How would you describe your style?

I was fascinated with fantasy artwork, Sci-fi and Disney as a child. The likes of Rodney Matthews and Brian Froud were my childhood heroes and Disney films fed my enthusiasm for lovable animated characters. Then my likings took on a slightly darker form in my teenage years and I alarmed some of my school teachers with outpourings of demonic horses and twisted creatures. Still, my main art teacher did nothing but encourage and cultivate my more unusual artistic outlets and I suppose those early days set a tone for what would become 'my style'. Later, I developed a love of Manga films, Japanese computer games and Anime style artwork. Then, mixed with my computer games experience and a love of the slightly sinister, some sort of twisted offspring emerged, and I suppose that's the long story of where my particular style comes from! I've done a good job of explaining my influences (oops, not paying attention to the actual question!), but as far as describing my style...perhaps decide for yourself ;-)

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How did you become an artist?

There has never been any doubt that I would be a professional artist in some form or another. I've ALWAYS drawn. I studied for a Design and Art Direction degree at Manchester Metropolitan University, although that was more advertising/graphic design heavy, but I found my way even when on, what could be argued to be, the 'wrong' course for me. My degree show was made up largely of fantasy character drawings, and while it didn't score me a top degree it did land me a place with a local art agency. From there, a mere week after graduating, I took on my first real freelance job in the form of re-designing the packaging for the computer game 'Lemmings/Oh No! More Lemmings'. After that, two greetings card ranges (Cyber Sprytes and Y2K Krew) emerged, before moving full-time into the computer games arena. I worked on 'Furballs', with Bizarre Creations, before becoming a concept/character artist at Electronic Arts. Through 3 years with the company I produced concept work for Theme Park World, a couple of games that never saw the light of day, and some of the Harry Potter releases. After leaving EA, I began drawing alternative characters again, but it wasn't until friends and acquaintances began asking for prints/t-shirts of my work that I started to see the potential for them. I finally decided to leave the world of the regularly employed and set up as a freelance alternative artist.I've got to work with a lot of people I admire and respect and despite the stress of being self-employed have never looked back.

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What do you plan for the future?

Hopefully we'll be releasing a children's book this year, there are a few exhibitions and events, quite a big project I can't really talk about yet and extensive work on this website. Other than that I'm struggling to plan for next week!!!

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