my mind about ideas and styles, then deadline poked me in the eye and I had to get started. I got to sketching, but before I could even start agonising over the final product, I found I was happy with what was sat on the desk before me. It wasn’t what I had planned at all but I dig it, and I can’t explain why! Happy accidents are the best.

There’s always a zombie lurking…

admin — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:14:29 +0000

What is it with me and zombies? Whatever I am working on, there is always a zombie job somewhere in there… recently I had just finished a fairly high profile zombie job (don’t think I can share it just yet) and I had started working on several non-zombie projects. Before I could ask “why aren’t I drawing someone with their limbs hanging off?” I had a request for a poster/flyer for an event in my hometown called Zombie Prom. I guess zombies are so natural to me now that I went into automatic drawing mode and came up with this before I even knew what hit me. It was a neat, quick project for a no-trouble client… my favourite kind! In Birmingham you are never more that 10 feet away from a rat and I am never more than 10 minutes away from someone who want braaaains….

Ramshackle

admin — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 01:19:14 +0000

Around 15 years ago I got my very first break doing artwork for Steve Gerrard’s various DJ events. He eventually partnered up with my pal Carlton, and together they built ‘Ramshackle’, which became the biggest indie party in the UK. Keeping me onboard to provide the visual identity, together we created several long running marketing campaigns (which seemed to strike a chord with the yooves), making various series’ of collectable flyers. This particular campaign was a cut-out and keep format, each flyer was a kind of designer toy version of someone related to Ramshackle in some way… we even utilized a full page ad in Fused Magazine as a kind of diorama in a good old cereal box style, and with my www partner Stef, created an interactive website based on the characters world (complete with realtime day and night!) It was great to dig these out and dust them off, made me appreciate all of the people involved in those days that helped me so I could keep doodling for a living. So, Nice one Steve G, Carlton, Stef, Dave and Kerry. Cheers!

Mags!

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:02:21 +0000

Mags! A magazine about independent magazine publishing by Monsa, features Fused Magazine‘s Juliet Lewis cover as illustrated by yours truly… look, there in the corner!