Here are a few photos from the opening of my exhibition, Pack of Heroes at Sweets Workshop! The exhibition featured the artwork that I've created for an up-and-coming card game by Adventureland Games.


If you didn't make it to the opening, the exhibition runs until the 18th of June so you still have heaps of time to check it out. Also if you liked what you saw and wanna get copy of the game as well as bragging rights for helping it get produced it is now up on kickstarter so head on over to www.packofheroes.com and follow the link!


I Would also love to thank my wonderful and super supportive friends and family who came out to the exhibition opening on Saturday. I really appreciate your support and it was fabulous to finally show you what I've spent most of this year working on!

This is me with Pack of Hero's Game Designer Phil Walker-Harding

Today it's time for the big reveal of my cover design for the up-and-coming card game Pack of Heroes from Adventureland Games. As you're probably aware I have spent the past year working on the artwork, illustration and graphic design for this game and I decided to leave the design of the game's box until very last.

It was quite tricky to select the characters that I would pick to be on the cover of the game. They had to represent the game at a glace so I ended up choosing a few of my favorites and the ones that looked the most like a group of classic comic superheroes. I then created the box art around a brand new illustration of the chosen group of heroes springing into action.


Of course a game cover wouldn't be complete without all the usual spec that go on a game cover i.e. number of players, ages it's suitable for and playing time. To compliment the illustration and really finish off the entire package I designed this information to resemble the cover of a vintage comic book, even giving it a title logo in the top left corner just like a silver age comic book!

This kinda mess can only mean one thing.... Yep, I'm getting for another exhibition.

My good friends The Drey Rollan Band are hitting the road for an east coast tour this May and I had the privilege of designing their tour poster! If they are playing in your neighborhood and you need a good old fashioned Rock 'n' Roll fix you should definitely check them out! The lovely photograph is by the super talented Nicola Daley.

So this is another blog post about my design work for the the upcoming card game Pack of Heroes from Adventureland Games. Today's post is all about The Power Cards. The Power Cards are pretty integral to the game play, they are cards drawn ever turn that allow a hero to activate certain powers they might have. From the get go I really wanted these to look great, but fairly subtle in their design as they are something you're going to see a lot of throughout the course of the game. An added challenge here was that I also wanted them to retain the same look and feel as the rest of the game.


The function The Power Cards have in the game, led me to design them to look like action panels from within the pages of a comic book. The fact that they are used across the game for all the different heroes meant the artwork had to be fairly generic and couldn't feature specific characters from the game, so I developed a generic Superhero character to feature across these cards. Lets call him SuperJim! Rather than having the action panels showing SuperJim fighting an adversary, I thought It would be cool if they showed him "Powering Up" in different ways because this is in essence the cards do for the characters in the game.

I recently dusted off my print Gocco machine again to create a set of four all new 2-colour prints for Sweets Workshop's third annual My Goodness My Gocco Exhibition.

It's time for a look at yet another character I've created for the upcoming card game Pack of Heroes from Adventureland Games. This character is called Big Top Ben, he is a member of the team Freak Show Five and I've knocked up another little animation to show his development from sketch to finished art.

A little update on the progress of the game. You'll be happy to hear that I have finished the bulk of the artwork which will feature in its own exhibition at Sweets Workshop in May, which will also launch the crowd funding campaign for the game.

I recently designed the above Business Cards from my good friends The Drey Rollan Band. I wanted the card to look like the album cover that I designed for them last year but added the graphic image of vinyl record on the back so that even if you haven't heard them play live you get a sense of their great Rock 'n' Roll / Rockabilly sound.

Speaking of seeing them play live if you haven't seen these guys play live yet go to their facebook page for a link of their upcoming shows and check them out you won't be disappointed.

For Dinner or Breakfast, Served Hot or Cold. You never know when it will strike. 

So this blog post is a little late but last year I did the above illustration for Sweets Workshop's Annual Food Fight Exhibition which had the theme Snack Attack!

I wanted the illustration to look like a Sc-Fi  movie poster from the 1950's though I also drew a lot of inspiration from the original Topps Mars Attacks Trading Cards which were released in 1962.

The pizza alien characters carrying ray-guns in the poster are something I've been doodling since I was in about the 3rd grade. I had a pencil sharpener in the shape of a slice of pizza and when I used to stand it up the arrangement of the toppings on it resembled a face.


A hand numbered, limited edition print of this poster is available now over at Sweets Workshop's Online Shop.

A Beatle! Performing live and I get to watch! No I'm not dreaming but this is the stuff dreams are made of. Tonight we got to see Ringo Starr perform with his All Starr Band at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. The All Starr Band for this tour is made up of Ringo Starr - drums, keyboards, percussion, vocals, Steve Lukather from Toto - guitar, vocals, Gregg Rolie from Santana and Journey - organ, keyboards, vocals, Todd Rundgren from Nazz, Utopia and The New Cars - guitar, harmonica, bass, percussion, keyboards, vocals, Richard Page from Mr. Mister - bass, acoustic guitar, vocals, Mark Rivera - saxophone, percussion, keyboards, guitar, vocals and Gregg Bissonette - drums, percussion vocals, who are all very talented musician in their own right so I knew we were in for a treat.

In preparation for this concert we spent the week rediscovering some of Ringo's hits with the Fab Four, some of his older solo records and his latest album entitled 2012. I have to say his first three solo records from the early 1970's are fantastic and It was great to have a reason to rediscover these as I probably haven't given them a good listen since my Beatle crazed teenage years. Sentimental Journey released in early 1970 was a record of Standards from the 1940's and 1950's covered by Ringo and arranged by a range of musicians including Maurice Gibb, Quincy Jones and George Martin, It is a fantastic album and was in a lot of cases the first place I had heard a lot of these fantastic songs. Ringo went on to release another album in 1970, Beaucoups of Blues a purely country album which has a guest appearance from the Jordanaires, Elvis'  vocal backing group and holds up as one of the finest solo Beatle offerings. Following a brief break from music he went on to release Ringo in 1973, this album would have to be my favourite solo Beatle record, because with guest appearances by John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison it kinda isn't a solo Beatle record at all!


Back to the concert, excitement among the crowd was high and Ringo didn't disappoint. He bounded onto the stage reflecting the energy of the crowd and he didn't stop, whether he was singing, drumming, singing while drumming or delivering excellent crowd interaction and banter. The setlist was amazing, Ringo belted out many of his Beatle era songs, including: Matchbox, Don't Pass Me By, Honey Don't, Boys, Yellow Submarine, I Wanna Be Your Man, Act Naturally and of course With a Little Help From My Friends. Ringo hilariously spoke of penning the lyrics for Act Naturally (the first song he ever wrote) and told how after coming up with the line, "I'm sorry that I doubted you, I was so unfair, You were in a car crash, And you lost your hair" he thought wow Lennon and McCartney had better watch out. He also prefaced Yellow Submarine by saying "If you don't like the next song I think you're at the wrong concert"  He also performed some of his solo era songs, including: Wings, Anthem and Photograph.

Of course the night was billed as an All Starr event and not to disappoint Ringo's set was interlaced with a few songs performed by the other talented musicians on stage. This ever changing stage really added to the big party atmosphere of the evening as it was almost like Ringo was programming a Classic Hits Radio station Live on Stage. Steve Lukather got to perform a few Toto Classics Including Rosana, Africa and Hold the Line, Gregg Rolie sung a great organ based version of Santana's Black Magic Woman while, Todd Rundgren sung I Saw The Light and Bang the Drum All Day, while the stand out for me was Richard Page who sung the Mr. Mister hits Kyrie and Broken Wings so beautifully and as if they were written yesterday.

Sadly the night did have to come to close with Ringo singing a lovely version of Give Peace a Chance a song by an old friend of his, John Lennon. I think this was the perfect way to end proceedings which could be summed up in six little words: Peace and Love, Peace and Love!