Dublin based illustrator and IGI member Brian Coldrick is next up on The Comic Cast’s exhaustive (but never exhausting) trek through the world of Irish comics and illustration. Go download the podcast here.
For more on the Irish comics and illustration ‘scene’ you can do worse than listening to previous interviews with Tomm Moore (director of Oscar nominated The Secret Of Kells), Nick Roche (artist on Transformers comic) and Gerry Hunt (creator of historical Graphic Novel – Blood Upon The Rose) and and many more besides.

Only kidding, recently Kevin McSherry was was invited to give a talk about his work to illustration and animation students at Ballyfermot College. He has put a post up on his blog outlining his presentation and he doesn’t hold back on his views of the current working environment for illustrators and is full of advice for the next generation. A must read…

Never work for free. If there’s no financial gain, then negotiate some other reward, whether it’s some advertising, PR or other contra-deal that suits you. There’s often something that could be of value but it has to be negotiated from a position of your daily rate. People don’t respect work that’s given for free and many have a tendency to abuse artists who fall for this sort of bolloxology. If some bullying twit [who happens to be paid regularly by the way] suggests that being published in their magazine/newspaper/advert will be a ‘great shop window for you’ or ‘a great portfolio piece’, or an ‘in’, ask them to quantify the greatness exactly in terms of cash. If there’s no benefit at all; walk away.

For the full post go here.

I’m blatantly cheating again this week. The Guardian featured Chris Wormell’s work yesterday and I, by coincidence, read his book One Smart Fish last week. That is nearly the sum total of what I know about Chris’ work – I loved the premise (fish finding their feet) and the amazing colour, crowds and landscapes in One Smart Fish.

The Guardian, again this week, makes for an excellent introduction:

The pastel drawings are immensely pleasing, but the real charm lies in the way that the protagonists, like all small children, are oblivious to the chaos they cause. – Lyn Gardner talking about Off to the Fair.

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I’m no expert and open to any/all recommendations – I’d love to find books that I’ve never come across – so if you have a suggestion, send it on.

Steven Heller takes an animated look through the evolution of Olympics pictogram systems, although he’s a bit harsh on poor Quatchi the sasquatch. CR Blog previously has a detailed look at the 2012 London system. Here’s a more detailed archive of previous pictogram sytems.