Name: Richard May

Age: 27 and a bit

Location: London, UK

URL/s: www.richard-may.com & www.pixelsurgeon.com

Tell us a little bit about your background?
Decided I wanted to be a comics artist at the age of 10 (or thereabouts) and set about designing and producing an extremely embarrassing (with hindsight) teen-angst ridden fanzine called The Bomb Circle (named after, perhaps predictably, a chapter from The Wasp Factory). Continued to do comic book stuff in my spare time and finally got the attention of 2000AD editor David Bishop who liked what he saw and saw fit to mail me a few sample scripts; did that for a while but decided that an illustration degree would be the sensible choice and I'd do comics at a later date (still haven't done anything). Thought, hey, I'll be a freelance illustrator and sent loads of CDs out to as many UK editorial clients as possible. They liked my stuff. They commissioned me. They're still commissioning me. Something like that, really, excluding the (less) boring bits.

How did you start out as an illustrator and designer?
See above. Dogged persistence and a modicum of talent will get you quite far. Unfortunately, every man and his Mac is an illustrator these days, or so it would seem - have Adobe Streamline, will illustrate. Also, some art directors don't seem to have a handle on what illustration actually is anymore, and it's easy to become stuck between ill-education and old-school traditionalism. Not always a good place to be, but I'm doing ok, and I digress. I'm not really a designer, though, not a "proper" one anyway.

Your illustration style seems to be a mix between traditional and computer
based. What is your process? Straight to the computer or sketches first?
Both, and all of the above. Of course, I'll produce quick conceptual roughs for editorial jobs and the like, but as far as actually creating an image goes... I guess I just throw myself into the process with the scanner bulb flashing every five seconds, a bit of doodling there, bit of Photoshop here. Really, it's all over the place.

How has using a computer changed your illustration style?
Um, I don't know. I guess not, because I've used a computer since day one. Day one of working "professionally" that is. At university, Russell Mills and Dave McKean (etc) were huge influences; I was doing a lot of hands-on, found object assemblage and the like - lots of lush, tactile, textural, pseudo-3D stuff. Look at Neasden Control Centre's book and you'll get the idea. I do miss doing that, but the conceptual process has remained roughly the same, no pun(s) intended. Give or take a few brain cells.

You do illustration work for a lot of magazines in the UK, how do you pick
up this work and how do you find working for magazines?
I can't sit still for more than five minutes - although my physiotherapist would be happy if that was literally true - so I love the 24 hour deadline thing that comes with doing editorial illustration. Sometimes you get a few weeks, but it's usually a few days. It can be very tiring, though. I've always done stuff for non-UK magazines, although not as much as I'd like; Wired, Raygun, Sporting Goods Business, a few obscure things in China and Japan. A few album covers here and there. It's all good, I guess.

Your one third of the infamous Pixelsurgeon crew, what made you guys start
Pixelsurgeon?
See below...

What did you hope to achieve with it that other design portals weren't
already doing?
The other design portals - yours included - were (and still are with a few exceptions) great, but it did seem like the same old crowd, portal in, portal out. We just wanted to do something a bit different; even if, initially, that difference was minimal. At least our personalities were stamped all over it, and we weren't afraid of being "uncool," whatever that means - most web designers who think they're "cool" are anything but. I think we managed it, to a limited degree... we had the Women In Design thing by Rina, which I was always pleased with, even though it really should have been called Women In Web Design. Also, we were all pretty established with our respective careers when we started Pixelsurgeon, and maybe that made a difference. And we weren't all web designers. I'm still not..

Do you think the popularity of Pixelsurgeon has changed the way you guys
work on it at all?
Nope. We just banged it all onto a database and that made everything easier. Quite a few new contributors now, too, so that takes the load off a little...

What do you see happening with Pixelsurgeon in the future?
Just the usual stuff... I can't see us changing too much!

Do you have any new projects coming up that you can tell us about?
Yes, but nothing set in stone right now.

What do you know about Australian design/designers?
Unless people are shouting from the rooftops about where they come from, or unless, for example, a particular designer's work is fundamentally Australian (or wherever they live, and in whatever way) I tend not to notice. Of course, if we were interviewing somebody for Pixelsurgeon, we'd pay more attention! But otherwise... as good or as bad as any design, wherever it's from. I know that probably sounds, I dunno, stupid, but whatever... Ashley Wood's Australian isn't he? I rate him, big-time. Not really a designer though, is he, although I think we've covered that one...

Any final comments?
Thanks for having me.

Thanks Richard!