Hay Festival- Hay Fever 2015!

This year I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to illustrate this year's Hay Fever children's programme for the Hay Festival!
It was a really exciting project to be a part of and, as the festival begins this Thursday, I thought it was about time I shared some of the art I created for it.

We settled on the idea of a group of children who travel through worlds of the imagination (via book portals, of course!) before eventually arriving at their destination- Hay!

The character designs came together pretty quickly as I wanted to stick to the types of fantasy roles children might be familiar with, so we have a ranger, a warrior and a sorceress:

I thought it would be cool to have the young explorers discovering the first book-portal on the cover, as I love the idea of forgotten sacred tomes that hold lost secrets. First I did a very quick scribble in my sketchbook to get the basic idea down and once approved I did a loose colour version.

From here I worked up the finished cover, trying to keep the enchanted feel and air of mystery!

The interior spreads came together quite quickly, the team at Hay had some suggestions for worlds the kids could travel through and I came up with the rest.

You can look at the finished programme HERE

The Hay Festival runs from the 21st to the 31st of May this year, click the links at the bottom of this post to find out more and book tickets! I'll be drawing at The Phoenix's stall on Tues 26th!

I must give thanks to Lisa Murphy and Andy Silver, who helped me out with the flat colours for these pages and both did a wonderful job!

Thanks also to Liz Payton, Tom Fickling and the team at the Phoenix and Jesse Ingham, Mary Byrne and the team at the Hay Festival for working with me on this and providing me the chance to illustrate the programme, It was a real joy!

Thanks also to my girlfriend Nikki Dyson, without whom I would have gone with an entirely different, much less fun concept- I owe you one!

RAAR!

Here's a Birthday card I drew for my mate James!

Sonic The Comic 20th Anniversary

STC Online have been doing a tremendous job of celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Sonic The Comic, the UK's excellent Sonic the Hedgehog comic which ceased production over 10 years ago.

STC Online is a fan-made continuation of the original Egmont-Fleetway published print comics, although it has had the full support and encouragement of the original creators since day 1. That support is felt very much in the latest issue, where a huge number of creators from the original and online incarnations of the comic have all shared their thoughts on it and, even better, contributed new pieces of art to the comic! Nigel Kitching and Nigel Dobbyn even collaborated alongside STC-O's Michael Corker on the lead strip which was a real treat for a big STC geek like me!

For people who aren't up on STC's long backstory there's a new comic strip being updated on a weekly basis, with contributions from both the original and new creators, that retells the entire history in brief, read it :here:

I contributed a couple of illustrations to the special- a drawing of Sonic for one of the covers as well as a panel for the catch-up strip, which was added to the site today.
Here they are:

Straw Hat

Here's yet another bit of One Piece fan-art, it's Luffy in his 'Two Years later' garb!

Zoro coloured!

Here's my drawing of Roronoa Zoro from One Piece, coloured!

Franky Mk. 2!

Hey there guys!
Just a brief update with a new bit of One Piece fan art, this time it's the new-look upgraded Franky; everybody's favourite seafaring cyborg!

Roronoa

This is a sketchbook drawing of one of my favourite One Piece characters, Roronoa Zoro!

zaksimmondshurn.co.uk is GO!

Just click the image to get whisked over to my new website, let me know what you think!

AGHAST: Live Dangerously

Hey there!
My pals in AGHAST have a new E.P. entitled Live Dangerously, I would highly recommend you check it out as it is exceptionally awesome!
Check the Facebook link below for more details

AGHAST!

Here's the cover I did for it, it took a while but I'm pleased with the results, there should be T-Shirts soon too, I'll have photos when I get my hands on one!

Sword Swingin'!

Here's a new drawing of my character Daigo, scrapping like usual!
I've been reading a bit of BERSERK! lately, if you can stomach it it's pretty incredible stuff, Miura is an absolute monster draughtsman and storyteller and he reminds you of this fact in every single panel.
This drawing is partly a result of reading lots of his action scenes: motion-blur lines ahoy!


At some point soon I'll be posting bits and pieces over at the KING ZILLA blog too, be sure to give it a look, there's some lovely work there. Cheers to Sinistar for the invite!

26!

Wahey, I turned 26 on Saturday!
This is the card my extremely talented girlfriend Nikki illustrated for me- they're Strawbearries!


Check out her site by clicking the picture, it's brilliant and is always being updated!

Whack-a-mole!

This is my Monster from a few posts back maintaining his extraordinary figure by whacking a mole and eating ice cream.

Just 'cos he's like that.

Luffy's Back!

I know he came back a week ago but here's my belated celebration of that!
One Piece has been absolutely mind-blowing lately- it took me ages to get the hint and check this manga out but I'm so glad I did, it's got the best action scenes in comics!

Ramona Again!

Here's the finished, coloured version of the sketch from last post!


Oh, and props to Bryan Lee O'Malley for making the comic series that inspired this, if you still haven't checked out Scott Pilgrim since my last post, consider this a reminder!

Tinks!

Hey, why not!
I'm off to Disneyland Paris in a couple of weeks so here's something I drew up over my lunchbreak!



I always find that Tinkerbell is portrayed in Disney's promo material as the epitomy of happiness whereas in Peter Pan she's pretty hotheaded and at times downright nasty!
This is the grumpy Tink!