I did this piece for Friends With Benefits, a print-making project put together by Erin Wallace. Seven artists, one of them being me, created a piece based around the theme of ‘Piles’ (I chose to interpret that as the ‘items on top of one another’ kind of piles and not the other one).

You can buy the set here and part of the proceeds go to MAP International.

You can now play The End, a free web-based game which is illustrated by yours truly. It was commissioned by Channel 4 Education and produced by Preloaded.

Here’s what it’s all about, from the press release:

It is a game of self-discovery for 14-19 year olds which integrates strategy, puzzles and philosophical questions into a world which explores a range of commonly (or less commonly) held views about death, belief and science.

The game takes the player on a metaphysical journey, recording their interactions in the world to reveal their attitudes towards mortality. These views are presented alongside their friends and some of the most important thinkers of our time, such as Gandhi, Descartes and Einstein.

Set across three worlds – Mind, Body and Spirit – the player must use a unique shadow ‘n’ light mechanic to solve physics-based puzzles, answer questions and battle the world’s Guardians. The ultimate prizes are the Death Objects, ranging from a memorial diamond to a human heart, which deepen a player’s contextual knowledge of death and help them progress through the game.

I created nearly all the artwork you see in the game (with the exception of the graphic design and death cards elements). It was a lot of work, but it was the best kind of work and it’s so exciting to see it all brought together and to be able to play it now. Working with the Preloaded crew is one of the best experiences of my career so far, so much work went into making this and they’ve done an amazing job in my opinion. Here’s some screenshots and bits.

The character creator in which you can attempt to make yourself from bits that I drew. You’ll more likely just make some crazy looking mess of a guy.

Examples of some of my level elements.

These are some of the ‘famous thinkers’ I illustrated. Top row: Sigmund Freud, Amelia Earhart, William Wordsworth and Ayn Rand. Bottom row: Empress Dowager Cixi, George Orwell, Rosa Parks and Nostradamus.

A selection of the objects you collect in the game from defeating the guardians. Each one is linked to a particular thinker or philosophy.

In-game artwork for the guardians themselves, in chilled mode and battle mode. These were easily the most fun bits to do. Below is an example of how they look in the game.

Check out the Preloaded flickr where there are loads more bits that I produced for game. Or just play the game and see it all there.

Illustration for Wired magazine. It accompanies a short ‘How-To’ piece concerning the biochemistry which goes into the cooking of the perfect poached egg, with tips from a molecular biologist.

My version of Kickass Annie, the logo/mascot for Koyama Press which is responsible for publishing work by some of the best cartoonists around right now, such as Steve Wolfhard, Dustin Harbin, Chris Eliopoulos and heir apparent to the indie comics throne, Michael DeForge.

This is my contribution to an ongoing project where various cartoonists are doing their own versions of said mascot.

I got to design a t shirt for my favourite band recently, which I was more than a little bit chuffed about. I think you can only buy them on tour at the moment but I imagine they’ll eventually appear online. If you’re thinking ‘what’s with the lion?’ then may I direct you here.

=w=

Gosh Comics, one of the best comic shops in the world, is closing it’s doors and opening them elsewhere.

I was lucky enough to get to design this poster/flyer for them to advertise the move! It’s sad that it’s moving, I really liked its location between the British Museum and The Cartoon Museum and I will miss its spiral staircase. But it’s exciting that an actual good comic shop (one that isn’t a sci fi toy shop by another name) needs to move to bigger premises.

The new Gosh will open at No. 1 Berwick Street, Soho on Saturday 6th August.

These are a set of illustrations produced for the live touring of Radiolab’s ‘Desperately Seeking Symmetry’ show. I was kindly enlisted by the brilliant Jez Burrows, who art directed the project. Other artists involved included Damien Corell, Heads of State and a couple of my favourites, Meg Hunt and Jason Munn, so I thought I was pretty cool getting to join in. The images were apparently projected during the corresponding part of the show (it’d be cool if anyone has or knows of any photographic evidence of this!) These are slightly edited from the original versions, as the time I had to actually do them was crazily short, which is why they’re as boiled down as can be.

Jez did a little blog post about the project here and you can listen to the podcast of the show here.

My job was to illustrate the Aristophanes speech of Plato’s Symposium. The speech is a crazy, but charming explanation as to why people in love say they feel ‘whole’. There were originally three types of people, each with two heads, two sets of limbs and two sets of genitals (men-men, women-women and men-women.) Zeus, annoyed about something or other and presumably overreacting, decided to chop them all in half and since then we’ve spent our lives wandering around trying to find our original other half, thus explaining our longing for a partner and our inclinations towards homosexual or heterosexual love.

That’s the jist of it anyway. You can read a way better summary of it here or even better you can watch this great animated version of the story from the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

This is the spread I did for Nobrow 5.  The brief was to create a repeating pattern that features a number of my favourite things, using 4 spot colours and an extra later of gold ink. Mine is kind of a combination of references to actual favourite things and things I just like to draw (like rocks). If you want to use this as a tiling wallpaper or something, you can get the unrepeated tile here.

Unfortunately my red and yellow layers got muddled up in printing and this is how it looks in the book. It’s upsetting because Weedle’s nose isn’t red. You can buy Nobrow 5 here.

I created this poster for Nobrow’s trip to the Angoulême International Comics Festival. It was produced as a two colour screen print and sold at the event. See if you can spot all the Nobrow cameos. You may even be able to spot a certain future-seeing horse.