Spare Parts: Simon Pegg Interview

Howdy folks

It's been a while, and I've not even finished off the last post...but wanted to quickly throw this up here, nice little interview with Mr. Simon Pegg, who voices one of the main characters in Spare Parts. It was very very cool getting to design the character of Con-Rad knowing it would be Pegg, and certainly influenced its design. The video shows off some cool footage of the game, and if you keep your eyes peeled you might even spot some of my concept art towards the end. The game should be out real soon, so I'll keep everyone posted on that also...

Might eventually post some new artwork up here soon! Maybe Santa will bring me a new sketchbook!!!

Ross Burt and the Lost Map of Influence!

So i spotted these kicking around the internet recently, and thought it sounded like a fun thing to put together - just didn't realise how long I would take picking which images to use, where to put them, how big they should be....but finally got there. There's a template u can find easily on google if u fancy putting one together yourself. The idea is something like to remind yourself and show others what has influenced your art over the years....now for me and I'm sure most of you, that's a heck of a lot of things, but I've tried to stick to artwork itself that has influenced my artwork, rather than get into toys , movies, and everything else - although some of my choices kinda involve elements of some of those areas. What I have tried to do is pick images that represent more than one thing - so not only an artist, but a topic or theme too.

Anyways, I'll put together a proper description to go with this shortly, talking about each image, but it's getting late, so for now u can just look at the nice pictures :)


ok...so here we go with a run down of the pics:

Cheeks - Panthro - Starting at the top left, one of my favourite current artists is Sean 'Cheeks' Galloway. Love his stylisation and simplification, and the fact he designed the recent Spiderman animation means I can now enjoy his work with my son which rocks! This image also covers Th-Th-Th-Thundercats, which was a massive influence when i was about 9, one of my favourite cartoons from my childhood that i occassionally watch again these days, just a fantasticly strong and varied set of characters, and a great mix of sci-fi and fantasy.

Jamie Hewlett - Gorillaz - next up is another of my current faves. First got into Hewletts work at Art College, i kinda missed the Tank girl comics first time round, but I still remember first spotting Gorillaz on the cover of Dazed magazine , and pouring over the Clint Eastwood video. There's a lot to love about Hewletts work, it's contemporary and unique, and the characters have real life and personality...plus i love that u can see it's hand drawn, he doesn't hide the pencil lines. Quality.


8 bit MegaMan - so this covers a bunch of stuff - first up, i love retro video games, the blocky stylings of the NES and the sweet old school arcade cabinet graphics look amazing and have always stuck with me. Plus when i was like 8 or 9 I used to keep a Megaman scrapbook, and draw all the Robot characters. GoodTimes.

Calvin and Hobbes - the genius that is Bill Waterson had to take a large chunk of this map. I first discovered these guys in my early teens, during our Saturday library trips. Finding comic books of anykind in there was hard enough - but this was amazing...these days I own all the books, and I find myself going back to them time and again, pouring over Bills amazing work. And this image best sums it up for me - whenever you read Calvin and Hobbes it feels like you're a kid again, in front of the fire on an autumn/winter day with the comics out. These guys were also the biggest influence behind my Captain Fuzzball comic strip. I only wish Bill would come back to them for one last volume..... Amazing.

Ralph McQuarrie - Rebo Band - oh man. StarWars. Well, Return of the Jedi. I'll go into the entire SW thing later with the main image, but this pic is up there for a few reasons - first up, McQuarrie was probably one of the first concept artists i was aware of, I got the Jedi portfolio for christmas when i was only 7 ish, and it was stunning. This is one of my favourite pieces from that folio - I loved Jedi mainly for the Jabbas Palace scene - so many wierd and wonderful creatures and characters that it blew my tiny mind. Mcquarries work captured moments from the saga in breathtaking style. Wow.

Bryan Lee O'Malley - Scott Pilgrim - I discovered this about 4 years ago when I moved down to London, and quickly caught up on the first 3 volumes. I loved the fact it was simplified with bold lines like an animation, in an almost Cartoon Network kind of way, but it wasn't a kids comic - and it's mix of smart dialogue and original action was a big influence when putting together my first issue of Astrofunk.

Chris Warner - Predator - This is a blast from the past. I remember sitting drawing around the age of maybe 13, and my Dad asked me what I wanted to be - and I said 'Comic Artist...like Chris Warner'. This guy was one of the first artist names I recognised, he was drawing a lot of my favourite comics at that age, when I was getting the british reprints of american stuff - so his Predator strip was one of the first, then Terminator, then his Aliens vs. Predator. I used to sit and just copy some of his covers or splash pages. I guess his work was a kind good balance between cartoony and realistic, and he was working on these cool movie tie-ins. Loved it.

Joe Madureira - Marvel Heroes

J.Scott Campbell - Mary Jane

Gendy Tartakovsky - Clone Wars

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Street Fighter - Third Strike

Mike Mignola - Aliens

STAR WARS - Drew Struzan


ooft..this is taking longer than i thought...to be continued !

In space....

...no one can hear you sketch!


So i saw some pics from the Aliens Blu-Ray a couple weeks back, which got me doodling Ripley...aaaah, sweet Sigourney.....anyways, then I started doodling an alien, then a bit of henriksen, and before I could say 'HIGH-FIRMATIVE ' it had turned into a pin-up thing of some kind. So I thought I should finally finish it up, and get onto some proper concepting nonsense, get back into some more drawing. But drawing Aliens whilst watching Aliens has been awesome fun, infact I am very tempted to do an alien sketch with dallas and the crew, but that should really wait....

backsoon!

Spare Parts Adventure Trailer

New Trailer Alert! This one is all about gameplay, showing off lots of cool new stuff, so don't sit around reading this nonsense from me - HIT THE JUMP BELOW!

SPARE PARTS ADVENTURE TRAILER

Back Soon with a Bishop, a Queen, and a Newt!
Adios!

Spare Parts Website

Hey folks

Quick update with some news on Spare Parts, the most awesome robot adventure game xbox live has never seen but will soon! The website has just gone live, so hit the jump below to check it out - it's got all the latest news, screenshots and trailers, new bios and pics, cool wallpapers.... and if you scour the site u can unlock cheeky concept sketches, so what are u waiting for ? get over there!

WWW.SPAREPARTS.EA.COM

March of Dimes Auction Links

hey folks

So the cards i posted below have gone up on ebay.....remember this isn't you giving money to an old git like me, all goes to a great cause helping new born babies. So if u fancy any of them , here's all the links u need below....spread the word!

Harry Potter

Voldemort

Slave Leia

Jabba

Gamorrean Guard


Cheers to all bidders!!

Return of the Sketch Cards

Back again with some pics of the sketch cards I've been doing this week...

These cards are for 5finity, and will be on sale this weekend on ebay ( links coming soon), with all proceeds going to charity March of Dimes, dedicated to baby health - click on the link for more info

Anyways, I was just gonna draw Star Wars, but the temptation to draw Voldemort was too much, and I didn't want him to be all alone, so Harry got thrown in there too. I'm pretty excited about Deathly Hallows, so it was a good excuse to watch the trailer again. ...and again :)

The Jedi scene was a lot of fun, and includes some of my favourite characters - I always loved Jabbas Palace, as a kid it was this amazing place filled with fantastic characters and creatures, just awesome. This is 3 cards that join together, so if someone wants the set they gotta cough up the moolah!

So this was a lot of fun, hopefully someone picks them up and helps out a good cause whilst getting some original art in the process. Or check out other cool sketch card art at 5finity

mE-bay!

howdy .....so yeah, still no new artwork. man i suck.

BUT

couple of cool things....first up, I'm currently right now at this very moment of the space time continue...um...thing ....drawing some new sketch cards, similar to the pulp girl cards i was doing a few months ago. The best thing about these cards? well, there's 2 best things...

1 - you can buy them and the money goes to Charity

2 - because it's for Charity I can draw what i want. so they are STAR WARS sketch cards!

So i am trying to finish them off right now and all going well they should be on ebay this weekend in charity auctions. I'll keep the blog posted with any links...

and speaking of Ebay....


I was just browsing the intergalacticworldwideweb and happened across some Pulp girl cards on the auction site we all know too well.....there's about 137 Pulp Girl cards up there, but if for some reason you wanna avoid the others and buy one of mine, then there are a couple of sellers with my cards for sale.....here are the links!

Stitches Sketch Card

Dust Bunny Sketch Card

Honey Brown Sketch Card

So I'll be back soon with hopefully..one day...when I ain't burning thru paper at EA...some actual NEW drawings.

Adios!

SR Digital

Howdy kids

Thanks to a cool team up with Jason Martin over at Super Real Graphics, you can now get Astrofunk digitally, online, right here on your computer! yupyupyup, how cool is that! You can buy a pdf for a mere 99cents! bargain! There's also some cool other comic strips up there for sale, and more coming soon, so hit the link below for the good stuff


http://superrealdigital.blogspot.com/p/astro-funk.html

Mega busy right now, but got some cool stuff ont he horizon, so hopefully back real soon!

Bafta Young Game Designers

Howdy folks....me again. Thought it was about time I put a new post up here, and although I don't have any new artwork yet, this recent video gives me a reason to at least post something, rather than just sit here and listen to the Inception soundtrack again ( great movie, great score ).


So a month or two ago I was asked by ea to record a video for the Bafta Young Game Designers awards. They run a competition to get kids involved with making video games, and were crazy enough to ask me about my day to day job as a concept artist. So if the thought of me rambling on about this interests you then check out the link below. Or maybe you just want a look at my messy desk and robot sketches :)

Bafta Young Game Designers

Anyways, was nerve racking but good fun, although I do put on my best teacher voice. You'll never hear me speak that clearly in real life ! Back soon with some actual artwork....once i get this Spare Parts game finished that is!

Adios!

JetSetRadio is 10

Finally got my pin-up done for the tenth anniversary of Jet Set Radio, and just in time too.
Didn't get nearly as much time on this as i would have liked, was hoping to incorporate rival gangs and a few more elements, spend a little longer on it in general, but I'm quite pleased with it, and it was certainly great fun drawing all the GGs.....check out the other anniversary pics at the JSR10 blog

www.jetsetradio10.blogspot.com

SPARE PARTS TRAILER

Check out the brand new first ever footage of my new game Spare Parts.....I was only involved with this at the Storyboard stage, but the guys have produced a fantastic trailer with some great animation and interplay between the two robots, combined with some cool gameplay footage....

SPARE PARTS TRAILER HD

Back soon with my Jet Set Radio 10th anniversary pin-up! Seeya laters!

Spare Parts

Robots Robots Robots!

Just a quick post to highlight my newly announced game from EA Brightlight. I'm lead concept artist on SPARE PARTS, and we've just released the first screenshots and description of the game..... I picked the Eurogamer site to show off the link, as i love their description 'Hurrah! A videogame that sounds like a videogame!' :)
Hit the link below to read more about the game.

Spare Parts @ Eurogamer



Hope you enjoy checking it out, when there's more news released then this will be the place to check it out!

Goonies!

What? It was the 25th anniversary of 'Goonies' yesterday? ( one of the most awesome kids adventure movie ever ) Dang - well to celebrate, I thought I'd do a quick sketch on my lunch break - so this took about 45 mins to rough and finish, then spent half an hour in photoshop just tweaking and stuff. Great fun.

GOONIES NEVER SAY DIE!

Time to get back to listening to the score.....aaah, Fratelli chase!

Sketching Sketch Cards....

Howdy

Recently I got lucky enough to be invited to work on some original Sketch Cards for the 'Pulp Girls' line over at SuperRealGraphics. Basically a 'sketch card' is an original piece of artwork that if you're really lucky, like the luckiest guy ever, having a lucky day, drinking luck potion in the land of luck - then u might get one of these badboys :) - So it's another challenge for me in that there's no Edit-Undo or Photoshop to clean up mistakes - much like last weekend at the convention, it pushes u back to basics, and is great fun at polishing your colouring in skills :) As you can see, my desk was covered in Markers, FineLiners, Posca Paint pens, anything i could find....I had spent a good few hours just roughing out poses and ideas, and I was a lot more careful and patient than when working on a piece which i am gonna take to into photoshop, but really enjoyed drawing all 12 cards - can't reveal any of them yet, but they're coming out in July , so I'll get them on the blog soon-ish. Anyways, I always like seeing pics of where artists work, so thought I'd stick some photos of my mess up here!


Check out Pulp Girls here - http://pulpgirlsblog.blogspot.com/

Convention time....

Howdy....ok, so it might be a little longer than i planned since my last post, but things have gotten just a little bit busy at work. I did however find time to get my butt down to the awesome Movie Comic & Media Expo in London this weekend. I've only done this con once before, when I launched issue 1 of astrofunk - since then it's changed a little , but obviously for the better, as it was chockablock full of funky anime costumes and comic fans - apparently taking a record attendance of 41,000! wowzas. Anyways, I got to meet and catch up with some mega cool people, sell some comics, practice my sketching skills with a couple of comissions like Wolverine above, and generally have an awesome time. Thanks to everyone who dropped by and picked up the comic, hope you're enjoying it. Hopefully I won't leave it as long before returning to this con next time!

Dr.Sketchy

I was lucky enough to get out to a Dr.Sketchy night on Sunday, where upon I sat in the pub, pint in one hand, sketchpad in the other, and tried to draw whilst admiring the beautiful models in burlesque. Which was nice.

Poses sranged from 1 and 2 mins, to 10 mins max, or there might have been one 15. Anyways, had a great time, really good night, would recommend it, and will probably try and catch them in London in the near future. Oh - the volcanoes, voting cards and....platipus - they were crazy challenges set by the host. There weren't actually any Platupi in lingerie at the event. Platupi? Platupusses? Platu-pie? mmmm :)

ANTLERED BEAST

Friday! Woo! But before I hit the pub, I've just got time to post this....it's the colour version of the first of my new Uncanny Sketchmen challenges, which u can check out from the links on the right....that involved sticking to black n white, but i wanted to push this thing into the land of colour, so here we go. He's inspired by a few diferent things, vultures, antlers, lizards, and just my wierd head. Right - pub time, Have a good one!

YO

Howdy

Been trying to draw alot more recently , so this guy is basically just one of many sketches i've been working through to the colour stage, with about 2 to 3 more in photoshop at some stage or another. I was starting to work towards drawing a Tokyo gang, but this guy is more just your average street punter. Hopefully I'll get on to the actual gang soon, but up next under this theme is probably the detective chasing them. Anyways, this guy was fun, played around with the opacity of the pencil layer alot, and ended up barely using it, which was a nice change.

In other news - The Uncanny Sketchmen have returned!
We finally got our butts in gear and started setting drawing challenges again, so you can check out the results so far at the link below.....I'm planning on taking my creature design through the colour process for this blog. Hopefully we can keep up a good momentum on sketchmen and post 3 or 4 new things a month!

THE UNCANNY SKETCHMEN RETURN!

Stay frosty!

Jet Set Raaaaadio

Howdy!

Just a quick shout out about a new blog I just launced - if you're a fan of the awesome video game series that is Jet Set Radio, then jump over to this link now...

JetSetRadio10

It's the tenth anniversary of the original Dreamcast JSR, a game which zapped me right between the eyes when it first came out, and it's following sequel was my main reason for buying an xbox years later....

Anyways, the idea of the blog is to showcase loads of new artwork by all the massive JSR fans out there, in time for the anniversary this June.....so if you fancy putting something together then drop me a comment and I'll add ya to the list!

I'm gonna get to work on my poster shortly, and am looking forwards to trying to draw all of the main cast in one image, but for now here's my Gum flavoured teaser....

UNTOUCHABLE

What's the matter? ...can't ya talk with a gun in yer mouth? '

..eheheheh, this is just a quick sketch i did last night before dozing off to sleep....I really wanna get drawing a lot more, so hopefully i can have at least one blog post a week from now on...looking back over the last year i didn't produce nearly enough new artwork !

Anyways, The Untouchables is one of my favourite movies, and I've never drawn connery before, so i sketched this out in about 20 mins. Just Pencil n Paper, there's nuthin like it!

..oh, and Ennio Morricone helping me out in the background :)

'WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED....TO DO!!'

Done Dee

D-Conned! I've almost recovered from my awesome weekend in Scotland....D-Con was fantastic, I got to meet lots of cool peeps, had my mind blown by some crazy costumes, got chatted up by a Tie fighter pilot, and sold a good couple of comics, so thanks very much to everyone who dropped by the stall, much appreciated. If you picked up the comic then lemme know whatchya think with a quick comment, you never know, you might just make issue 3 even better than 2!
I picked up a few emails and deviant links, so it'll take me a week or so to get around to replying to everyone, but thanks for the links and I look forward to checkin' out yer stuff.

I also got the chance to do my first ever Astrofunk flavoured interview, and hopefully I'll have a link up here soon to the podcast.

Oh and well done to Branstar who walked off with the street fighter tournament again...comiserations that the prize was yet again another piece of my artwork ;)

Last of all - here's the poster i put together exclusively for D-Con...if you look closely you can just spot the Law hill in the distance, i had alot of fun doing this one, thanks to everyone who picked one up...hope to see you all again next year, which I've no doubt will be even bigger and better!

Dundee Calling...

D-CON is almost upon us, so I'm packing up the funk and jumping on a train to Scotland this weekend. Hope to see loads of you there, I'll have both issues of Astrofunk for sale, along with badge packs and a couple of posters, one of which is a brand new image I created exclusively for D-Con, here's a sneak peek....





So come along, grab some comics, play some streetfighter, hang out with some Stormtroopers...just a regular weekend in dundee! kicks off around 2, check out details here

D-D-D-D-COOOOOOOOOOOON


pLUS - you can now pick up a copy of Astrofunk in London at Orbital Comics, just round the corner from Leicester Square.

RETURN OF THE FUNK!

'I had it Marcus...I had it in my hand.... ' And it's in my hands at last! Astrofunk 2 has landed, and it's great to finally be able to read through it as comics were meant to be seen, in your hands, under your nose, IN YOUR FACE! :) I'm currently updating the astrofunk website, but if you're desperate for a copy then you can drop me an email and order by paypal.....

And if you missed out on issue 1, you can get a tastey combo of both issues for just £5.00! Bargain :)

Buy Astrofunk Astrofunk Issue 2 £2.99 Astrofunk Issue 1 £2.95 Astrofunk Issues 1+2 £5.00

Anyways, if you pick up a copy then be sure to drop by and lemme know whatchya thought of it.....it might inspire issue 3!

AF2 will be on sale at D-CON in a couple of weeks time, hopefully along with a new exclusive D-con styled astrofunk poster which I'm working on at the moment, preview coming soon..... Good times ahoy! see ya soon!

Funk x 2

And ...it's.....done!! I finally pulled my finger out, knuckled down, stared at my laptop every night, denied myself xbox, sat down and actually finished Astrofunk 2! It's been...well....over a year and a half in the making, but it's now at the printers, and all going well, should be in my hands in a month, and on sale at D-Con!

Soooo, to wet your appetite, as a tastey little starter, here's a look at the cover and first 3 pages...the cover was obviously an important image...looking back at issue 1, I'm really not that happy with the cover, so my goal with this one was to make it more dynamic, put more personality in the main figure, better expression, and just something that jumps out at ya!

The first 3 pages show a diferent view of the Astrofunk world and characters, exploring their lives on earth before they ventured out in to the ever expanding universe....there were some tough challenges for me in these first pages, but it was great fun to draw diferent situations and locations.

Anyway, check it out and lemme know yer thoughts, and if u want to pick up a copy of issue 2 in a months time then just gimme a shout!

Back soon!