London Cyclist Handbook

This week saw the launch of the London Cyclist Handbook. I did some drawings for it.

It takes you all the way through from looking at bikes online...

... To cycling around London ...

... To talking incessantly about bikes in bike themed bike cafes ...

... Right up to when you become one of these guys. Mamils, they call them apparently. Or Mawils, I guess.

I'm currently somewhere between stage two and stage three.

See a preview of the book for free here.

The eyes have it

An ophthalmology gif. That’s what people want to see on the internet, right?

How Not to Talk Like an Arse

How Not to Talk Like an Arse (available now) is the third book in the Richard Wilson's Arse trilogy, and the third one that I've illustrated. This time Richard's turning his grumpy old eye to the modern day vernacular, pouring a bucket of scorn on words like 'Ciao', 'Hurting', 'Staycation' - and then a bigger bucket on the people that say them.

Here are some of the drawings:

This one is Mark Lawrenson and the Chuckle Brothers combining to make a commentary dream team.

And here's "Man despairs as fellow passenger reads chick lit".

Something to do with "Any Time Soon".

An Apprentice contestant type (invariably the worst offenders, apparently) and that great Keysian phrase. The banana is something to do with alpha males (gorillas or penises or both).

An über-mum.

An über-mum sketch from when I didn't understand what we were talking about.

This one's obvious really.

News reader wears a scarf tied in the "new way". My joke headline that got a swift axeing: "SCARF ACE" (fair enough).

Clapham tosser does pistol fingers.

Theresa May in space (please forward on to Political Cartoonist of the Year Awards).

Power lady lulled to sleep by glowing devices.

That great portmanteau that noone has ever said.

And, er, that's it.

OxPARC

I just finished a great project for OxPARC making about a million illustrations for their website. OxPARC is an NHS centre that treats rheumatoid conditions (arthritis, basically) in young people. I worked with their staff, the patients and the patient's parents to develop a cast of kids and teens to populate near every page of the site. They're a diverse bunch, as you might expect, and every one of them has a pet.













There are more illustrations up on my portfolio site, or you can see the full set as nature intended by clicking through the OxPARC site.

Ninja Tune and Big Dada Showcase

Here's a poster I made for a Ninja Tune/Big Dada showcase night last week, part of the Great Escape festival in Brighton. I made the type into a box, which is supposed to be a bit like a showcase. Geddit? It's like a basics revisioning of that great Well Deep artwork Oscar and Ewan did a couple of years ago for the same label.

I didn't go, but I do like old Dels.

I made the box-thing by using some high-tech Illustrator techniques, mapping art onto a three-dimensional wireframe structure just like Jeff Bridges in Tron (I assume that's what happens).


Reduced Taste the Difference pizza for dinner, reduced Fruit Loaf for afters.

Ninja XX banners

I made dozens of these lo-fi animated gifs advertising the Ninja Tune XX box set and live shows. They are all strongly lead by the boxset design and the whole XX identity, but I was still proud to do a little bit for the celebrations - 20 years is a long time.

Match of Tomorrow

Match of the Day Magazine asked me to do an audition piece (a pitch, if you will) for a series of double-page comic strip predictions of England's World Cup performances. I poured all my wealth of footy-knowledge (largely based around the 1994 Arsenal squad), a couple of anti-American clichés and some blind optimism into a script and the first page came out like this:



And then the second page was to be a bit like this:



Not exactly what eventually did unfold, but then if they were to all prove accurate it would be a pretty depressing comic series. Sadly they didn't go for me though, which is a shame because I'd love to do more stuff like this. I'm not sure if someone else got the job or not, but if they did I do hope it was Paul.

Families at The Dorchester

This is a booklet for The Dorchester and their special offerings for families. They wanted a traditional children's story look so I got to crack out my watercolours and pencils for pretty much the first time since I did GCSE art, which was pretty satisfying. It's like using photoshop but instant.

The booklet stars Doris the duck, the Dorchester mascot, and her 2.4 ducklings.

It's a small A6 booklet that folds out using complicated paper engineering that words can't describe into two big pages that look like this.


I drew a little illustration of Doris for each of the family specific offerings.

Here's Doris having a little me time.

Doris has a princess-themed party.

Doris gets ready for bed her luxury den. Glamping, they call it.

Doris inspired by a trip to the English National Ballet.

It was a really fun project to work on, and I'm definitely proud of how it came out. Thanks to Jade who was the brains behind the whole operation. As I was designing the booklet as well as illustrating it the whole thing is really a product of pretty much just our two little minds, which is pretty satisfying.

Getting Doris' look right took some work though. The family started off like this:


And ballerina Doris like this:


The whole family went from this...

to this...

to this...

to this...

and this before finally ending up as they did - ie. actually looking like ducks. Using paints, pencil and paper mean that these repeated revisions did take a little longer, but I think it was worth it in the end.


And here are some painty type bits I was thinking about throwing in early on.


So that's nice.