Wednesday 14 December 2011

Alphabeast app is go!



 
So excited to announce that our iPad Alphabeast app is now available on iTunes! Thanks so much to everyone who helped make this happen through fundit.ie. 
 The app was created by myself, James Kelleher and the brother Simon Judge and features all new illustrations from the world of the Beast. 
It's available for iPad at the moment but we are currently working on the iPhone and Android versions which should be available in January. Visit iTunes and search for Alphabeast to download.

Tuesday 13 December 2011

The Lonely Beast Gift Set



Looking for a (reasonably priced) gift for a loved one? Well look no further! The Lonely Beast Christmas Gift Set now available on my shop with free shipping for €20. The set includes signed Lonely Beast book and choice of two signed mini prints. Free shipping too!
What's included:
A signed copy of The Lonely Beast book + a choice of two signed prints (28x24cm - same size as the book) printed on nice 350gsm textured paper.
Simply choose two from the three of the prints by indicating your choices as well as an inscription for your book and they will be winging it's way to you right away!

VISIT THE SHOP BY CLICKING HERE TO PURCHASE
 

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Sharks!

 

The lovely book 100 Facts About Sharks by David O'Doherty, Claudia O'Doherty, Mike Ahern has recently been published and I was honoured to have been asked to supply artwork for two of it's 'facts' (see above).

If you haven't picked up a copy yet I urge you to purchase it soon! It may save your life one day. As well as the brilliant 100 Facts About Pandas.


Wednesday 12 October 2011

Illustration course!


I'm delighted to announce a new illustration course that I have been invited to lecture at in Giddy Studios!
After the great success of the last courses and all the great work produced, Giddy Studios are opening their doors again to another intensive four weeks of illustration madness.

If the last course and the work that was produced is anything to go by then I cannot wait to meet our future students. It was an honour to be involved with such a talented bunch.

The course is great way to meet like-minded people and walk away with several bodies of new work.

Details for this seasons are as follows:

Tuesday 27 September 2011

The Lonely Beast US edition


I just received some copies of the full HD Hardback version of the US edition of The Lonely Beast from the lovely folk in Andersen Press. With fancy dust jacket and everything! It's amazing to see it in hardback after getting used to the soft cover. I guess it's usually the other way round.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Endless Summer Campaign

 During the course of the Summer I worked on this great campaign with the lovely folks in Cawley Nea for Carphone Warehouse. They didn't want a dreary 'Back to School' campaign (I always hated seeing those signs during school holidays, invariably in July!) so the concept was to capture all of the fun of the Summer holidays and keep it going into the Autumn. The illustrations are based on doodles from the back of copy books, I still have a pile of mine and went to them for reference!

I will be doing live versions of the drawings on big canvases in the Carphone Warehouse stores in Galway, Limerick and Cork (starting tomorrow in Galway).

Click the Read More link below to see some of the places the artwork ended up...

Monday 12 September 2011

Amongst Inspiration





I was honoured to be asked to be the first contributor to James Coopers lovely Amongst Inspiration shorts that he has just started producing. Thanks James!

From James: 'As an Australian creative based in Dublin, I have met & been inspired by a number of talented Dublin creatives working across all disciplines in Ireland's capital.'

Friday 9 September 2011

Alphabeast App!

Alphabeast from Pilcrow on Vimeo.




Very excited to announce a great new project I am working on with Simon Judge and James Kelleher. We want to bring the world of The Lonely Beast to life on the iPad and iPhone as an interactive A-B-C app for kids called Alphabeast. I will be creating 26 all-new scenes featuring the beast and his friends so that kids can learn the alphabet, discover new words and have heaps of fun all at the same time. watch the video below to get an idea of what we are up to.

We need your help to do it on the youfundit site!! Your contribution will go towards the production and development costs of making sure the Beast finds a happy home on the app store. There are lots of great rewards for each contribution. You can read more about it here.

Friday 2 September 2011

ESB Electric Picnic illustrations

If you're in Electric Picnic over the weekend keep an eye out for the Sparkhead illustrations etc that I did for ESB with the guys in IIBBDO. There's a big recharging area with swings, seesaws and running wheels!

Tuesday 30 August 2011

The Great Explorer Picture book


My second picture book 'The Great Explorer' is finally finished and winging it's way to the printers! It will be published on 2nd February 2012 by Andersen Press and is now available for pre-order on Amazon. This is the cover!
 'The Great Explorer' tells the story of a young boy named Tom, whose Dad is a famous explorer. His Dad goes missing in the North Pole so Tom decides that he must go and find him and sets out on a perilous journey across Oceans, snow and ice, braving dizzying heights in a hot air balloon and helicopter. He also crosses the path of some scary large animals!
For my second book I wanted to make a fast paced rollicking adventure so I arrived at Tom as the main character to battle the elements. I am a huge fan of the great arctic explorers like Shackleton and Scott and of all the astounding feats of bravery they achieved at the turn of the century but the character that I hold dearest to me is of course the great Tom Crean. I have a mild obsession with him, as do many Irish people, so this story is a tip of the hat to the great man. My story is set in the North Pole as opposed to the South Pole, mainly because the animals are better :-)
I'll post more images and info from the story closer to the release date of the book! Also I'll post here about the launch for it which will be some time in February.


Saturday 27 August 2011

The Beast at Edinburgh Book Festival

 
Very excited to be doing some book readings at the Edinburgh book festival tomorrow afternoon. Do drop in if you're in the vicinity! Click here for info.
Any recommendations for shows on over the weekend?

The Lonely Beast in New York Times

I was delighted and very surprised to have The Lonely Beast included in the New York Times Sunday Book Review in last Sunday's book review section ahead of its release on September 1st in the U.S. Hooray!
You can read the review here.

Thursday 14 July 2011

Seasonal Skills in The irish Times

This is the first of a series of fun illustrations I'll be working on over the course of the Summer with writer Conor Goodman and will be published every Thursday in the Irish Times. You can see this one in todays paper. I'll post them here as they are published.


 



Beastly Treasure Hunt in the IFI

The lovely folk in the IFI have invited me to take part in the IFI Family Festival 2011 this weekend. There's lots of amazing films and events on over the weekend.

On Saturday I'll be doing a workshop called 'A Beastly Creation' where I will be helping kids create their own Beasts for their own stories. I will also be showing our short film 'The Lonely Beast'.

On Sunday I will be reading by book to an audience (gulp!) in screen one before showing the Beast film on the big screen before The Gruffalo film. Then it's off on a treasure hunt around Temple Bar to find all of these Beasts! Thanks to Dee in the IFI for naming them. More info here.

Click Read More to see all 10 Beasts...

Thursday 7 July 2011

The Tote Bag Book

 



Thanks a millions to Jitesh Patel for including my Tote bag that I designed for Ben and Jerry's ice cream with Thinkhouse in his beautiful new book The Tote Bag Book which has just been published. The cover is wrapped with an amazing tote bag which is something I've definitely never seen before. Check out his website for some spreads from it or better yet buy it!

Wednesday 6 July 2011

Key Frames Project








I've really missed drawing comics and just can't seem to find the time to sit down and draw one as they are incredibly time consuming and hard to do. It's also very difficult to come up a good story or plot an usually after a few pages mine run out of steam (except for the ones my brother Andrew wrote which were brilliant stories).

I'm constantly coming up with ideas and have all sorts of stories scribbled in notebooks and emails to myself but the thoughts of trying to focus on one of them and create a 40-80 page comic terrifies me. I often stare longingly at panels from my favourite comics and isolate panels thinking 'What a perfect piece of artwork it is on it's own'. So a while back I came up with the wheeze of making just one stand-alone key panel from stories I'd like illustrate but leave it at that. As if I've cut out panels from different graphic novels and presented them as is.

I have been working away on them over the last few weeks in ink and watercolour and have been really enjoying it. I am aiming to have a collection of them ready for an exhibition in October but that seems so long away!

I was delighted to be asked by Wayne O'Connor in Sligo to take part in group illustration show that opens on the 17th of July in The Yeats Memorial Building in Sligo so I decided to exhibit six of the more light hearted panels for this show (see above). I would love to hear your thoughts on these!


I have also posted the poster for the exhibition above there.

Tuesday 5 July 2011

Xenon!

This is my contribution to a great new exhibition opening next week on the 14th of July in the Science Gallery in Trinity College Dublin called 'Elements'. I chose Xenon so obviously I drew Xenon Bulb Fish quietly floating in the murk. I mean what else would I draw? It runs for a few months so drop in for a look if your in town, I think it's going to be amazing. Thanks to Gav Beattie for the invite.
 More info here: http://www.sciencegallery.com/events/2011/07/elements-preview

Monday 27 June 2011

FBD Insurance




I recently worked on a really enjoyable hand drawn typographic project with Sally O'Sullivan in QMP for FBD insurance. I'm really enjoying projects involving hand drawn type at the moment, it's a great learning curve. When I studied design in college way back when I loved working with type but over the years pure illustration had taken over from any contact with design so it's great to be able to mix the two.

The illustration appears in today's Independent and tomorrows Herald newspapers.

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Travel Sketchbook New York and Virginia May 2011

Over the last couple of years I've tried to keep sketchbooks whenever I travel and more often than not I'm too lazy or having too much fun to be bleedin' drawing pictures, so more often than not I come home with a few half assed doodles and they end up in a drawer. Other times I get into the rhythm of it and can't stop.

I'm just back from a really fun holiday in Americky visiting my sister, brother-n-law and brand new niece baby Maeve in Virginia as well as a week in New York where I couldn't stop drawing the amazing characaters wandering the around the area we stayed in.

Here's a selection from various sketchbooks and scraps of paper I made during the trip.

I enjoyed it so much this time that now I just want to hop on a train around Europe and draw for months like Steve Doogan did though!

Click the 'Read More' link for all the sketches


Reminder about CBI conference this Weekend!



Just a quick reminder about the session I'm involved in this weekend with some pals.

------------------

I'm honoured to be have been invited to be a guest speaker at this years Children's Books Ireland conference along side some of Ireland's most talented illustrators and writers. It takes place on the 21st-22nd May in the National Library, Dublin. I am also very chuffed that they used The Beast for the cover of their programme and posters.

This is the event I'll be taking part in so I have to get my thinking cap on:

Sunday 21st, 2.45 Picture-book Inspiration 4x4 with Emma Byrne, Chris Haughton, Chris Judge & Steve Simpson
Take four of Irelands most talented picture-book designers and illustrators then challenge then to talk about
their four favourite designers and illustrators. The catch? They have only two minutes per artist to make their case!  

Click here to find out more about the fantastic event.

Easons session this Thursday



Really looking forward to the 'Illustrators Evening Event' this Thursday in Easons on O'Connell street Dublin which I'm delighted to have been invited to take part in with David Melling ('Don’t Worry Douglas'), Chris Haughton (A Bit Lost’ which just won the 2010 Bisto award! Well done Chris) and Niamh Sharkey (‘On The Road With Mavis & Marge’)

We'll be drawing pictures, talking about how we got into the childrens book industry and signing books.

Details of how to get tickets here.

Thursday 28 April 2011

The Lonely Beast Short Film!

Myself and photgrapher Cliona O'Flaherty finally filmed, edited and uploaded The Lonely Beast short film we've been threatening to make in the last few months. We would love to hear your feedback!

Click through to YouTube to see a big fancy HD version.

Credits:
Directed by: Chris Judge and Cliona O'Flaherty
Photography: Cliona O'Flaherty
Costume: Renate Henschke
Music: 'Up to You' by David Kitt
Editor: Andy Barry
Music edit: Simon Judge

Thanks a billion to:
Photographer Cliona O'Flaherty for doing a beautiful job shooting it.
Renate Henschke for making such an amazing costume.
David Kitt for letting us use 'Up to you' which totally made it.
Andy Barry for editing and grading and making it look fancy.
Simon Judge for music edit.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Animation Test!



Annoyingly Blogger won't let me embed the video so click here to see HD version on Vimeo!






For a long time I've been wanting to try some stop animation and finally got around to my first tentative steps with photographer Cliona O'Flaherty. We used Dragon Stop Motion which is an amazing application and I can already see the huge potential with it the more we play around with it.

This first test is a simple enough affair but good lord I couldn't believe how much pre production was involved as well as how time consuming it would be!

The idea was to showcase a cross section of characters and artwork I've been working on over the last year or two so I had a bunch of them printed on heavy textured stock and cut each one out with a scalpel over a number of days (aaaagh!). I then stuck tooth picks and skewers to various elements and built the little set.

We tried an initial test of the whole thing at home but the lighting was too inconsistent so we moved the whole thing to Cliona's studio in South Studios using different light sources and it worked much better.

After about 6 hours of construction and photography we finally wrapped it and sent the files to ace editor Andrew Barry who assembled and graded it and made it all look pretty and cohesive. I was so chuffed that The Vinny Club let us use the amazing song 'It's not you it OF' from the album Rocky IV Reckyrd. Check out the whole song and indeed the album, if you're a child of the 80's and loved video games it'll knock your socks off.

So anyway, have a look at all 35 seconds that took weeks to make.

Can't wait to make more animations!

Design Of The Times

Ace designer Claire O'Regan has recently launched a new online magazine/blog called Design Of The Times dedicated and inspired by all things design in both Ireland and worldwide. The site itself is beautifully designed and so far the content is excellant. I'll be checking in everyday for a read during my elvensessses.

Claire kindly did an interview with me which just went live today whereby I rattled on about all thing illustrations.

Have a look here.

Thursday 7 April 2011

Pivot Dublin



Pivot Dublin have just submitted Dublin’s bid for World Design Capital 2014 and I was delighted to be asked to contribute to create one of several covers that is being used on the document.

My submission is based on the new building on Dame Street (about which there is NOTHING on the internet anywhere, I think it might not even be there) next to City Hall.

Since I moved into my new studio on dame Street this building (with no name)  has been the main view from my window and at first I really didn't like it, (along with lots of other people it seems) but have since grown a soft spot for it namely because it looks like a big friendly robot. So hence my addition of the robot face. This represents the good parts of Dublin in hibernation while we wade through the recession for the next few years.

If anyone involved in the creation of this mysterious building (with no DOOR either) please consider adding this face to the building I think it would be lovely!

You can see lots of lovely covers by some of Ireland's leading creatives here.

Did I mention that there is nothing about this building on the internet?

Thursday 31 March 2011

Absolut Round One



Myself, Mark Wickham and Fergal Brennan are doing 7 nights of 'Unflattering Portraits' in conjunction with Absolut Vodka's 'Absolut You' nights (and the handsome lads from Synth Eastwood) over the next few weeks. Myself and Mark completed our first round of abuse on unsuspeting members of the public last Saturday night in the Chocolate Bar in the Pod.

We set up outside on a big old barrel and spent 3 hours drawing portraits of customers, taking into account their worst features and expanding on them. Sounds cruel but between us and the audience I haven't experienced as much tears of laughter while drawing in I don't know how long. Fair play to the poor subjects we were drawing they pushed us to make them worse!

I've uploaded a set on my Flickr account so check it if you have a moment.

I'll upload them as we go. We'll be in Cork, Sligo and Kilkenny over the next few weeks as well as other dates in Dublin so drop in and get yours done if your brave enough. All for free and packaged in a nice tube!

Wednesday 23 March 2011

Comic Cast!



I recently did an interview with Liam from the Comic Cast about The Lonely Beast book which is one of the features in this months episodes. If you haven't heard the Comic Cast or indeed are not even into comics I urge you to listen to this podcast on a regular basis. It's just brilliant.

The Beast on Titan!






I spent last Monday night searching the skies for Saturn with my telescope and finally found it, tiny but crystal clear, hanging in the sky looking very lonely and quiet. I managed to take a blurry photo of it but you can definitely make out the rings. I posted it on Facebook and my brother Andrew managed to clean up the photo enough to reveal Saturns biggest moon Titan to the left. If Saturn looked that cold and lonely in space, what the hell is Titan like?

Based on those fantastic Sci-Fi paintings from the 50's and 60's, I decided to transplant The Beast to this lonely rock miles from Earth. I'm sure he'd be more than happy to explore it's surface.

I also got some nice pics of the Moon too...

The painting is for my contribution to the annual United Arts Club illustration exhibition which opens tomorrow evening in Dublin and is curated by illustrator Brian Gallagher.

Venue:
United Arts Club
3 Upper Fitzwilliam Street Dublin 2

Date: 24th march 2011

Time: 7pm.

Children's Books Ireland Conference 2011!



I'm honoured to be have been invited to be a guest speaker at this years Children's Books Ireland conference along side some of Ireland's most talented illustrators and writers. It takes place on the 21st-22nd May in the National Library, Dublin. I am also very chuffed that they used The Beast for the cover of their programme and posters.

This is the event I'll be taking part in so I have to get my thinking cap on:

2.45 Picture-book Inspiration 4x4 with Emma Byrne, Chris Haughton, Chris Judge & Steve Simpson
Take four of Irelands most talented picture-book designers and illustrators then challenge then to talk about
their four favourite designers and illustrators. The catch? They have only two minutes per artist to make their case!  

Click here to find out more about the fantastic event.

Wednesday 16 March 2011

GRAPHICS UNLEASHED Tonight!

Poster for exhibition by Alan Clarke.


BLUELEAF GALLERY

 An exhibition of graphic and illustrative work by:
Alan Clarke, Brian Coldrick, Cathy Dineen, Brian Fitzgerald,
Brian Gallagher, Una Gildea, Chris Judge, Joven Kerekes,
Emmet Mullins, Padhraig Nolan, Ray Sell, Steve Simpson

The reception will be held
Wednesday, 16 March 6.00pm-7.30pm
at BlueLeaf Gallery Project Space
7 Sir John Rogersons Quay, Dublin 2
(building backs onto Windmill Lane; three blocks west of Samuel Beckett Bridge)

The exhibition opens for viewing Tuesday, 15 March
and will continue until Friday, 25 March
Viewing hours:
Weekdays: 11:30am-6:30pm
(Closed: St. Patricks Day 17 March; Sat & Sun)

Monday 7 March 2011

New Prints!



I have just added some new prints to my shop including some prints of images from The Lonely Beast book. Drop in and have a look if you have a moment.