Luke Pearson's Blog
April 25, 2014
Adventure Time
I did some storyboards for Adventure Time a while ago! If you are unfamiliar with the process, it basically involves taking a paragraph describing what happens in a given scene and then coming up with exactly what will happen, how it will look, how it will move and what the characters say. It’s probably the most satisfying thing I’ve gotten to do so far and I’m extremely grateful to all involved for giving me a shot. I’m hoping I’ll get to do some more in the near future.
I worked on the episodes Candy Streets and Frost & Fire alongside Somvilay Xayaphone and was responsible for about half of each one. I thought I’d share a couple of shots I’m particularly proud of, my original crappy drawing and how it looks once the designers, animators and background artists have had their way with it. I also designed the title cards, which were then painted over and made to look cool.
Hic & Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humo(u)r
I did a few strips for The Hic & Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humo(u)r Volume II: The United Kingdom Edition. This is one of them. I don’t think the other ones I did were very good so I’m not putting them online, but you can judge for yourself if you buy the book. The other comics in it are good.
Slate Book Review
I did a series of illustrations for the Slate Book Review in April 2013. It was fun getting to such a varied bunch of stuff all under one brief, but the turnaround was tight so I’ve excluded some of the ropier ones. See below each image for a link to the article or review they accompanied.
The Curious Incidence of Dogs in Publishing by Daniel Engber
Thesis Hatement by Rebecca Schuman
First We Stake Manhattan (Review of The Measure of Manhattan by Marguerite Holloway)
Perfect Game (Scott Korb’s review of Baseball as a Road to God by John Sexton)
The Way of the Egghead is Hard (Rebecca Onion’s review of Aaron Lecklider’s Inventing the Egghead)
March 2, 2014
New Republic
Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin
A couple of pieces for Germany’s SZ-Magazin, the Friday supplement of Süddeutsche Zeitung. The cover is from October 2013, the other piece is from an issue earlier in the year accompanying an interview with Cornelia Funke.
March 1, 2014
Tiny Pencil
A comic I drew for the anthology Tiny Pencil. The hook is that everything in it is drawn in pencil and I was actually really pleased to have the excuse to do this. I’m pretty happy with how it came out. I also did the drawing below which was printed over a double-page.
I think issue one has sold out now, but there have been a couple of issues since, including this cool activity box thing for kids.
Cover by Nick “Showchicken” Sheehy
Real Simple
A series of illustrations depicting temper tantrums across the ages for Real Simple magazine. You can read the article they accompanied online here. These were fun to do. Thanks to AD Alexandra Mooney.
October 10, 2013
Memory Palace
This year I took part in Memory Palace, an exhibition at the V&A based on a piece of fiction by Hari Kunzru which was interpreted and adapted by 20 designers and illustrators to make a multidimensional walk-in story type thing. I was given a passage in which the imprisoned narrator is interrogated. Please click the image below to see the whole piece. Warning, it’s really big.
I had a lot of space to play with so I decided to do a large scale comic that breaks down and depicts the passage in a ridiculously literal way. I wanted to try and describe everything the character sees and experiences as the scene progresses. To be honest I would have liked to have gone even further with the amount of panels and different trains of thought branching off from the main narrative, but for various reasons it is as it is. It probably doesn’t make loads of sense out of context (you can buy a book that has the full story in it plus information about the exhibition) but you should be able to follow it. Below are some bits I cut out for easier viewing and some more info.
From the website:
Hari Kunzru’s story is set in a future London, hundreds of years after the world’s information infrastructure was wiped out by an immense magnetic storm. Technology and knowledge have been lost, and a dark age prevails. Nature has taken over the ruins of the old city and power has been seized by a group who enforce a life of extreme simplicity on all citizens. Recording, writing, collecting and art are outlawed.
The narrator of the story is in prison. He is accused of being a member of a banned sect, who has revived the ancient ‘art of memory’. They try to remember as much of the past as they can in a future where forgetting has been official policy for generations. The narrator uses his prison cell as his ‘memory palace’, the location for the things he has remembered: corrupted fragments and misunderstood details of things we may recognise from our time. He clings to his belief that without memory, civilisation is doomed.
I felt like I’d been pretty conservative when I saw what some other people had done with the brief. But I did make it really big so that’s something. Some other contributors included Isabel Greenberg, Rob Hunter, Alexis Deacon, Stuart Kolakovic and Henning Wagenbreth who made this cool sculpture. See the full list and more information here.
Here’s my piece in situ. I was going to draw it directly on the wall but I babied out and decided to hand draw it all separately, arrange it digitally and then get it stuck on the wall as a series of giant print offs.
April 10, 2013
Covers
These are some covers I’ve done over the course of the last couple of years and for whatever reason haven’t put them on my site yet. This first one is for a young adult book called Mothership, which is about a school for pregnant teenagers in space. You can read about it here. Note: The colour was shifted to purple by the publisher at the last minute. You can see my original version here.
This one is for my Granddad’s book about Erik Bloodaxe. You can read about it and order a copy here. I was really excited and proud to get to work with him on this. He basically designed the cover for me (see his rough drawing below, alongside the final for comparison).
This is the cover for an educational science comic about Malaria, the way the parasite works and what scientists are trying to do about it. The comic itself is drawn by Edward Ross, creator of the film theory comic series Filmish and now Grow, a great autobio series about becoming a parent for the first time. The interiors were coloured by Tom Humberstone, editor of Solipsistic Pop and currently cartoonist for New Statesman.
You can read the comic in full here.
This was done for a new edition of Ian Serraillier’s The Silver Sword. It went unused in the end (the publisher opted for this more exciting version), but I’m still kind of proud of it.
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