Ah, so that’s what a professional illustrator looks like! While this early Adobe promo for illustrator is a funny bit of nerdy nostalgia, it must have been pretty shocking for all those illustrators that worked in-house in design agencies back in the day, soon to be given the elbow. “Now anyone can create high quality graphics and illustration”. Indeed.
This years 35th International Comics Festival was held yet again in the beautiful French town of Angouleme (a place of pilgrimage for all discerning comics fans).
The winners have been announced, and as usual the talent and diversity is incredible.
This years Grand Prix went to French cartooning duo DUPUY & BERBERIAN, a partnership that spans two decades. For all those not fluent in French, Drawn & Quarterly have a few of their books translated into English.
A friend of mine has developed an excellent creativity tool called Rory’s Story Cubes. Rory’s Story Cubes is a dice game/tool that helps people of all ages to develop their imagination and creativity through improvisational storytelling. It is comprised of set of 9 6-sided dice with a total of 54 unique images/symbols.
I asked some of my talented and generous illustrator friends to test them out to see how/if they can be useful tool. Brian Gallagher was one such illustrator. He has also agreed to show us the process he used to create the above image.
Over to you Brian… (more…)
Illustrator Donough O’Malley has launched his new website, www.pencilrobot.net. Donough is from the North East of Ireland. He completed a degree in Illustration at the University of the West of England, Bristol in 2000 and afterwards went on to do an M.A. in Illustration at the University of Brighton. Check out some wonderful work in the children’s book section.
If you want to see this great idea for an exhibition you better get on a plane to Tokyo pronto as it closes soon! Fortunately PingMag has stopped by for us. The exhibition features work by over 100 different artists and is the brainchild of illustrator Mao Yamaguchi.
All hail the humble and underappreciated Bic pen! Here’s a DesignBoom post on the large scale Bic pen art of Juan Francisco Casa. Their article ‘reinventing the bic pen‘ is worth a scan too.
The European Design Awards 2008 is open for submissions. There are two illustration categories: corporate illustration and book/editorial illustration. Deadline for submissions is February 15th.
From the New Yorker; “Eustace Tilley appeared on our first cover, in 1925, and has returned for nearly every anniversary issue since. Create your own version of The New Yorker’s iconic dandy for a chance to be featured on newyorker.com in celebration of our 83rd anniversary next month.”
Bit late on this contest, deadline 24 January, but you can see all the entries so far on Flickr.
Laura De Burca recently talked to SCAMP about her latest children’s book, Puisín.
Puisín is a storybook for kids aged 6+. It is based on the pet cat who belonged to Sadb, the author. He sadly died on Christmas Eve (he was a fluffy 17 years old). I worked on the illustrations for maybe two years in stints. Between us both, work and other projects slowed the process.
(more…)
BBC Children’s TV programme Na Dódaí has been nominated for Best Educational Programme in the Celtic Film Festival. The programme, which is nominated in the Education Category, is in Irish and produced by Imagine Media and BBC Northern Ireland, featuring storybook Illustrations by Annie West. The Awards Ceremony takes place in Galway in April.
Well done Annie
