Tuesday 27 September 2011

Be What You Want



I recently did a bunch of illustrations, comic strips and posters for the Be What You Want Campaign, organised by Close The Gap. The campaign is intended to support young people in being what they want to be, and help tackle gender stereotyping and occupational segregation.



It's always nice to have a job where you're drawing fun things and working for a cause you can believe in, so this was a really satisfying project to be involved with. Occupational segregation now joins the ever-growing list of Social Problems I Have Bravely Fought Through The Medium of Comics, along with traffic safety, adult innumeracy and chronic disease in indigenous populations. Oh yeah, and racism. Obviously.


Packs of the posters and comic strips were sent out to every primary and secondary school in Scotland, which is kind of mind-blowingly awesome to think about, too. Anyway, I've put a few sample pieces over on my website, and you can check out and download the full set of resources over on the Be What You Want website.




Tuesday 20 September 2011

Amusing Tales and Scribbles and Such: the DFB Storyblog!


I've recently joined in blogging over at the DFB Storyblog, where lots of David Fickling books' fine writers and illustrators (and me) are sharing tall tales, amusing anecdotes, and whatever other assorted nonsense takes our fancy. The general theme to start with was 'coincidences and misunderstandings and what have you', to tie in with the recent launch of Andrew Norris' I Don't Believe It, Archie!

I joined in with a nerve-shredding tale of terror which, as well as being senses-shatteringly exciting, features such eye-poppingly gorgeous artwork as the following:


Intriguing, no?

Read the full story here! I'll be contributing fairly regularly to the blog, so brace yourselves for further tales from the foothills of the mountains of madness.

Do go and have a read, there's tons of fun stuff on there already, with posts from my fellow DFC Library peeps Dave Shelton (Good Dog, Bad Dog) and Sarah McIntyre (Vern & Lettuce) as well as such luminaries as Candy Gourlay and Tony Mitton. Enjoy!

I blog at the DFB Story Blog