Morality Test Illustrations for BBC Lab

Thirty three illustrations in two weeks..... yep, this was a real 'nose to the grindstone' job but also incredibly rewarding. I had to illustrate the scenarios for thirty three different questions to gauge your sense of morality for BBC Lab. You can take the test, see how moral you are and view all of the illustrations HERE. This was a great job and I really enjoyed stripping the images back and working on producing a strong compositional picture that helped enhanced the text for the reader. Here are a sample of eleven of the illustrations.

75 Peters

To celebrate the 75th birthday of Sir Peter Cook, 75 artists and designers were asked to create a portrait of the great British Architect to help raise money for charity. The exhibition is taking place in Brisbane, Australia but the auction for the pieces will take place online. You can check in and look at the auction by signing up at the following link where you'll also be able to see the full list on artists involved. http://theadamandeveprojects.com/75peters

Here is my piece for the show built up layer by layer.

MASKS opens at Nobrow Gallery, London

On Thursday 15th September, Masks opened to the general public and the launch night was a blast. Thank you to everyone who attended and a special thanks to Sam and Al at Nobrow for hosting the event, Adrian, James, Natasha, Ann Lou and Joe for being such stars helping me ready the show, Nick White and Laura Beckett for looking after me in their lovely home all week, Sahar Freemantle for her beautiful hats, Felt Mistress for the incredible and gigantic felt versions of Mr Fish, Taimatsu Maru and Neko Mata from the Bento Bestiary and lastly, my father, Colin Newman for the fantastic work he put into making the Masks come to life in 3D. Hopefully this is just the first of many projects with him in the future. The prints from the show are available from Nobrow. Below are some pictures from the night and some press reviews I've found from around the interwebs.

As the show is a part of the London Design Festival it has been gaining some great press. Here are some snippets and quotes.

This quote is from a blog called 'I am the Noble Savage'. I'm flattered beyond belief.

"Newman’s evocation of primitivism, however, is also layered with a retroactive sense of futuristic fascination. Weird, wily faces are composed with a repetitive mechanical energy reminiscent of Italian Futurism, the graphic rigor of Russian Constructivism and the clunky horror of nineteen-fifties American science-fiction monsters in a faded pulp comic palette. Symmetry offers no solace in these images, at once remarkable reminders of the highly organized aesthetics of the uncivilized and machined abstractions of ritualistic horror."

-Jamil, (iamthenoblesavage.com)

You can see more pictures and writings of the show on 8 and 2 (a blog by Yu Fujiwara), the Nobrow website and Its Nice That (which is where the video below comes from). Thanks to everyone for supporting the show.

LDF Special: Ben Newman from It's Nice That on Vimeo.

Life and Fate for BBC Radio 4

I was asked by creative agency Devilfish to create a bold, Russian-style poser to advertise the upcoming BBC Radio 4 dramatisation by Kenneth Branagh of Vasily Grossman's novel 'Life and Fate', which was so controversial at its time of publication that it was banned. Some say it was the only book to ever 'be arrested'.
Once the poster images were designed, Devilfish approached me about the idea of creating an animation to advertise the radio show on BBC television. I suggested the fantastic Wonky Studios. I worked as character and element designer on the animation and Wonky did an amazing job of storyboarding and animating this 30 second promo, just watch the video below to see for yourself. Thanks to Devilfish and Wonky for all their hard work. It looks great! Daniel Binns was the animator on this project check out his site HERE.

Credits:
Agency: Devilfish Creative
Senior partner: Richard Holman
Creative director: Lee Edwards
Designer: Ben Newman @ Pocko

Production/ animation company: Wonky Films.

ABSOULT VIS10NS Project

During the last week of August, I was fortunate enough to be asked to fly out to Dublin and join nine other artists in the ABSOLUT VIS10NS project which was being curated by The Small Print. I was part of a team of very talented folk from a wide scope of the creative spectrum. We all had to customise an 8ft fibre glass Absolut vodka bottle each and we all had a blast. I'd like to say a huge thank you to Absolut, the fantastic Small Print crew and all the awesome creatives for making my week in Dublin so incredible. Below are some shots of my final bottle design (you can see the full set of bottles HERE on the Creative Review website).

Here is a shot of me working on the bottle in the final stages.
Finally, here is a great 7 minute mini-documentary about the creation of the bottles and footage from the launch night which we were all flown out to on the 7th September. FYI, I'm the one who keeps waving all the time.

ABSOLUT Vis10ns from THE SMALL PRINT on Vimeo.

Artists included in the project were Ben Newman (UK) / BRENB (IRL) / Celestine Cooney (IRL) / DALEK (US) / Linda Brownlee (IRL) / Mario Sughi (ITA) / Niels Shoe Meulman (NL) / Rilla Alexander – RINZEN (OZ) / Steve Alexander – RINZEN (OZ) / The London Police (UK)

3D Masks Sneak Preview

Here are the first glimpses of two of the three 3D masks that I have collaborated on with my father for the MASKS show (Facebook users can RSVP here) that opens on the 15th September in London at the Nobrow gallery. The show will run until the 11th November. My Dad and I talked at length about how to get these image to work three dimensionally and with a spot of elbow grease, luck and determination, I am pleased to say that I couldn't be happier with the end results. My Pops has really out done himself. He cut, drilled and chiseled the wood perfectly and it was up to me to paint and varnish the buggers. Just a few tweaks left and then they will be back at his work space for gluing before they are shipped to London for hanging. Exciting times.See here for exhibition details during the London Design Festival.

Masks Exhibition and Felt Mistress Sneak Preview

September 15th marks the opening of my new solo show 'Masks' at the Nobrow Gallery in London which will feature my mask designs from the last six months. The show opens just in time for London Design Festival and you can read more details on their website by clicking HERE. To make the event even more special I have enlisted the help of some very talented friends. In fact one of the collaborations is with my Father, Colin Newman but more details and pictures of that project nearer to the exhibition.

With the show just over a month and a half away, I can contain myself no longer as I'm very, very, very excited to preview photos of my collaboration with the extremely talented and very lovely, Felt Mistress. This is a dream project for me as back in 2008, I was exhibiting alongside Felt Mistress in a Christmas show and completely fell in love with her monsters and her ability to visualise and create these incredible beasts in three dimensions and only using felt! Anyway, three years later and to much anticipated excitement, I've finally gotten to team up with her and the results are amazing. Felt Mistress is creating three Yokai from my book, The Bento Bestiary (which is available to buy HERE) and today you can see sneak preview shots of the terrifying Taimatsu Maru. YEAH!This bad boy even has a big blue tail. SHAZAM!
Boy oh boy, he is a handsome devil!

'Masks' featured in Guardian

A couple of weeks back, my Masks series was featured the the Guardian newspaper. Which came as quite a surprise..... a very good one. These prints along with a whole host of other prints and exciting projects will be exhibited at the Nobrow gallery from the 15th September. You find more details HERE.

The Science of BBQ for Wired

An illustration for an article titled 'How to BBQ with Science' in the famous 'how to' section in Wired magazine.

Totem Tape for Betty and Dupree

Available now! My Totem Decorative Tape is for sale on the Betty & Dupree website for £4.95. Click HERE to purchase the tape or click HERE to check out their fantastic shop.

'Masks' Update

Pretty busy at the moment but I thought I'd stop and share the latest Mask designs from last week.

Ghost of Gone Birds - Bishop's O' O'

This is my illustration of the now extinct Bishop's O' O' for the 'Ghost of Gone Birds' exhibition and will be available at the shows as a 21x21 cm screen print of 20 on wood and a 42x42 cm Giclee print of 40 on a 310g fine art felt paper. The aim is to help raise awareness and money for bird preservation societies so that hopefully we can stop more species of bird from becoming extinct. The first of a number of Ghost shows start this week at the Liverpool School of Art and Design on Thursday 19th and Friday 20th May. Over 80 artists and designers are taking part in the project including Ralph Steadman, Jamie Hewlett and many more.

Free wallpapers available at The Fox is Black

Head over to The Fox is Black to download two free desktop wallpapers designed by me. Click HERE to pimp your screen.

Pocko

A little illustration for my agent, Pocko. All of the Pocko illustrators have designed a small image that works as a signature at the bottom of their emails. The images rotate at random from email to email. Pretty neat, huh?

NSPCC Foyer Images

A little while back myself and numerous other illustrators were asked by the NSPCC to create images to brighten up their foyer for visitors. We had to choose from a variety of words and I picked 'tiger' and 'robot'. A simple but incredibly fun brief. Below are the final illustrations and some shots of the illustrations hung in the foyer.

Here are some shots of the illustrations hung in the foyer. Thanks to Ashley May for his involvement in the project and for send the photos over.