I had a grand time in the two weeks running up to Christmas, partly due to the kids’ excitement, and partly because I got to spend most of my work-time drawing and painting. I was doing a painting for my sister as a present – both for Christmas, and for the apartment she got (after much ado) a while…
Great news from (and for) Niamh Sharkey. She’s teamed up with Brown Bag Films and Disney to create a series about her characters, the Hugglewugs, entitled ‘The Happy Hugglemonsters’. And it’s going to be broadcast on Disney Junior in over 150 countries worldwide. Cathal Gaffney of Brown Bag said, “We are delighted to announce the production of this series,…
This is a cool little idea for an app: one that tells a story of Santa getting ready for Christmas, then lets you write a letter by hand to him on the screen. You can check out the ad here. I have to confess to being biased on this one – the music for this ad was composed by…
With ‘Merciless Reason’ due out in March, we’re on the last stretch before it goes to print. The copy edits are pretty much complete, I’m working on the illustrations for the chapter icons at the moment, the team at Random House should have the page layouts done up before Christmas . . . and the cover is finished. I…
I still take on illustration jobs and private commissions, but it’s rare enough that I get the time to do some decent painting, so when a guy I owed a big favour to asked me to do an A3 poster of a role-playing game he’d run with his mates, based in the Star Wars universe, I thought I’d record…
Children’s Book Festival has come to a close, and I’m starting to catch up on all the things that have piled up on the desk while I’ve been running around like a blue-arsed fly, and shouting at defenceless children. One of the things I’ve got to swot up for is the Green Inking Comic Event this Saturday. I’ll be…
My brother sent me this and I thought it was pretty cool, so I’m sticking it up here. Somebody’s built a life-size motorcycle that looks remarkably like Flash, one of the ancient, living machines known as engimals that appear in the Wildenstern Saga. You can see Flash on the cover of ‘Ancient Appetites‘. ‘Merciless Reason’, the third Wildenstern book,…
On the 10th of October, Phil Hogan, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, announced that the Library Council (An Chomhairle Leabharlanna) was being dissolved. Bad as this news was for the council, it was a far worse omen for the future of the nation’s libraries. Particularly given the burnt-earth policy that is causing libraries to close…
If you’ve been to any of my talks, you may already have heard me say that, for me, the definition of a ‘Young Adult’ book is something that appeals to both young and adult readers. Looking at it this way, you could say that most of our entertainment – whether it’s written down or shown on-screen – is ‘Young…
When it comes to technology, I often think companies with powerful new applications can fail to see the difference between ‘Can we?’ and ‘Should we?’. As private companies develop increasingly bottomless resources for storing our most personal information, we, their customers, should constantly be asking how much of this is really necessary, and how much we are giving away…