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.

Thomas Flintham vs Pixar

I recently had the pleasure of watching the new pixar film 'Up' and recomend it highly. It is swish, especially the first 15 minutes which have some great storytelling to go with the great story. 'Up's story of a flying house reminded me of a project I did way back in the second year of my BA Fine Art studies at De Montfort University in 2002 called 'The Flying house'. Below you can see both the series of drawings I did and my first brief experimentation with animation aswell.



click the area below to browse all the images full screen.




I can't really claim that pixar stole my idea as my version itself was not the most original idea ever, being inspired by books such as 'The House That Sailed Away' by Pat Hutchins, and 'Laputa Castle in the Sky' by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Also despite the fact that I did upload all the images onto a website in 2002 I don't think pixar would have seen them.

A couple of semesters after I did the 'The Flying house' project I created my first ever comic called 'Momo and the Little Bird'. Soon after I finished at the beginning of 2003 I started to think of ideas for another comic. One of the main ideas I liked was called 'ROBO' about a robot made by a scientist that outlives not only his creator but all of mankind aswell. So a story about a robot left all alone on earth carrying on its work all alone.......which is just like Wall-e, those pixar scoundrels!

Although apart from this detail my story was going to be quite different, but I was still abit annoyed by the similarities as I still had the idea in mind when Wall-e came out. I never got further than the cover for 'ROBO' the comic, I instead decided to animate it instead. I planned to animate the whole story to the song 'Eric the Gardener' by the Divine Comedy, matching the progression of the story to the changes in the music. I had the whole thing planned out but never got further than a very small section at the beginning showing ROBO being built. I turned the small section I did do into a small looping animation of a series of ROBOs being produced, using a sample of 'Eric the Gardener' within it. I also did an a brief follow up, another short looping animation showing lots of ROBOs called 'ROBO Parade'. You can see them both below:





Although I still like the idea I had for my ROBO story, following Wall-e I'm not sure if I'd ever do it the way I intended, but I might incorporate it into another story. Those darned Pixar people, always 120 steps ahead......

The Art Book 2010 Cover

The above image is a rough sketch/layout/doodle for an image I entered into a competition this summer, to design the cover for the 2010 edition of The Art Book. The Art Book is an annual illustration showcase produced and compiled by a number of agencies featuring a selection of the Illustrators they represent, which is then sent to a range of art directors and clients. You can look at the previous editions online at www.theartbook.com. (Just as a note the competition and the opportunity to have a page in the book is only open to illustrators represented by the agencies involved)

Im not sure if you can tell from this stage that the main part of the cover features a maze like what I did in 'The Amazing Giants Castle'. It even features the same boy and his dog. I appraoched this as a kind of re-interpretation/follow-up but at a more widely useful size.
From the basic sketch I expanded it to included the spine and the back cover too. See below:


To enter the competition you could enter an unfinished design, which due to a lack of time is exactly what I did. I sent the above sketch to give an idea of how the front and back cover would work. I also sent the image below, which is a more worked up version of the front cover, specifically the maze itself:


I was happy with the design at this stage, but I wasn't happy that I hadn't had time to finish it before sending it off, which made me doubtful of my chances. I was surprised however to find that my entry had gone through to the second stage and was one of the final six based on the voting to that point. All the judges then voted on the remaining six to choose the cover and although I didn't win in the end I did get runner up, which I was very happy with.

I was still happy with the design and decided to finish it so that I could use it on my page in the finished book. Below is the finished version:


Because the image was no longer going to have the back cover part, I decided to move the monster in the fog behind the island, as he was one of my favourite parts of the original design, and i wanted to keep him in. I also zoomed out a bit to both make room for the monster and to show abit more of the island and the sea. It was tricky to get right but I'm happy with the end result.

Below is a weird version that happened when I tried to upload a CMYK formated version for this blog post. I quite like it though!:

Postcard 1

I've not been good at updating my blog for a while and so I've got a few things to catch up with. Here are the images for my very first promotional postcard that had made up in time for my MA Final Show this July. Below is the main picture from the front and is the first ever non-Christmas Greg:


Next is the first ever Ghost Boots strip. Miss Ghost boots has a cameo in The amazing Giants maze (see here and here and here) and is a character I'd like to do more with. I drafted her in here for advertising duties. The postcards were colour on the front and the back is Black and White (and grey). See below:


Although I was happy for Ghost Boots to be Black and white I also did a colour version which most likely will not be used ever. Here it is:


I hope to do more postcards in the future they're fun to make. I hope to start posting more often but some of the things I have done can be posted here for various reasons. At least not yet.......

Happy Belated Birthday Yuki!

Here is a picture I have made as a birthday present for my very talented friend Yuki Nishimura (see her work at www.yukinishimura.com). What started off as a simple drawing to a simple poem that I wrote (inspired by her own work illustrating nonsense poems) kept growing and growing, and getting bigger and bigger until many months had passed with the picture still being unfinished. In the end I decided that I had to draw a line somewhere and I have declared it finished at last. Although I would still like to add more......

Happy Belated Birthday Yuki :-D

Click the above image or here to see a zoomable version. (sometimes you might need to click refresh to get it to load properly)

to see the swish picture Yuki made me for my birthday go here.

The Amazing Giant's Castle

The final show for my Illustration MA is finished now, all the work has been taken down and all assesments are over. So I thought its about time I put up my the main piece I made for the show, see it above. It is the piece I have been showing bits of in my "sneaky peak" posts over the past couple of months.

I printed it at 200cm by 70cm, its abig pic! you cant really see the detail in the picture above but I have put a zoomable version up on my website see here.

So thats that, the MA is over. I got my results through and I've somehow manged to pass with distinction which I am super happy with. As well as being happy with that, Im sad its over and scared senseless about whats coming next. I set this blog up as I was required to as part of the course, but I have enjoyed it and found it helpful so I plan to keep going with it.

Whoop.

MA final show opening tomorrow!

Tomorrow night is the opening night of the MA final show at the Camberwell College of Art, and as a graduating student my work is there amongst all the other swish and talented people exhibiting. Check this site for information on the illustration part of the show:

camberwellmaillustration.blogspot.com

The work I am showing has been show in parts in numerous previous posts look at may and junes blog posts its the sneaky peak ones. I will show it on here after the show, thought id save it for the show though.

The show starts tomorrow (Tuesday) and runs until Sunday (Sunday)

As well as my work I will be selling the first copies of my new book "Super Japanese: Text Book 1" and also my first ever postcard will be available free of charge, gotta collect em all? start with the first!

Hope you can come to our show, we have put alot of work into it so we hope you enjoy it. If you come. Which I hope you do.

You should.

"Super Japanese: Text Book 1" Launch Party news

Tomorrow night is the launch party of my brand new book "Super Japanese: Text Book 1". The party is at the Camberwell College of Art, between 6-9 and is accompanied by some kind of an exhibition of various peoples work including my own. See here for details:

click here

There will be 15 copies up for grabs, price undecided as I'm trying to make it as cheap as possible while also covering costs, and it cost more to make each one than I thought it would. Its my first ever full colour book. I hope to make more when I can afford to email me if your interested at tommyflintham*AT*hotmail*DOT*com

Also new and tweeked portfolio is now up on my website. check it out:

www.thomasflintham.com

Cheerio.

Happy Birthday Me!

Normally I only use this blog to show my work but I thought I'd make an exception for this super swish picture that my super talented friend Yuki made me for my birthday. Its me and one of my bunny friends dressed up as the two most bestest characters from one of my most favouritest tee-vee programs One Piece. I'm dressed as Monkey D. Luffy, who in turn is dressed as me, and My bunny friend is dressed as reindeer/man/pirate Tony Tony Chopper. Needless to say the picture is amazing and I feel lucky to have such a present. To see more amazing pictures by Yuki head over to yukinishimura.com. Thank you Miss Yuki!


Also here is the aMAZEing card the talented young mister Paul Shinn drew for me. Point your faces here for his blog: lookwhatidrawed.blogspot.com. Thank you Mister Paul!

Also thank you everyone for a lovelly day in the midst of the season of stress.

Here is a sample of the great one piece, although its only when you get stuck into the story that you see how truly great it is:

The same and but different

While trying to layout my portfolio 2 images fell together that caught my eye. The one on the right was made in march 2008 the one on the left was made January 2009. I don't know what i think when I see them together, but there is something there in the differences and the similarities. I was not thinking about the older one when making the newer one, but they are related.

p.s. laying out a portfolio is not an easy thing. i wish i had fewer a4 shaped things,and more landscape shaped things.

Last Sneaky Peak

For the past 5 weeks I've been working on something for the final show for my MA illustration degree. Ive been posting some sneaky peaks up on the blog. Here is the very last sneaky peak of it, im not going to show the full thing until after the show. This little guy was the last thing i did for it. If you do come to the show see if you can spot him. End of sneaky peaking.

A day moon at Castle Hill

Fly! You!

Is he great?

Colour clash at castle hill

a sneak and a peek but cant reach

this guy and can you see that guy too? a sneak peek.

Sneaky Peeking Foxes

Sneak peek at finished Miss Ghost Boots

Those Ghost Boots sure are sneaky, can you peek at them?

twit-twoo (sneak-peek)

sneakers peekers

Sneaking peeking pals

sneak and peek and chase

sneak, zoom, peek, zoom, look....

Even more sneaky peeking

Is that Mister Sneakerson Peekerson? No it isn't.

Sneaks and peeks

More Sneaky-peeking

Freddie and the Fairy

Here are the images I submitted for Waterstones 'Picture This' competition, the winner of which will get to illustrate 'Freddie and the Fairy' the new children's book by Julia Donaldson, writer of 'The Gruffalo'. For the first stage of the competition I needed to do a full 2 page spread (see above), and character sketches of Freddie, Bessie Bell the Fairy, the Fairy Queen and some of the animals that turn up in the story (see below). This was the picture that I showed a sneaky sample of a couple of posts ago.





The deadline was yesterday and after getting home from work sunday night I had to work through most the night to get it done in time to get it printed and travel to brentford to hand it in. I'm quite happy with the results. On Saturday 6th of June they will announce in The Telegraph the 6 illustrators that go onto the final stage to see who wins. It would be swish if I was one of them. Yup.

Another Sneaky-peek

Here is a picture of a tiny bit of a much bigger picture I'm working on. At the minute I'm working on a number of things that I don't really want to show too much of until they are finished, but I still want to be posting stuff, hence why this blog post and the last have been abit mysterious. Perhaps for the next 7 weeks as I get close to the end of my course this blog will mainly be one big tease. Who knows. I don't. To be honest I've got enough to be worrying about with out thinking too much about this kind of stuff. Its probably best to just see how things pan out I guess.

To sumarise: here is a little bird in a tree.

pixelation fun

Ive not posted anything on here for a bit so I thought I'd show a sneaky sample of something I'm working on. Ive zoomed into a low res version of it an I quite like how it looks when its all pixelated. Click the pic to see it big in all its pixelated shinyness. Bye.

Worse Things That Happen at Sea Again

The picture above was the very first picture I popped up on my blog. It was commissioned and drawn alongside "The Giant", (which I've recently redrawn, see my last two posts), by the lovely and swish Daydream Network (see here) for an exhibition of art in response to the credit crunch. Both were drawn on large boards with edding pens. The originals are no longer in my possession, and as I have no good photos of them I decided it would be worth redrawing them for portfolio purposes and because they were both images that I was very happy with. Ive already posted 2 different versions of "The Giant", and here are my recreations of "Worse Things Happen at Sea":

Here is the original uncoloured dip pen and ink drawing. Ive stuck fairly close to the original, the main differences being a change to a new character away from the originals Mr Bankerman, and an inclusion of rain to the stormy clouds. The original was about the size of a sheet of A1 paper, this remake was drawn at A4 size.


Here is the final coloured version. I tried to keep the colours fairly muted and simple as i didnt wanted to make the colour fight with all the busy pen marks. I'm happy with it, and feel ive managed to recapture everything that I was happy with in the original with a few extra tweaks to help it work. Ive been working on the newer, smaller piece on and off for a few days, overal it took more time than the original which I did in an afternoon and an evening.

Splashes and rain? Oh no! I hate being wet! A monster? yes.

Also while I'm talking about the Daydream Network, the new Daydream Network book, DD06, features one of my pictures alongside the work of many others artists and writers. You should consider checking it out. Its not up on the website to order yet but I'm sure it will be soon.