I am delighted to share the work of Yusuke Nagano, a Japanese born Illustrator and Art Director who has lived and worked for much of his life in Sweden. He’s one of my favourite illustrators working today and I was fortunate to briefly speak with a busy Yusuke during his recent and very successful exhibition at the Motala Konsthall in Sweden.

——

Thank so much for talking with us Yusuke, could you tell SickManSick briefly about the type of work that you do?

Many of my works are based on children, because children have had the most impact on me in my life.

Congratulations on your current exhibition at the ‘Motala Konsthall’, please could you tell us a bit about the work you are showing?

In my paintings, I portrayed dreams from my childhood, my memories and wondering about how the world would change and showed them at my current exhibition at Motala Konsthallen.  You can see my short film there as well.

You’ve mastered a variety of creative endeavors during your career. I know of your passion for drawing and I really admire the diversity within your studio and personal illustration work and also in particular how the energy is translated into your animation work.

Does this type of transition feel natural and what difficulties did you discover in this kind of process?

Through my long career as an illustrator, I have had contact with various kinds of people from different creative areas, which influenced my style of work.  I was affected by how musicians, designers and dancers around me felt and saw things.  I think that these various influences are reflected in my work.

We’d love to see your work here in London in the future, Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, we wish you all the very best,

Thank you Yusuke!

Japanese version

このたびはインタビューをお受けいただきましてありがとうございます。ではまず簡単に長野さんご自身について、そして長野さんの作品のタイプについてご紹介願います。

僕の作品の多くは子供が主体になっています。それは自分が生きていた中で、一番インパクトがあつたせいかっだったからです。

このたびの’Motala Konsthall’のご盛況、誠におめでとうございます。今回その展覧会ではどのような作品を展示されていらっしゃいますか？

Motala Kosthallen では、子供のころの思い出またその時、見た夢、それプラスこれからどんな形に世の中が変わっていくのだろうか、という疑問を絵にしたものを展示しました。それにShort Filmなどです。

私の知るうえで、長野さんは過去にさまざまな独創的な試みに精通されてこられました。
長野さんの絵画に対する情熱を存じ上げており、スタジオや個人のイラストレーションの作品の多様性、そしてまた特に例を挙げると、それらの努力がどのようにしてアニメーション作品へと変えられているかということについて大変敬服しています。

この様な変化は自然だとお感じになられますか、そしてこれらの過程でどの様な困難がみうけられましたか？

僕はイラストを長い間、描いていたのでいろいろな人たちと仕事をしての経験がたぶん生かされていると思います。僕にとって僕の周りにいる絵描き、音楽家、デザイナー、ダンサーなど彼らから物の見方、感じ方、心を動かされることがありそれが作品の方向性につながっている可能性があるとおもいます。

先生の作品をロンドンでお目にかかれることを楽しみにさせて頂いています。今回のインタビューをお受け下さりありがとうございます。先生のますますのご発展をお祈り申し上げます。

ありがとうございました

Thank you so much to Hitomi Sato for doing a great job with the translation work.

Please check out more of Yusuke’s work at www.yusuke.nagano.nu and you can also purchase a selection of his illustration work at www.then.se

Rich.

Zoey is an illustrator who has also just graduated from the London College of Communication. Her work specialises in image making with an additional twist of embroidery. She draw’s inspiration from every day life, nature or musical references.

After graduating, Zoey has completed a three month internship with UKUrbanCulture and plans to continue to seek exciting placements, internships or freelance work. Her ideal plan would be to design alongside the music industry as she hopes to achieve this in years to come.

You can check out more of Zoey’s work at www.zoeyhardwick.co.uk and follow her on twitter @zoeyhardwick

Paul Crump is a Graphic Designer based in London and a recent graduate from the BA Graphic and Media Design course at the London College of Communication.

Paul is a self-proclaimed ‘versatile perfectionist’ with a keen eye for detail and he produces clean, well structured design and graphics. Every element of his work is well informed and carefully thought through and he strives to challenge existing formats in an attempt to make them more engaging and eye-catching to the viewer.

During his time at university he also worked with Alexander McQueen and joined WhyNotAssociates as an intern straight after completing the BA course.

It (WhyNotAssociates) was a great experience working in a multi-disciplinary studio, any questions you had they were happy to help and let you work in the way that suits you best. The feedback given was very helpful to feed into my own practice.

At the moment I’m working on the identity for the textile designer Finchittida Finch who recently graduated from the Chelsea College of Art and Design.

I can vouch for his meticulous and strong work ethic and this has been recently rewarded with a First Class Honours degree and features on both the Creative Review and Grafik Magazine’s ‘Great Graduates’. Paul is pushing on with this momentum and has big plans around the corner:

In the future I would like to experience working in New York. It’s a place I love visiting and has a completely different atmosphere to London. A job at Pentagram would be amazing. Just working alongside some of the designers there would be a dream come true.

Paul has also recently setup partnerships with two other recent graduates as part of DIVIDEBYTHREE in order to push their work further as part of a team.

To find out more behind the projects featured check out www.paul-crump.com.
Twitter: @paul_crump

Rich.

New large illustration piece in the same theme of work I exhibited as part of my degree show.
“Nothing is more real than nothing” is a quote taken from Samuel Beckett’s 1951 novel ‘Malone Dies’.

‘Nothing is more real than nothing’
Limited run
70x100cm
by Rich Sheehan

Full passage: ”I don’t like those gull’s eyes. They remind me of an old shipwreck, I forget which. I know it is a small thing. But I am easily frightened now. I know those little phrases that seem so innocuous and, once you let them in, pollute the whole of speech. Nothing is more real than nothing. They rise up out of the pit and know no rest until they drag you down into its dark. But I am on my guard now.”

Take a closer look below:

You can check out more of my work in the art, design and illustration sections on SickManSick in the categories menu.

Rich.

In my first tutorial I’d like to share some of the techniques I use when creating a basic digital illustration in Photoshop. I hope what follows gives you a glimpse of my process and although quite straightforward you may find something useful. “You should be doing this in Illustrator!”, I hear you moan… I know, I know, but for me this process is more free and less fiddly for something so quick. I do a lot of digital based work and the software can open up unlimited avenues to explore but I prefer to keep it simple, so let’s start at the beginning.

I use OS X, Photoshop CS4 and a Wacom Bamboo drawing tablet.

Go Big:

Whatever the purpose for your illustration I recommend always setting up your canvas at a larger than needed size- this gives you maximum flexibility and control in refining your work and secures a higher quality finish to your final piece.

As the purpose for this is simply a demonstration- converted to a free desktop and iPhone/iPad wallpaper (Links at the end), I will set up my canvas at landscape A3 dimensions to begin with. I stick with 300dpi resolution as it’s the standard for print and will retain that quality.

Sketch:
On a new layer, I begin by sketching out the basic shapes of the composition. I use a basic round brush, Hardness 100%, Spacing 1%, with Pen Pressure control, Other Dynamics>Opacity Control>Pen Pressure selected and quickly sketch up the bird pose. This brush is a very simple set up and will essentially be what I use throughout, the Spacing and Hardness setting will give me smooth, clean and crisp lines to work with.

Once I have the basic pose laid out, I drop the Opacity of the sketch down to 30%, this acts like tracing paper and will give me enough information to then draw over more refined lines to better shape up the bird on a new layer (Shortcut Shift + Apple + N). This stage shows what is and what’s not working for the pose and you can begin to easily tweak the composition- I went through several to nail the ideal one!

Cut Backs:
I find drawing like this with the Wacom still gives me problems in executing very precise lines. My drawing surface is between A5/A6 in size and so traditional techniques like moving your pen across the page from the momentum of the elbow rather than the wrist still applies but can be awkward. Here I find cut backs useful, particularly in finding that ideal line and refining sharp edges as below.

Brush setup used again is a basic round brush, Hardness 100%, Spacing 1%, with Pen Pressure control and Other Dynamics deselected. I skip between the Brush (Shortcut B) and Eraser (Shortcut E) and draw then cut back (erase) to achieve the ideal line weight and finish- (this is where Adobe Illustrator is ideal and reduces this hassle, see next tutorial.)

I add detail by decreasing the brush size and rotating the canvas (Shortcut R) so I can find a better angle to work into.

Set up a Palette:
On a new layer, dropped behind the refined line work (Shortcut Apple + [ ), I select several greyscale tones from dark to light and paint them away from my work area. On another new layer, I begin to roughly add in the light values to give the character consistent tone values, using ALT as a shortcut for the Eyedropper tool whilst working with the brush selected, to pick the tones from the palette.

Colour:
I pick a blue colour for the bird and change the layer style to Overlay and begin to block in the bird.
Here I can just focus on getting the colour I want and not have to worry about tonal values as the work has already been done.

I switch the layer mode to Normal once completed and zoom in to tidy and check for any missing chunks or mistakes I have made before switching it back to Overlay.

I copy this layer (Shortcut Apple + J) and tweak the Opacity of the copied layer to give the right amount of impact I want the colour to have. Duplicating this Overlay layer adds vividness to your chosen colour.

I decide the linework is too dark for the piece and so by holding Apple and clicking on the layer icon of the Linework layer, I select all the information on that layer and it will only allow me to work within the line work area. I choose a dark blue and quickly paint over the entire area selected.

Final Touches:
I increase the Canvas Size (Image > Canvas Size) and tweak the composition.

Every element drawn in the piece is on a separate Layer and it helps so much in giving you the maximum flexibility in changing and tweaking your composition. I also have a habit of duplicating layers and hiding them in case I want to revert back to it later.

I add a block yellow background and then a gradient on a new layer. I also add some type which I’ve then Rasterized, warped the Perspective and then drawn and cut back into as previously shown to rough it up a bit.

I duplicate the linework layer and fill in to make it a block silhouette shape and through the FX menu on the Layers window I select a stroke at 32px and apply a similar stroke to the fly, giving them a white outline.

Again for the fly trail I draw and then cut back into it with the eraser to give it the appearance of a dotted line. At any stage you can freely select layers and work back into any aspect of your piece and what I tend to use a lot is hitting (Shortcut D), this reverts your brush colours to Black and White at anytime and (Shortcut X) switches between the two colours selected. The Lasso tool (Shortcut L) is also a neat way of selecting areas of your drawing that you need to move or rescale without having to redraw them again from scratch. Isolating every element of the drawing in it’s own individual layer allows you to easily tweak and change every aspect and detail of the piece with much less hassle than piling it all on one layer.

I add a couple of extra highlights and expressions on another final layer and there you have it.

Free Wallpaper Download:  1400×900  1280×800  iPhone  iPad

(Right Click > Save As)

Rich.

p.s I’ll be sharing some of my work processes in Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects over the coming months so if you found this useful let us know by posting a comment below.

I went down to the MA Publishing student’s exhibition at The Book Club in East London last Wednesday- ‘Publishing Challenge’ showcased new self-published books and magazines from the students at LCC.

The work on display was excellent and the night also coincided with the launch of the ABC Book Project.

There were some very interesting presentations, highlighting the highs and lows of making the work on display, including the painstakingly hand screen printed cover for each copy and this was followed by an auction of the final ABC book- the book, signed by the illustrators went for £75 and this will go towards the other great fundraising work ABC has been doing with the British Red Cross.

Keep up to date for more news on the ongoing project here, ABC Project.

Rich.

Next Wednesday is an exhibition by MA Publishing students from LCC- a celebration of the all things printed and bound.

As part of this will be the launch of the ABC Book Project which I was involved in earlier this year. I was one of 26 illustrators each contributing an illustration of a designated letter of the alphabet with a short written paragraph/poem to accompany it.

Really excited to see the finished article so please come down to The Book Club and check out the event!

From the LCC website:

Date: Wednesday 20 July 2011
Time: 6.30pm onwards
Venue: The Book Club, 100 Leonard Street, London, EC2A 4RH

Are you a designer, illustrator, photographer or photojournalist who has created a book or magazine?

If so, LCC MA Publishing students – the New Publishers 2011 group – invite you to participate in an exhibition and Pecha Kucha night to celebrate new self-published printed books and magazines.

If you’d like to take part contact newpublishers2011@gmail.com or visit www.publishingchallenge.com for more info.

Rich.

The Private View was last night for the LCC Graphic & Media Design: Illustration degree show at LCC. It was packed out and I hope everyone enjoyed it! It runs until next Friday 8th July and a full post is to come on the show and about this new work.

I’m exhibiting four different framed pieces including a new illustration print.
Here is a preview of that new one, packed full of detail and referencing dreams, nightmares, western and eastern mythology and folk tales. I have produced a limited number for sale in the original black and white and four other colourways; orange, pink, green and blue on heavyweight 250gsm Parchmarque paper.

Thank you to those who picked up a print last night-

A new online store is in the works and hopefully will be ready to go soon, in the mean time drop me an email- rich@sickmansick.co.uk for more info about the show and the prints.

Rich.

It’s my degree show private view this Thursday!

The exhibition goes on for a about a week but please come to check out the great work from all the different pathways. The uni is right by the island in Elephant & Castle- if you come out of the Shopping Centre Tube Station it’s opposite- you can’t miss it.

If you’d like to come on Thursday please RSVP (essential) with your names to events@lcc.arts.ac.uk

Info from the LCC Site:

Private view, Thursday 30 June
Includes work by BA (Hons) FdA & ABC Dip Animation, ABC Dip 3D Modelling and Animation, BA (Hons) & FdA Design for Graphic Communication, BA (Hons) & FdA Digital Media Design, BA (Hons) & FdA Games Design, BA (Hons) Graphic & Media Design, FdA Graphic and Spatial Communication, & BA (Hons) & FdA Media Practice students; BA (Hons) Graphic Product Innovation students.

All Press and Private Views by invitation only 6 – 9pm

RSVP (essential) and all enquiries: LCC Events, events@lcc.arts.ac.uk

We welcome children of all ages to LCC to view the exhibitions. Children under the age of 16 will need to be accompanied by a responsible adult at all times and have written permission to enter the building. For more information please email: events@lcc.arts.ac.uk or phone 020 7514 6550.

The shows run from 11 April until 8 July 2011, 10am – 7pm (Mon-Fri), 10am-3.45pm (Sat), closed Sun.

All exhibitions take place at London College of Communication.

Get live updates via Twitter @LCCLondon or by following the #LCCRA hashtag.

Hope to see you there,

Rich.

I’ve hit a bit of a lull in terms of getting the content I’ve been making up here on SickManSick- but rest assured there are exciting projects in the pipeline.

It’s been a very busy few months- I’ve recently finished up some client work with a Martial Arts company and I’ve just graduated from the London College of Communication on the BA (Hons) Graphic & Media Design course and so I’m busy preparing for the final degree exhibition- the private view is on June 30th 2011 at LCC in Elephant & Castle. I’ll create a separate post advertising this.

In the down time I’ve been working on some new logos and mini schemes.

- you can follow me @Rich_Sheehan

I am also in the process of setting up an online store where all being well you can purchase some original artwork, prints and cool creative things in the future through the site, although I’m still working on the themes and schemes in the mean time-

I hope to have it up and running in the next couple of weeks.

Until then, I have to get back to preparing for the final show…!

Rich.