The workload of an illustrator fluctuates. Sometimes there’s regular work aplenty, other times the source dries up for a spell, and for Manchester-based Paul Shipper childhood dreams have recently come true with a bit of help from Apple Mac technology.
Shipper has been commissioned through Lucasfilm, the film company established by legendary Star Wars creator George Lucas in 1971, to provide illustrative artwork comprising various Star Wars characters for the cover of a tin in which kids will get the Wizkids Star Wars pocket model trading card game. He is also providing illustrations for a Star Wars related book produced by Wizards of the Coast, for which initial sketches have been approved.
For Shipper, who as a child used to study the work of the original Star Wars illustrators through the iconic posters on his bedroom wall, and who even now in his spare time might sit down to paint Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones for fun, getting work from Lucasfilm was a defining moment.
He explains: “A guy called Drew Struzan did a lot of the Indiana Jones and Star Wars posters and he has been my inspiration really. I had them all on my wall but I didn’t know who had created them. Then one day I looked and they were all by him, and I thought ‘I want to do what he does’. So I’ve been chasing the career of being an illustrator, trying to make it happen and after ten years, the Star Wars thing was the defining moment. It was quite a pinnacle, even though it’s not a national billboard piece of art. It’s still significant for me – it means that my work has been under the noses of the right people.”
Shipper was on holiday in New Zealand when the chance for his big break came though. He has a regular job for GQ magazine providing an illustration every month for the film column written by AA Gill. He knew he would need to produce one of these on holiday, and so took his MacBook Pro, his Wacom tablet and reference files, along for the trip. He had produced a mock teaser poster for the fourth Indiana Jones movie and a friend saw this online and put Shipper in touch with the art director at Lucasfilm’s licensing division.
The call came to see more of his work, and Shipper was able to compile a portfolio in Aperture on his Mac, export it to PDF, and get it printed and bound in New Zealand. “A week after they received my portfolio, a job came in from them with a one week deadline. I got it done a day under the time,” says Shipper.
While Struzan and other illustrators of the era used traditional painting materials to create their artworks, Shipper has transferred the skills into a digital setting. He can and does still paint and draw in the old-fashioned way, but technology allows him to meet tighter deadlines. He can paint on his Mac using Photoshop for the initial composition and then taking that concept into Corel Painter software to produce the final artwork. The software can simulate certain classical effects, such as watercolour and oil paints, and it saves having to scan original paintings to create a digital.
The irony of using high tech computer technology to try and create illustrations with an authentic feel isn’t lost on him. “I have moved a style from traditional painting to the computer while retaining as much natural feel as possible. Nowadays, there’s not so much of a traditional feel about illustrations, it’s all very clinical. I like to make mine a bit more organic; it’s not all clean, straight lines, sometimes it’s a bit messy, but it’s like that for a reason.
“So I am using a computer that is one of the most technically advanced things available and trying to create something that’s almost the polar opposite, which is kind of weird. Everything stems back to school or at home drawing on paper, but using technology to make it more efficient, and being able to supply artwork at the click of a finger to clients all over the world. If I had kept doing traditional paintings I would not have got as much work.”
With Star Wars work on his CV, plus the GQ work and other assorted illustrations for book covers, Shipper has a burgeoning reputation, which he will take with him as he and his family emigrate to New Zealand in February. As he has already discovered though, neither the technology nor the distance will let him down there.
• www.paulshipper.com