Man of Steel

When I'm excited for something, it usually manifests itself into artwork of some sort, and this is no exception. So there could be more festive things to put up a week before Christmas, but to coincide with the new trailer that is doing the rounds for the new Superman film, I designed a teaser poster of sorts. I wanted to keep it simple since the film is still 6 months away, and perhaps do a more dynamic one closer to release. And it doesn't get much more simple and iconic then the shirt rip people!

More Christmas goodness over at our newly started Foss blog! Charlie has her designs up there, aaaand we have the Etsy shop up and running, alongside the BigCartel store. The shops and cards were a way for us to work together on a project, and produce some work to get out there in time for Christmas, so I'm pretty happy with how its turned out. With the cards out of the way, the next challenge will be seeing what we can collaborate on, post-Christmas season!

It's Chriistmaaaaaasss!

Well, nearly. Sort of. For me it's felt like Christmas for ages as I've been busy making and producing a whole bunch of Christmas cards. Myself and Charlie Pringle have started a tiny and super exclusive collective, with a blog and shop to boot! Charlie drew this guy and he ended up being our lil trademark/logo.

He comes in a number of different colours and flavours too! The first things to come out of this collective are the Christmas cards, which are ready to be sent out to homes everywhere to bring much festive cheer. 

The first batch of cards (mine) are up on our Big Cartel shop, with Charlie's hot on its heels.

Shop

Blog

That's Mister Chief to you

I decided to come up with a poster for Halo 4 after seeing one of my favourite artists, Olly Moss, tweet that he wished he could've designed a poster for the game's release, but had to decline as he simply didn't have the time. This was sad news indeed as I can only begin to imagine the awesomeness that would transpire from a Halo and Olly Moss project. It did however give me the idea to have a go at one myself, seeing as my art schedule isn't quite as busy as his (just a guess).

I wanted to keep the poster pretty simple since I only had a day to do it (I'll be away from home for the next week, and with the game being released on Tuesday, I wanted it ready and online beforehand).

To keep clutter to a minimum, the only text on the poster would be a tagline and release date. Characters in videogames don't get much more iconic then Master Chief, which is why I didn't feel the need to plaster 'HALO 4' anywhere on it. It's also a sign of how successful a character or franchise is: if something is so recognisable you don't even need the name or any information to go with it, you've definitely hit gold.

Image one is how the poster looked at the end of day One. I worked on it some more the next day and produced the second image, where I tried to get MC looking a bit more like his Halo 4 counterpart (his armour has had quite the upgrade in the design department).  Not sure which one I prefered, so uploaded both.

Happy Halloween!

Or at least, Happy Saturday night before Halloween. I suspect this is the night most of us will be dressing up if were going to this year. As a student, Halloween was one of the highlights of the year as it meant dressing up and at least one evening of watching scary movies. What follows is a collection of those movie monsters, and what they would look like if I had 6 pumpkins to carve them onto. If I did 3 more to make up a 3 x 3 grid, I forsee them making a nice enough screen print one day.
Can YOU name them all?

Editorial stuffs

So I decided to set myself a project to practice illustrating to a tight deadline, much like artists working on newspapers etc no doubt have to keep to. I picked an advice column out from a weekend broadsheet and set about coming up with a drawing per week, which would go alongside the letters.

First up, this lady had written in because she was worried her 18yr daughter was seeing a 28yr old muscian but wasn't being honest about it, and the mum suspected he was exposing her to drugs. The daughter is off to a charity gig next month and the mum has just found out the musican is playing there, and is worried sick about what kinds of debauchery could happen!

Next up was quite a sad letter, written in by a 14 yr old. His gran had died a few weeks back, and this kids mum was devastated, the kid writes his mum cries all the time and there seems to be nothing he or his dad can do to cheer her up. I tried to get across this inconsolableness by making his mum so much larger then him, his arm not being big enough to put on her shoulder and comfort her.

Last one so far is about a guy who cheated at a vegetable competition in a village flower show. He used disallowed fertiliser on his onions and went on to win the competition  After winning, he was made president of the show for next year. He is racked with guilt and doesn't know whether to confess and bring shame to his family (who would be made guilty by association, his father and grand father were all presidents of this show) or keep quiet and remain president, which means so much to him.

Illustrating this is a nice challenge, as the pictures have to work immediately, and will no doubt be seen before the letters are read by readers, so have to clearly give some insight into the story.

Decided to upload a few close up's of the illustrations as they appear in my final major project from this year. Can't wait to get stuck into my next book, which is currently in the planning process now.

Little White Lies

Next competition! I had 50 minutes to do this one, the magazine needed an image of Daniel Craig as James Bond to go in their next issue. Since time was so short, I went for a silhouette, hoping that he would still be recognisable. I didn't win (they had 90 entries in an hour!) but it was good fun and practice, looking forward to the next one.

Not my gumdrop buttons!

I became an uncle earlier this year and wanted to create something for my twin nieces nursery. It wasn't the strictest brief I've ever worked to, I think whatever looked good would have sufficed (I wasn't expecting my new born nieces to be my harshest art critics) but their mom Erin suggested a theme of favourite nursery tales which helped me zero in on an idea.
One of the first and only tales which sprung to mind (my memory is quite foggy about that period in my life, its going back a few years now) was the gingerbread man. I decided that two pictures, canvas mounted, would look better then one, and could position the gingerbread man on his own, with some of the animals which chased the poor guy on a second picture. With this being the result!

Tumblr Portfolio

I'm  using my Tumblr page to act as a portfolio until my inevitable .com website goes up. It has the same work you can find on this blog, albeit in a format which allows more immediate access to images, and features far less waffling, so its win win.

http://markusmotum.tumblr.com/

Little White Lies

LWL is a film magazine based in the UK. Every issue collaborates with a particular artist to design and illustrate that particular issue, which produces gorgeous covers and articles, making each issue far more then just a magazine reviewing the latest films. They have taken to setting one hour challenges on their Twitter and Facebook pages. Today's brief was to sketch an image inspired by the Michael J Fox classic, Teen Wolf. Here's my submission which I had to complete and submit in neck break speeds ( compared to my usual rate of working). I would've loved to have attempted Michael J Fox himself, but without a tablet, 'sketching' at speeds using a mouse is pretty tough, so I limited myself to this design to make sure it would be something I could complete on time. The basketball itself could act as space to put the films title or article header inside.

And talking of competitions, Youtube channel The Yogscast have released a video of many of the t shirt entries they received.I didn't win but my design was included in the video, which after being uploaded yesterday has recieved 327,000 views, so as consolation prizes go, its a pretty good one!

Charlie Pringle's design was one of the runner's up, meaning her t shirt has been produced and is on sale now at http://yogscast.spreadshirt.co.uk/. Look carefully and you might be able to spot her design being modelled by a rather familiar face... Fame and infamy at last!

More sketching

There is a very fine line between something looking cute and something looking terrifying, hopefully these guys tread on the right side of that line. These were my first forays into drawing stuff for a (much) younger audience.

And now for something completely different

Trying out some children's style illustration

Posters

So I managed to get 12 copies of this poster of just in time for The Dark Knight Rises release day yesterday.

The shooting in America has turned this otherwise exciting time into a tragic one, but just as Warner Brothers decided they wouldn't stop showings of their film (which was contemplated it seems) as a result of the tragedy, I still want to share these posters. They're A3 size, printed on 180gsm paper, and turned out pretty okay in the end. Now I just have to decide what to do with them!

Official graduate!

So New Blood and graduation has come and gone in a flash, both of which were great.

Gearing up for New Blood was fun, putting together my first proper portfolio and printing business cards to hand out all made me feel like a proper illustrator! Graduation felt pretty special too, besides my mortar board being way too small for my giant head (now that I've realised that, I can't un-see it in every photo) but the important thing is, I didn't trip over my gown up the stairs to collect my diploma in front of everyone. That and getting to see my fellow graduates, friends and family all in one place, all there to celebrate our degree's.

I also have my final major project back in my possession, so here are a few spreads.

  

 That's all over, so what now...