The robots aren’t coming. The robots are already here.

If you were a robot, how would you take over the world?

If you were a robot, how would you take over the world? Would you launch a bloody assault with humanoid looking, bipedal killing machines, giving your human enemies a target to retaliate against? Or would you be a bit sneakier about it?

I only ask because I have a suspicion that it may have already happened. The robots may have already taken over and we’ve all been happily going along with the incipient invasion. Yes. All of us.

This epiphany occurred in the Library, last Saturday when I went to the counter to check out my stack of graphic novels. I looked at the Assistant expectantly;  she smiled at me and said “Oh, we have new machines to check your books out now.” She gently led me over to a bank of steel grey machines and demonstrated how to use them: library card in the slot, the stack of closed books in the maw-like opening, a flash of blue followed by a printed receipt telling me how long I could borrow the books for. “Are they trying to phase you out?” I asked the Assistant. She smiled, slightly nervously. “It does feel like it sometimes.” She replied conspiratorially, as if the machine was listening to our conversation.

So, now you don’t have to see a Librarian in order to borrow books, just a machine. A machine like those self-service supermarket check-out tills that are now so ubiquitous – the ones that you only need one person to look after. Machines just like those at the Bank: the ones you can take money out of, pay money into and get your account information – all without needing to speak to a real person. Machines like the ones at Airports, that you use to check-in, without having to bother any human beings. Can you see a pattern here? More machines appearing every day, doing all those little things that people used to do. Slowly replacing human contact with card slots, scanners, lights and buzzers. Slowly acclimatising us to rely on machines instead of those soft, fallible people. Slowly creating a society where we can’t function without machines doing things for us.

Your robot is already your best friend.

And, yes, the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m sitting here at a Mac I’d rather not do without. That  I rely on my iPhone to tell me everything from tomorrow’s weather to where my Facebook friends are. That I think my iPad is my new best friend – and is doing more and more for me each day. Think about it: your own robots; your phone, tablet and computer, are already your best friends. Through thousands of electronic connections with Internet Banking, Social Media and E-Commerce sites, they already know more about you than any single squishy human being does – probably more than you do yourself.

You know it’s only going to continue this way: ‘smart phones’ will get smarter, media platforms will integrate more rapidly and there will be more and more things we rely on our machines for. And that’s just the way they want it. What’s the best way to take over the world? To be asked to take it over by the lifeforms who can no longer do without you. Until, of course, the machines don’t need us any more.

I’ve got to go now. My webcam is looking at me strangely.

Illustrating Danny the [trainee] demon. 3 of 3

Last time, on Danny the [trainee] demon…

In my previous two posts (take a look!) I showcased the storyboard, sketch and finished image of two selected spreads from ‘Danny the [trainee] demon’, a children’s book I wrote and illustrated a year or two ago. In this post – the third and final part –  I’ll be showing you exactly the same process with a spread from further on in the book. Why? Well, actually because this is one of my favourite spreads and I think you deserve to see it. Of course, I also hope you also find it  - and the previous two posts – useful, insightful, yet entertaining.

A red demon rendered in red pen

When I’m creating an illustration, there are usually three stages I follow: the initial rough sketch, the finished layout and the completed image. With most of my illustrations, the idea gets refined, nuanced and gently tweaked on the way from brain to page. This spread, of Danny’s fearsome head teacher Mr Nick, is one of those occasions when the idea remained more or less the same from one stage to the other. I had a clear picture of Mr Nick in my head and it was just a matter of taking that image from scribble to screen.

This storyboard section shows Mr Nick standing infront of his desk, having ushered the quaking Danny into his office for a reprimand. What do you reprimand a trainee demon for? For being too darn nice, that’s what. It doesn’t pay to be cute and lovable when you’re training to become a malevolent demon.

As well as knowing how I wanted Mr Nick to look, I had a good idea of how his office should look too. I wanted it to look like a head teacher’s office as I recalled it from my own schooldays: portraits on the wall, imposing desk and suitably impressive books -but all with a dark, demonic twist. Now I come to think of it, I remember my own head teacher’s office already had a quite a dark twist. Although it did have a threadbare green carpet instead of burning coals on the floor.

Getting carried away by a big angry demon

Out of all the finished sketches I prepared for ‘Danny the [trainee] demon’, this is the one I spent the most time on. Once I got my coloured pencils out, there was no stopping me. I just enjoyed drawing this illustration and probably spent longer on it than I needed to. But, hey, it was fun to do.

The main thing I wanted to convey about Mr Nick – as well as being scary –  was the physical differences between him and Danny. To show how a demon changes as he matures, I gave Mr Nick a more mottled skin, larger horns and a spiked tail, as well as a lot more teeth – and really angry eyebrows. I also added the Blobus into the image at this stage – lurking quietly behind the head teacher’s chair.

Go and see Mr Nick, head demon, in his office  - now!

So, here’s Mr Nick in all his demonic glory. That‘s one angry head teacher. Overall, the finished image is very close to the original storyboard image and the interim sketch. The devil is in the details (sorry!). With my digital carpentry skills, I made the desk dark wood and suitably carved, as befits Mr Nick’s demonic status. I also had a lot of fun with the School Team photograph (Team Hell) and the portrait of the previous head demon (Mr Pentangle, in case you wondered). The bookcase boasts the three volume ‘History of Hades’ and the complete ‘Demonicarta’ in twenty six volumes. I added a back shadow to the illustration, to emphasise the impression of Mr Nick looming above Danny. And there, of course, is the Blobus, now moved to actually sitting on Mr Nick’s chair, instead of lurking behind at, as in the sketch. My favourite part of the illustration? I think it’s Mr Nick’s tail. There’s something about the spikes that really do it for me.

Do you want to see more?

I honestly hope you’ve enjoyed these three posts. The finished book of ‘Danny the [trainee] demon’ has twenty three glorious spreads, chronicling the travails and eventual redemption of its titular hero. If you’d like to see any more examples, or comment on the ones I’ve shown, let me know. It’s always great to hear from you. Thanks!

Illustrating Danny the [trainee] demon. 2 of 3

What has gone before, on Danny the [trainee] demon…

In my previous post, I showed you the storyboard, sketch and finished image of  a selected spread from ‘Danny the [trainee] demon’, a children’s book I wrote and illustrated a year or two ago. In this post I’ll be showing you the same process with a spread from further on in the book. Why? Well, as another helpful example of how my ideas make the tortuous journey from my brain to glorious completion. As I’ve stated previously, this is how the process works for me – but I hope you also find it useful, yet entertaining.

Scribbles on a  storyboard

This is the stage where I pour my brain out onto the paper. If the illustration is part of a book – as in this example – I storyboard every spread. And, because I write the book before I begin the illustrations, I include the text in the storyboard. It also helps me identify any places where the story doesn’t flow. You can see in the storyboard extract above, that I decided to add two more spreads, which I scribbled down as thumbnails. I felt the story was moving too quickly, so wanted to slow it down with an additional scene, over two spreads. These extra scenes served to give Danny’s character more depth, and they were fun to draw too.

This storyboard section shows the titular Danny being yelled at by his deeply demonic teacher. And you thought normal teachers were tough! Poor old Danny – it isn’t easy being a trainee demon. This rough image gives me the composition of the illustration, including the fact it bleeds onto the text page. I’d like to say it’s ‘deceptively simple’, but it’s actually just simple!

The joy of crosshatching

So here’s my finished sketch. I’ve included details I want to be in the final illustration, such as the bandage on Danny’s tail and the ‘Seven Circles of Hell’ homework drawn on the blackboard, on the wall. However, I didn’t think the sketch conveyed how angry the teacher should be, so I made a couple of notes to remind me. I’m not precious about scribbling on my own illustrations – that’s what they’re for. Anyway, it’ll probably put the value up when I sell ‘Danny the Ultimate Collection’ (yeah, right!). I do sometimes put in a bit more detail than is necessary, but I do love crosshatching, so I make no excuses for excess shading. It’s my only vice. More or less.

Finishing touches and final illustration

Here’s the finished illustration. Interestingly, the composition of the final spread is closer to the storyboard scribble than the rough sketch. However, the elements from the sketch are here too: Danny’s bandaged, smoking tail and the homework on the blackboard. Danny’s teacher is also looking as angry as I intended. As mentioned in the previous post, the little green ‘Blobus’ features in every spread, so there he is, lurking behind Danny, in the bleed. I’ve even added a diagram of him on the wall, to acknowledge the character.

Coming up…

In my final ‘Danny’ post I’ll show you the same process with the scariest spread in the book. If you like your demons horny, spiny and warty, this one’s for you.

Illustrating Danny the [trainee] demon.1 of 3

Previously, on Danny the [trainee] demon…

As I mentioned in my previous post, ‘Danny the [trainee] demon’, is a children’s book I wrote and illustrated a year or two ago. In this, and the next two posts, I’m using selected spreads as an example of how how my ideas get from my throbbing brain, through my flying fingers, to the completed illustration. I’ll show you the storyboard, sketch and finished image of each, with some apposite words of explanation along the way, so you can see how my own process works – and if it might work for you.

From my brain to the storyboard

So, the first stage is taking that perfect finished image, shining beatifically behind my frontal lobe, and sketch its bare bones – just to get the idea down on paper. In the example of ‘Danny’, I created a very rough storyboard of the entire book. (I always create and print a storyboard template to sketch onto.) I used this as a roadmap as I created the actual spreads, so I knew where I was and how much further I had to go – and to put me back on the right path if I got lost. Yes, I know, I could have used a GPS.

The storyboard section above, shows our sensitive hero being threatened by a his fellow trainee demons. I wanted to give each demon its own look, and you can see a thin demon on the left and a chubby demon on the right. However, once I’d sketched out this spread, I felt it was too static. So, when I took it to the next stage, I altered the idea to add more movement.

From the  storyboard to the ‘finished’ sketch

The next stage, the finished sketch, lets me render the initial idea with more detail than is needed in the storyboard. As you can see, I not only create and print a storyboard template, but I also create an illustration frame to work within, as above. You may find this unnecessary, but I like having the right sized page area to work with. The freedom of a tight frame!

So, now there’s a little more movement in the illustration. Having beheaded the practice dummy (bottom right) the trainee demons are prodding poor Danny. I suspect that he’s not really demon material. Behind the action you can see I’ve sketched in a network of pipes, on which is perched a ‘demon-monkey-thing’. As the book progressed, I slipped this character into every spread. I liked the idea of something extra for the reader to find in each illustration – it added another aspect to the story.

From the  ‘finished’ sketch to the completed illustration

Above is the finished illustration. You can see that I’ve cleaved very close to the ‘finished’ sketch, although my ‘monkey-demon-thing’ became a ‘blob’. Because there’s a lot of red and yellow in the book, I made him green, to contrast nicely with the palette of the story. In retrospect, I’m not sure I completely succeeded in giving the ‘bad’ demons distinct personalities. Their eye colour  and teeth are different, as are the freckles and pot-belly, but I think I probably could have added a few more distinct features to make them more individualistic. Perhaps I’ll do that in the ‘Special Edition’!

Those tiny extra details

My software of choice is Illustrator, which I love using. One aspect of using Illustrator that I enjoy is being able to zoom right in and create tiny extra details. Even if the reader never sees it, I know it’s there. There’ll be some examples in the next two posts. And, in case you wondered, the white area on the left of the illustration is part of the left hand text page. I bled the action off so that, when you read the text, the ‘bled’ action pulls you into the illustration.

Coming up…

In my next post I’ll show you the same process with a spread from later on in the book. I warn you, it’s going to get scary! In a warm, cuddly, child-friendly way, of course.

From the brain to the page in three steps.

Where does an illustration begin? 

For me, it starts with an image in my head; the finished image, hovering beautifully in my mind’s eye. Then it’s just a simple matter of translating the incandescent glory of that ideal image, through my hands, via pen and mouse, to become solid – or digital – reality. Easy! So what’s my process? Well, I have three stages from brain to page (or screen). They might not work for you, but this is how I get there. First, there’s the rough sketch (or storyboard), then I create a tight sketch – sometimes in colour if I want to get a feel for the palette – and then I grab my mouse and create the finished illustration.

Danny the [trainee] demon

Danny the [trainee] demon, is a children’s book I wrote and illustrated a year or so ago. It’s a good example of how my process works in the real world (at least in my real world). To demonstrate how my process works, I’ve chosen three spreads from the book  and, over my next three posts, I’ll show you the storyboard, sketch and finished image of each, so you can see how I got from brain to screen.

I think you’ll find it informative and maybe even useful. Let me know if you like what you see. Thanks.

I never met Steve Jobs, but I knew his children.

I never met Steve Jobs. I never experienced his fabled “reality distortion field” or asked him just how many black turtlenecks and Levis 501s he had hanging in his wardrobe. But, if Steve Jobs was the father of the Macintosh, then I knew his children. I grew up with them, played with them and, eventually, went to work with them.

Early adopter

I adopted my first of Steve’s kids in 1986: a beautifully robust Mac 512k. I was working at Ogilvy & Mather Direct and bought it from an American  called Peter Boggs. For £50. No, really. He’d brought it with him from the States – and he even threw in an ImageWriter with it. (The noise of its dot matrix printer chuntering away kept my own kids up at night.) Guess what? I still have my 512k and, twenty five years later, it still boots up from a floppy.

The first time I took delivery of one of Steve’s newborns was in 1992. It was a slim, gorgeous LC, boasting an RGB colour monitor which fitted perfectly on top of the ‘pizza box’ design. I paid £2,000 and was deeply in love. I even bought 10MB of extra RAM from the States, where it was a lot cheaper. Suddenly the world was a much more exciting, colourful place.

When I started my design business I needed a slightly more mature partner, a heavy duty workhorse. So, I availed myself of a secondhand IIci: a big tin box with an Apple logo. That was one tough dude. Some time later, a Photoshop-intensive commission meant ‘having to’ buy a brand new baby – a tall, good looking Quadra tower. It was powerful enough that a Photoshop filter had almost finished running while I was making myself a cup of tea. Raw power!

The iMac years

Then Steve came back to Apple and, when I NeXT upgraded, my baby was a stunning graphite G3 tower. I didn’t want to put this baby in the corner. I wanted it where everyone could admire it, tickle it under the chin and then stand back while I dropped the side panel and proudly showed off its RAM slots. At that time, my wife decided she really needed her own new baby. She maintained it was a coincidence that, suddenly, a sublime pink iMac was available for adoption. She loved it and it made her smile. A lot. For some reason she was less impressed when I bought her a pink & white peripheral floppy drive for her birthday. I didn’t understand – it was pink and it seemed like the perfect gift to me.

My two boys made friends with Steve’s kids too. We adopted twins: a graphite iMac and a dark blue iMac. Suddenly, the house was full of kids: Steve had convinced us we needed four of his offspring in our house. For a while, our lives were a colourful cacophony of shiny translucent plastic and all the USB and Firewire peripherals that came with it.

Then the iMacs grew up and left home and we took in a sublime but temperamental G3 Cube for a while, until the stork brought us a Mac Mini. Damn, I still miss that Cube.

All grown up

These days Steve’s kids are more refined and mature. I love my 17 inch MacBook Pro and still use a ten-year old 23 inch Cinema Display all day, every day. Two of my kids have slim and responsive MacBooks, whilst my middle son has fallen deeply in love with a gleaming 27 inch iMac. It is rather gorgeous. It seems £2,000 will buy you a lot more these days.

We made it through the tough teenage years, when Apple was a misunderstood delinquent, teetering on the edge of being adopted by Sony. We watched as Apple grew up into something beautiful and made everyone look again. And then line up around the block to say hello. And here we are, in what seems to me like a parallel word, where nearly everyone walks around with one of Steve’s kids in their pocket. It’s a world I like.

So, even though I never met Steve Jobs, I knew his kids. As they’ve grown up, so have we. His imagination, his vision, gave birth to the Macs that we took into our house. We treated them with respect and love and they rewarded us with a tactile, immersive experience – whether we were playing or working. They came into our house and fitted into our lives – even as they became part of our family.

So, thank you Steve, for having the unshakable faith in your vision to change my world, because you changed it for the better. And I hope your legacy continues to do so.

Enjoy the cloud Mr Jobs, you’ve earned the rest.

Freddy’s Cat Charity. Istanball-less.

I know from experience that, although you can turn a client into a friend, it’s seldom a good idea to turn a friend into a client. Somehow the dynamics just don’t work.

Taking on one of your family as a client is also, in my experience, not the best idea. However, my sister recently commissioned me to create an identity for her new charity.

My sister lives in Istanbul, in the Cihangir area, where street cats abound. Her charity will catch the cats, neuter the cats, then put them back on the street. No doubt to be beaten up by the cats who still have their testicles. She decided to call her new charity ‘Freddy’s’ in remembrance of her first cat. A sweet idea – I just count myself fortunate it wasn’t called Tiddles or Puffball, not the best names for a charity.

So my job was to create a strong and simple identity that immediately says ‘cat’ but also pays homage to poor dead Freddy.

So I sketched a bunch of ideas – my favourite part of the process – and whittled them down to the idea that worked the best. Then it was a matter of simplifying the logo to its basic elements. The result is shown here: a simple oval with the letter F gently sheared and reflected to evoke Freddy’s feline visage. I chose Diavlo as the typeface because of its sinuous and cat-like curves, although I did add a swash to the F to give the subtle impression of a cat’s tail.

Happily my client/sister likes the logo – although not enough to pay me. Family. Now I’m creating a series of tee shirts to promote the charity in Cihangir. Apparently neither “Istanball-less” nor “Freddy’s: the f in feline” translate very well.

Now I believe my son needs a logo for his latest venture…

Darwin is better in the original Klingon

Klingons have always intrigued me. I understand their culture is a brutal and violent, their society based on war and conflict (so unlike our own!). I get that to be a true Klingon you have to live as a warrior and die a noble death. Not for them sitting around watching television eating pizza. If you want to eat it, you catch it and kill it. Although maybe the pizza delivery boy counts if you chase down his moped. What I can’t get my head around, so to speak, is the discrepancy between the old school Klingons in Star Trek and the subsequent Klingons, typified by Worf in Star Trek: The Next Generation (or ST:TNG as all the cool kids are calling it).

The original Klingons, whilst bearded and brutal, had beautifully smooth foreheads. Worf and the latter day Klingons have walnuts for foreheads. Heroically ridged, they were the outward manifestation of inner brutality. The forehead of a warrior. Why the difference? Well, the official reason blamed either a viral mutation, an evolutionary offshoot or the lack of prosthetic expertise in the 1960s. My personal opinion is that the original Klingons were just a bit more metrosexual than their descendants.

I think all Klingons had bumpy, ridged heads, but that season’s fashion was for filing, buffing and smoothing. The forehead equivalent of a manicure. No Warbird Commander would be seen sporting anything other than the smoothest, shiniest forehead, with their hair teased delicately across it. Not to mention spangly gold tunics. Eventually, the fashion faded away and stylish Klingons went natural again. It was a back to basics movement, a return to Klingon warrior values. Brutal on the inside, bumpy on the outside.

What makes me sad is the thought of all those Forehead Bars closing down all over Klingtown and Kling City. All those sensitive, creative Klingons out of work. Fashion is a cruel mistress. Well, everything’s cruel when you’re a Klingon.

The usual suspects…or how I learned to finally love Illustrator

I’ve always believed that the best way to learn software is to create a ‘real world’ project.

When I was learning how to use Illustrator, about three years ago, this was the image I used to find my way around the tools, palettes and effects.It was a lot of fun. I had dabbled over the years, but never had a reason to learn Illustrator properly. Despite loving Photoshop, I always found Illustrator a bit daunting.

I traced a photograph of myself as a template, then created three different ‘stereotypes’, using that as the base. Perhaps each of them represent a different aspect of my psyche: the bleached-haired new wave punk, the intellectual bookish geek and the leather-clad, tattooed rocker. Only my subconscious really knows and he’s not telling. Well, not overtly at least. I’m sure his opinion will surface at some point.

As with most things, looking at it now I can see how basic my skills were – but creating the image was a great way to learn. It gave me a good grounding in using the pen tool, creating gradients and developing the beginnings of a style. These days, Illustrator is my favourite piece of software and, the more I use it, the more I learn and the better I get.

I will say though, before I put mouse to screen, I did watch a series of tutorial videos on lynda.com, which is a fantastic resource. However, you can watch as many videos and read as many manuals as you want (when was the last time you got a manual with software?!) but unless you use those skills, they’re going to atrophy faster than a leg in plaster.

Which probable explains why I have to relearn Freeway every time I redesign my website. Now where did I put those manuals…?

Five floating Macs are worth a thousand blogs

I love Macs. I bought my first Mac Plus in 1986, from an American Account Exec’ I worked with at an Ad’ Agency in Soho. I paid £50, which included the ImageWriter printer. No it wasn’t Don Draper. He was called Pete Boggs. Seriously.

Since then, my upgrades have cost me a little more than that, but my love affair hasn’t diminished. Having experienced the nadir of Apple, when they were almost bought by Sony, it seems very strange to live in a world where virtually everyone carries an Apple product in their pocket. It feels like I’ve slipped into a parallel universe. The Appleverse.

I decided to create a visual memoir to the Macs that have served me well in my design, writing and illustrating career. So, here are my Macs, bobbing gently on a tranquil sea. My venerable (and still working) Mac Plus, my short-lived SE30, my gorgeous blueberry iMac (must get another one of those), my sublime graphite G3 (six years of continual service) and my Mac Quad (my first Tower. Damn it seemed fast back then!). By the way, the sea isn’t a  visual metaphor for the calmness with which I work, simply an excuse to include reflections. I do hope the subtle Apple, floating in the foreground, wasn’t lost on anyone. (Not so subtle if you feel compelled to explain it, I guess!)

In case you’re interested, I created the entire image using gradients – no blends were harmed during the making of this illustration.

Did I mention I love Illustrator too?