My Life as a Pirate...
I've had quite a few emails since 'The Pirate Cruncher' was published, asking me where I get my ideas, and how I find reference.

My ideas come from all the things I experience in life. Just like everyone, the inside of my head is a mish-mash of all the places I've been, the people I've met, books I've read, films I've watched, animals I've seen, museums I've visited, conversations I've had, and dreams I can still remember when I wake up. They all get jumbled up in my head. Sometimes they emerge as daft conversations, sometimes as doodles in my sketchbook and sometimes they trickle out as ideas for a story. Everyone's head has a different jumble of ingredients, but we can all have daft conversations, draw doodles and make up stories. I'm just very lucky that I can do it for a living.

With 'The Pirate Cruncher' it was slightly different. I didn't have to make much up, because I used to be a pirate. I may not have been the usual marauding, ship-attacking, rum-guzzling, salty sea dog you might expect, but I did live and work aboard a square-rig ship for almost a year. I dressed up in old-fashioned clothes, climbed the rigging and sailed the seas. We took kids on board to educate them in the ways of the waves, drank some rum (but not too much), waved our swords occasionally, fired the cannons at nothing in particular, clambered aloft for film crews making movies and beer adverts, and lazed about on deck in the sun. So it was almost like being a real pirate, minus the looting, prosthetic limbs and gibbets.

Eventually I jumped ship in Dublin, because the ship's cook didn't like my vegetarian ways, and Dublin was quite close to my Mum and Dad's house in North Wales. but I still fondly remember my days at sea. And just to prove I'm no fibbing landlubber, here are some photos....

The 'Santa Maria' moored in Charlestown, Cornwall. The ship was actually called the Phoenix, but was rebuilt to look like Columbus' Santa Maria for the movie '1492: Conquest of Paradise'. I lived on a small bunk below decks for a few months, as we sailed between Bristol, Cornwall, London, Chatham and Brighton.

The Captain even let me steer the ship! This was sailing from Cornwall to London in March 1995. I'm using a compass to navigate which you can see in front of me, alongside the very distracting bar of chocolate. Everybody knows that pirates love chocolate. That's why they hung about in Central America, had bad teeth, big pot bellies and suffered from scurvy. Fortunately I don't have scurvy yet, and have never been to Central America.

This is me dangling aloft on the Santa Maria, rubbing tallow on the chains and tackle. Tallow is congealed lamb fat which is used to make sure all the ropes and chains and moving bits run smoothly and don't rust, and I was usually asked to do this job because I was a vegetarian and it got right up my nose. Grrr.

In the summer of 1995 we set sail for Ireland aboard the Kaskelot, and met up with another ship, the Earl of Pembroke. We made a couple of films; 'Kidnapped' (a TV movie with Armand Assante), and 'Moll Flanders' with Morgan Freeman. It was a lovely hot summer and I drank a lot of Guinness.

I got dressed up a lot and scurried about the rigging for the cameras. This is me on the bowsprit (the long bit that sticks out the front), doing nothing in particular, but if you ever see 'Kidnapped' I actually got to coil a rope on camera too. They should probably have asked a more experienced sea dog than me...

Here's what it looks like 'aloft' whilst 'furling' sails. Before I worked on the ships I wasn't too keen on heights, but after a few weeks I loved climbing the rigging, and often took my camera up with me to take snaps. "Look, no hands!" I'd say and all the proper pirates would 'tut' and tell me to get on with some furling, to stop colouring in and eat some meat. 'Eat Yer Greens!' I'd say, because pirates would've been much healthier and less prone to scurvy if they'd eaten more fruit, eaten less goat's heads, drank less rum and visited their dentist once in a while.

There be Pirates Abroad!

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I've been without the magical world-wide interweb for several weeks, since moving to the Welsh hills. That was fixed a couple of days ago, and once again I will need to show some restraint if I'm going to get any work done.

But one big thing happened while I was cut off from the world, 'The Pirate Cruncher' was published in the United States of America!! Hoorah! Or should I say "Ooooo-ArRR!"

I was sent a copy of the book a little while back, and on first glance there was something peculiar about it. Hmmmm.

Spot the Difference
(apart from the jaunty angle!)

Here's the US cover (above), and the UK cover (below)

I'm afraid there are no prizes. I just wanted to point out to the US book buying public that they're actually getting a little bit more for their money. Amazon.com has quite a few pages in it's preview, if anyone would like to 'Look Inside'.... Look here!

There are also a couple of lovely reviews. For now at least, it's got half a star more than the UK version with a full five stars, but then a couple of snippets in the book have been changed and they rhyme better. That may well be it, a quarter of a star per rhyming couplet. Or maybe it's just the extra bit of tentacle on the cover. Ooops...

And on a related note, my publisher told me that there are only a couple of hundred copies of the UK hardback left in their stock cupboard. So that's good. But if they manage to flog the lot, a paperback version will be published in the UK on the 1st June, I think.

Pirates and Monsters! Ooo-Arr!!

I thought maybe a brief introduction might be worthwhile.

I'm a freelance illustrator and concept artist living and working in Buxton, arguably the highest town in England and almost in the UK's very lovely Peak District.

I worked for eight years in the computer games industry, at Codemasters, Warthog and Eurocom, before going freelance in 2006. Stuff's been a bit mad since then, and I've worked for some fantastic clients in games, film and children's publishing. As a kid my two big goals in life were to write and illustrate my own book and to design stuff for a movie.

With those two big goals in mind, I've been working on and off for the last two years on a major movie project with Aardman Features (sooooo exciting!!), although I can't show even the teeniest morsel of work, because it's all hush hush. What isn't hush-hush is that the project is a stop-motion movie adaptation of Gideon Defoe's "Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists!" For anyone who's not read the book, try and grab a first edition while you still can! I've got three, and one of them is signed by Gideon! Woohoo!

Gideon's pirates are a daft bunch of hopeless ham-lovers who stumble across a young Charles Darwin and astound the scientific community of Victorian London with a funny looking parrot. Gideon wrote the book to impress a girl, so he deserves everybody's support.

And just to complete my life's ambition, my first picture book, 'The Pirate Cruncher' was published by Templar in September 2009. Here's the blurb from the back of the book:

I was sailing one day and what did I see?
And Island of Gold in the Scurvy Sea!
With a fiddle-de-dee,
There'll be treasure for me!
Fiddle-de-dee, across the Sea!

But there's one small thing I forgot to share-
There's also a MONSTER waiting there...

And that about sums it up. It's not a long book, it has a moral and some grown-ups might find it scary.

The launch of the book coincided with Arena's 'Pirate Party' at the Discover centre in Stratford, East London. The event was part of the Big Draw, and the place was swarming with mini-pirates drawing on every wall and floor, which were thankfully covered in paper. Some other Arena artists did some amazing work and demonstrations, including Matt Buckingham, Alex T.Smith and Adam Stower. Here's a picture I liked from the day.... I'm the funny looking fella with the pirate hat and something in my eye, and the little girl is called Siwan and is a particularly fearsome pirate of London Town. Oooo-Arrr!


So life's been pretty pirate-y for me in the last few years (you can throw in fourteen months at Eurocom working on a 'Pirates of the Caribbean' video game too), but then I used to be a pirate once, so I've got a decent excuse. One day I might even post some pictures.

But after all the pirates, it's sci-fi next! Picture book number two is in the works and it's going to be full to the brim of laser guns, aliens, robots and spaceships! Yeh!

And maybe the odd space-pirate...