My First (Audio) Book Cover

Today I got a nice surprise in the post, the audiobook of the Cardturner, with an adapted version of my cover used both on the CD cover and the C.D.'s themselves. I'd not given the audiobook any thought, so it was an especially nice thing to find amongst the post.

If anyone is interested the book is out on June 1st, the audiobook is due on June 7th.

My First Book Cover

A few weeks ago, I received my advance copies from Bloomsbury of 'The Cardturner' by Loius Sachar, which I have done the cover for. In all the excitement of seeing my first ever book cover published, I forgot to post any pictures.

The idea was to create something like the design on the back of a playing card, with elements from the story turned into symbols in each corner, instead of the traditional hearts, spades, clubs and diamonds. I created a kind of road map pattern for the rest of the design, again in reference to the story (click the picture to see the detail better).

The book will be available in two different colours, like a blue deck of cards and a red deck of cards. Below is the back cover which I designed to look like the ace of spades. This is not in reference to the track by the band 'Motorhead'. I tried to work in a few more story elements into the pattern, can you see a compass and a car wheel?

Im very happy with the final thing, its really exciting to finally see some of the work I've been doing over the last year finished, printed and ready to show about. Im really looking forward to seeing it in the shops. The book is released on June 1st here in the UK (heres the amazon link). I'll put up some better pictures once the book is out properly.

One detail Im particularly happy with is this, my actual name, in actual print, on an actual published book! whoop!

Bologna 2010

At the end of March the annual Bologna Children's Book Fair took place in Bologna of all places. To quote wikipedia's description of the fair "It is the meeting place for all professionals involved with creating and publishing children's books, and is mainly used for the buying and selling of rights, both for translations and for derived products like movies or animated series". While I wasn't able to attend myself, this was the first year that some of my work was over there. One place it could be found was on the cover for Scholastic's 2010 rights guide.

The illustration on the cover is taken from 'Super Amazing Mazes', a book I'm working on at the moment with Scholastic, which was amongst all of the other tops things inside the catalogue. They even let me do the lettering. I was really honored that my work was chosen for the cover, and It was lovely to see the finished catalogue. It was really nicely printed, with a glossy varnish used on the bear and the ground, which looks particulary swish.

Today my agents sent me an exert from industry magazine The Bookseller's coverage of Bologna 2010 which even mentions my book! Im very excited to have gotten a mention! Click the pic below to take a closer peak.

Adam B WIndow

One of the problems with finding things that I can post on my blog is that there is often a big gap between me finishing a piece of work and it actually appearing where it is intended to appearing. Here is a good example, a window display I worked on last summer for Adam B, a printers near Tottenham Court Road in Central London. Here are some pictures I snapped on my phone when I happened upon it all printed and all put up, last week.

Here is a distant view:

This is what I saw when I walked a bit closer:

The image goes across two separate windows. Here is the left window:

Here is the right:

Now I'm walking away:

Im further away now:

They also used the picture on a window along the side:

Here is the original:

I also did a black & white option:

Here is a photoshop mock-up that I made to show how it would look printed and put up. Im happy at how close it matches the reality:

Here is another mock-up:

Im not sure how long it will be up for, I think it my be semi-permanent for now. If you want to go see it, you will find it here.

P.S. This is my 100th blog post! Hooray!!!!

EDIT: Here are some extra photos that the Swishly talented Mr Augustine Coll sent me (he's the chap in the photos). Point your eyes at them then point your eyes at his website too (here).

Yuki Wallpaper(here)=Yuki Wallpaper (now)

Hello there. I've not posted here since Christmas, and today its Easter which is very bad and naughty of me. So to make up for it I am doing a blog now. I have been very very busy, but its just not really stuff that Im allowed to be showing around at the moment. As soon as I can show anything I certainly will. Here is something kind of new I can post up.

The last blog I did was a Christmassy desktop wallpaper, and I dont have any Eastery desktop wallpapers, I do have some Yuki-ery wallpapers. Yuki is one of my super talented friends and I made a big picture for her birthday (see this blog post). I recently got round to sending a copy of the file and edited a couple of different desktops for her, and she said I could share them on my blog. I hope you like them. Also you should really check out Miss Nishimura's website to see her illustrations.

Cheerio :-)

Christmas Gift 2: festive wallpaper

Happy Christmas! Here is another virtual gift, a festive wallpaper for your desktop. The image is from the cover of the sadly unfinished Super Christmas 2009 (currently cover and back cover finished+a 50 page story with every page started but none finished, time has not been on my side, I need a super christmas miracle!). This image was also used by my agency on their christmas cards. Hope it helps your computer get festive.

Super Christmas 2007

Happy Christmas everyone!

As a kind of virtual present here is my Super Christmas 2007 book for you to read. I hope you enjoy it and it helps you feel festive! It is missing one page I'm afraid but it does effect it too much.

Merry Christmas you!

1 Month to go.........

Arena Illustration Agency

Although I might have mentioned it in passing in a previous blog post, I thought today would be a good day to specifically announce that I have joined Arena Illustration Agency. I chose today as their new website has launched with my page as part of it. have a look here. I have been working with them for a few months now and while Im not able to show you (yet) some of the things we've been working on, I will do as soon as I can. Hooray.

More Animations

I thought following the few animations In my last post, I'd post the rest of the animations I did at while studying Fine Art at De Montfort university.

Here are some animations from the second semester of my second year in 2002. The animations were projected on to larger sheets of fabriano paper alongside a series of similar pictures drawn on to fabriano paper to match. In these drawings and animations I was creating large detailed patterns using common elements from my doodles. This was the most successful of all my projects on my fine art degree and I'd still like to return to it at some point. Because the animations where supposed to work like the still drawings they were made of short loops so they could be constantly projected onto the sheets of paper.







The following animations are from the last semester of the third year. They are taken from a follow up project to the one mentioned above. I didn't get to project them onto paper and ended up just having a showreel playing on a tv alongside my other drawings that wern't really connected to the drawings. As a project it didn't work aswell but I still quite like the animations themselves.