Steve May has been working with Discover Children's Story Centre in Stratford, East London on their brand new exhibition SUPERHEROES. Steve created the characters, a comic and the environments for the exhibition.
Alphabet City is under threat from a mysterious villain and children are given the task of rescuing it from destruction, with the help of five superhero characters 'A', 'E', 'I', 'O' and 'U' who each have their own superpower. They must crack the code and defeat the evil mastermind 'Y' who is stealing all the vowels. The city they inhabit is purely from Steve’s imagination, he also created an animation to visualise the chase through the city streets in pursuit of the villain.
With the Olympics being held just around the corner, the exhibition is already breaking records with 500 recorded visitors on the opening day and 3000 visitors during the first week. SUPERHEROES runs until Sunday 4th November 2012. Steve May is represented by Arena
Jonny Duddle has been working as a character designer for director Peter Lord at Aardman Features Studio in Bristol for the last three years on the animated adventure The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists which is now on general release in cinemas. Jonny share's his experiences working with Aardman in an interview on The Pirates!Band of Misfits Crew Vlog:
"Peter Lord briefed me for the Pirate with Prosthetics during my first work visit to Bristol. He described him as a particularly unlucky pirate, with a variety of prosthetic additions, and that was about it. So I started off with a very scrawly sheet of ideas, from the practical (like a ‘fishing rod attachment’) to the downright silly (erm, ‘ship biscuit ear’?). Then Pete and Jeff looked over the first sketches with their wonderful eyes (the lucky blighters have more than one each which is testament to the relative safety of animation when compared to pirating), and sent me an email with lots of feedback, such as “Wooden teeth are a great idea”, “I wonder if you could design a head that has both the innocent simplicity of the first head, with some of the craziness of the second” and “I like his hook and the sort of wooden hinged arm that goes with it. No idea how it’s meant to move, but somehow I don’t think anybody’s going to worry about that! I read the feedback and got on with another sheet of drawings. This time I could pick the bits I liked from the first sheet, mix them up, and work with Pete and Jeff’s feedback and what they liked to create something which gets us a bit closer to a suitable design. Pete looked at the new sheet, and said the body was looking good and his favourite head was the one in the middle. So then I did a colour one in Adobe Photoshop, combining the body and the head that Pete liked. The proportions are a bit awry, and the colours changed for the finished puppet, but amazingly the Pirate with Prosthetics was pretty much done. All that was left to do was a turnaround, showing him from the front, back and side, and then the drawings were sent off to the model-making rooms, where the sculptors work their magic to bring it all to life."
Adam Stower hasillustrated the fantastic cover for Gareth P Jones' The Considine Curse (Bloomsbury) which has just won this year's Blue Peter Book Awards.
Adam Stower has also been long listed for The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2012 for his picture book, Silly Doggy! (Templar) and Neal Layton has also been long listed for his illustrations for John Hegley's picture book Stanley Stick(Hodder).
Serge Seidltz was commissioned by Educational Insights to design 8 children's jigsaw puzzles. Each puzzle is made up of between 24 and 48 pieces with words printed on one side and parts of the picture on the other.
The puzzles work by choosing a piece, reading the word on it and searching the puzzle tray for the synonym to that word and then setting the piece in place. Finishing the puzzle then reveals the hidden picture.
Sholto Walker has completed a fun yet sobering commission for a leading specialist UK advertising agency. The brief was to design a mostly friendly monster to represent the rare blood disorder haemophilia that predominately affects males. The aim of the campaign was to inform young children who suffer with the disease about how to live safely with it. The character had to be represented in a positive and entertaining way while reflecting the particular nature of the disorder as closely as possible. Sholto says " This I did by designing a bright red pet monster, Hemon, that was, while potentially threatening, mostly benign and friendly if looked after and treated with respect by his friend, Max, the ten-year-old boy he lives with. I drew the characters as vignettes in various scenarios and activities and also produced three four-page comic strips featuring Max and Hemon in various simple short stories."
The Bizzy Bear On the Farm app, illustrated by Benji Davies, has won an Editor’s Choice award from the Children’s Technology review.
Some rather amazing news! The Bizzy Bear On the Farm app, illustrated by Benji Davies and created by Nosy Crow, has won an Editor’s Choice award from the Children’s Technology review.
Follow the link to read the Children’s Technology review and the app view and see how highly he scores it against other big name competition, such as Sesame Street, Charlie Brown and Dr Seuss:
If you have a moment too, do have a look at the other reviews Nosy Crow have been getting for Bizzy Bear, both on the app store, and by bloggers: Nosy Crow Website<https://nosycrow.com/apps/bizzy-bear-on-the-farm> .
Latest Phosphor star Jonathan Leach, creates illustrations from his personal imaginary world “populated by individuals who all look a little off centre”
Jonathan has worked both as a creator of puppets, and as a puppeteer, and this is reflected in his powerful characterisations. Look out for Jonathan’s jolly Christmas pudding character skating across your screen soon !
James Ellis has launched a brand new children’s age range covering ages 1-6 by talented illustrator, Ailie Busby, who has been illustrating children’s books for more than 15 years and has had work published all over the world.
The range of glittered children's age cards with curved corners, are all beautifully individually wrapped with pink and blue envelopes.
Adam Stower has illustrated Francesca Simon's new book, The Sleeping Armypublished by Faber & Faber.
A story about Freya, who lives in modern Britain with a twist: people still worship the old Viking gods. Stuck with her dad on his night shift at the British Museum, Freya is drawn to the Lewis Chessmen and Heimdall’s Horn. Unable to resist, she blows the horn waking four chess pieces from their enchantment. Summoned to Asgard, they are ordered on a perilous mission.
Here’s a selection of Adam's delightful interior illustrations as well as the hardback cover.
We are proud to announce that Mark Ruffle has won the prestigious English National Ballet 'My First Ballet' poster competition. His artwork for Sleeping Beauty wowed the panel of expert judges, and as a result his poster will be used to advertise the ballet and forthcoming events nationwide. What is more, another of our talented artists, Javier Joaquin was awarded runner up for his take on the brief. All in all a huge success for our guys!
