Frankie is a student at University of Birmingham where she manages student radio station Burnfm.com. She has worked for the BBC, Gigbeth and Created in Birmingham. She also keeps a blog, which she uses to write about her ‘gift of the blag’ and her misunderstood fascination with YouTube.
You are currently browsing Helen Byrne’s articles.
Tags: bbc, created in birmingham, frankie ward, gigbeth, youtube
Words: Claire Spencer
Photography: Jannica Honey
Described as ‘a real sleuth’ by veteran journalist and newsreader Jon Snow, the future looks bright for Natalie, 22.
“Jon Snow is amazing. He lures you in with his jazzy ties, and then you realise how much of a pro he is,” remarks Natalie Whelan on one of her key inspirational figures. “You can tell he still enjoys it.”
The much-loved Channel 4 anchor was impressed after seeing one of her reports on a student house party that ended in chaos after the police sent in the heavy squad. “I wasn’t actually at the house party,” she admits. “I had been out, and lots of the roads were closed around where we lived.”
“The next day, there was a lot of talk on Facebook about the party and what had happened with the police. I managed to track down footage of police violence and photographs of injuries sustained by students, as well as comments from the police and the boys who organised the party. It was all a bit of a rush to get the story to air [on student station LSTV], but it was worth it. It was the story everyone was talking about.”
Natalie never had a moment of realisation that pushed her into journalism. But her love of writing and inherent fascination with the news made it a natural progression. “When the rolling news channels broke news of disasters I would watch transfixed for hours,” she recalls. “Journalism was a great way to combine the two.”
She studied Broadcast Journalism at the University of Leeds, followed by placements with the BBC, MediaGuardian and Sky News, which she describes as “a nice way of knowing what you’re letting yourself in for.” Luckily her time at Sky News led to paid work.
The reel she submitted to the 4Talent Awards included various reports from Essential, her news programme on Leeds Student Television. “I feel they represented me not only as a reporter, but as a producer,” she asserts. “I also submitted some blogs I’ve written for MediaGuardian online. It’s always important to move with technology.”
Tags: broadcast journalism, channel 4, journalism, mediaguardian, Natalie Whelan, sky news
Words: Anna Lord
Photography: John Stewardson
The term multi-talented is bandied about a lot, but after creating weird and wonderful theatre, appearing in EastEnders and teaming up with Peep Show’s Super Hans, 27-year-old Oliver Lansley certainly qualifies.
“It’s quite amusing, but very flattering,” is Oliver’s take on being officially dubbed multi-talented. As an actor, writer and director, he certainly boasts the necessary credentials. He started out performing on stage before setting up his own theatre company, Les Enfants Terribles.
“I always thought one of the great things about theatre was the fact that anyone could create it,” he explains. “Essentially, you just need a space to perform and an audience – unlike TV or film, which is pretty hard to create on your own.” The formation of the company inadvertently led him into playwriting: “Primarily because I couldn’t afford the rights to put on other people’s plays,” he shrugs.
The theatre of Les Enfants Terribles is at once magical, whimsical, sinister and grotesque. It has garnered comparisons to Tim Burton, Roald Dahl and Lewis Carroll. With their most recent production, The Terrible Infants, Oliver wanted to create “a show that makes adults feel like children.”
“The stories I remember from being a kid are the ones that scared, thrilled and excited me. I think storytelling – and to a certain extent, theatre – is about eliciting an emotional response. When creating something for children, you’re trying to work with bold emotions that they can relate to: fear and wonder. The combination of magical and sinister is a natural one, plus I think the things that tend to excite us the most also scare us a bit.”
As well as writing, directing and performing in his own creations, Oliver has substantial experience of acting on stage and screen elsewhere. He has appeared in Holby City, Doctors and EastEnders. “The thing about working on those shows,” he admits, “is that no matter what other work you do, your friends and family will never be quite as excited as they are by you being on EastEnders.”
A career highlight for Oliver was playing the lead role in Greek, a play written by his hero Steven Berkoff. “Steven’s always pushed his own creative vision,” reflects Oliver admiringly. “He has a bold voice, writes, directs, acts and is very accomplished at all of them.” He could just as easily be describing himself with that statement: Oliver Lansley feels like a young Berkoff in the making, with recently published play Immaculate no-doubt the first of many.
For the time being, Oliver is concentrating on his TV work. He’s busy developing Whites, a comedy for the BBC with Matt King [Super Hans from Peep Show], based on King’s experiences as a chef in a Michelin starred restaurant. And after filming a pilot back in 2006 for Channel 4, ITV2 picked up his comedy series about DJs, FM, co-written with actor and director Ian Curtis.
Being pitched as The Office meets Peep Show, the series stars Chris O’Dowd [The IT Crowd] and Kevin Bishop [Star Stories]. “We’re just finishing off the final scripts at the moment, and start shooting towards the end of November,” he can reveal. “It’ll go out in February: it’s a very exciting time at the moment.”
Tags: acting, IT Crowd, les enfants terribles, Oliver lansley, Peep Show, Super Hans
Words: Suchandrika Chakrabarti
Photography: Jannica Honey
Inspired by the natural world, this 25-year-old designer’s beautifully intricate patterns make her textiles and wallpapers true collectors’ items.
Based in Aberdeen, Johanna Basford Designs has been producing hand-printed wallpapers, fabrics and ceramics since 2006. It’s a one-girl show, with 25-year-old Johanna co-ordinating both the financial and creative affairs.
There’s nothing like a little help from your nearest and dearest, though: “I have very tolerant friends and family, who over the years have been accountants, web designers, photographers, models and box packers,” she grins.
Referencing the nature that surrounded her as she grew up on a fish farm in rural Aberdeen, Johanna’s delicate, leaf-like drawings are embellished with flowers and vines that twine together to become dense, baroque-style patterns.
“As I child I scrawled on the walls; on absolutely everything,” she admits sheepishly. “I drove my parents mad. But we weren’t really allowed to watch TV, and I think that helped feed my imagination.”
Running her own business, she confides, is a challenge: “When I first set the company up, I didn’t know just how much time it would take up. Getting that balance between the two sides is a difficult thing.” She must be doing something right though, as she won the Shell Livewire Award for Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2006, as well as securing a welcome loan from The Prince’s Trust.
Although the design side is Johanna’s passion, she’s enjoying the independence that comes from being self-employed. “You’re in charge of the direction your work is going in,” is her take on it. “The minute you start working for someone else, it can be quite restrictive.”
Just a few months after graduating with a first in Printed Textiles from Dundee of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Johanna was already attending the glitzy opening of DKNY’s new Bond Street store – freshly kitted out in her wallpaper, after she won the New Designers showcase at London Fashion Week, fittingly in association with Wallpaper* magazine.
Apart from her products being stocked from Aberdeen to Brighton, she also takes on commissions, one recent example being a handmade set of limited-edition silk-screened labels for local brewery Brewdog.
Her one piece of advice? Don’t get chickenpox just before your Award photo-shoot: “They’re going to have to Photoshop that out,” Johanna notes wryly. “Oh, and if everyone else is jumping on a bandwagon, do the exact opposite. Carve out a niche, differentiate yourself from the crowd, and dare to be different.” We’d expect nothing less from our Wildcard winner.
Tags: Johanna Basford, textile design, wallpaper
Words: Nick Lockey
Photography: Elizabeth Gordon
World-beaters in the brave new world of Alternate Reality Gaming, the Hon brothers’, aged 26 and 29, produce work that has re-defined cross-platform media.
“Movies are great,” begins Dan Hon ardently. “They suck you into a story and can affect you in profound ways, but it’s only ever a selfish experience. You never learn anything about the guy sitting next to you.”
His dig at the cinematic arts seems almost sacrilegious given that he’s currently tucking into scrambled eggs in the members’ bar at Bafta, but his infectious enthusiasm for his craft makes it easy to forgive. After all it’s not every day you get to share breakfast with a creator of worlds.
Together with his brother Adrian, Dan helms Six to Start, one of the leading ARG (Alternate Reality Game) design companies. Since the firm’s 2007 conception they’ve spun their complex narrative webs for an enviable client list including Penguin, Channel 4, Disney and the BBC.
But it’s their players who are the real heroes – a supporting cast of thousands that would make Cecil B DeMille weep with envy. Sucked into these experiences through fiendishly conceived ‘rabbit holes’ left in seemingly innocuous places, ARG players quickly find themselves following breadcrumb trails of mysterious clues through complex, multi-layered worlds.
But these aren’t virtual environments or video games; they are experiences that play out over extremely familiar spaces: on popular online platforms, in real-world locations, through ringing payphones, blogs and classified ads. It’s as if you’re experiencing everyday reality but through a warped fantasy filter where anything is possible. “If you want to get to know a particular character,” explains Dan, “just pick up a phone and talk to them.”
Six to Start’s own story is pure ARG narrative in itself. We join our two heroes at key moment in their story: Dan is studying law at Cambridge, Adrian working on his PhD, both happily trudging the path of high-powered inevitability when suddenly they stumble upon a tear in the fabric of reality.
Whilst watching an online trailer for the Spielberg film AI: Artificial Intelligence Dan spots a curiosity in the credits – a young woman named Jeanine Salla, billed as the film’s ‘Sentient Machine Therapist’. Googling this bizarre job title, Dan falls down a rabbit hole and finds himself in the belly of The Beast – the most celebrated ARG of all time.
“It was such an adrenalin rush,” enthuses Dan: “It was like being there at the birth of cinema, a Wild West with no rules.”
Dan and Adrian’s role in co-moderating The Cloudmakers – a community of players collaborating to unlock the secrets of The Beast – brought them to the attention of the secretive team who crafted the game. Their subsequent invite to the States to talk about their experience planted a seed in their minds that left the two brothers teetering on the brink of a real-life rabbit hole – could their futures lie in creating these things, as well as playing them?
They took the red pill and plunged headlong into a new adventure which would see them turn their backs on years of university education to become ARG puppet masters themselves, first at British games company Mind Candy and then under their own steam as Six to Start.
It’s clear, however, that Dan isn’t precious about the genre that prompted their life-changing decision. “We’ve been called an ARG design company, but it’s more of a label than a definition. We want to move beyond the novelty and just get on with telling great stories.”
So what’s the secret of their success? “We’re platform agnostic,” explains Dan between mouthfuls of buttery toast. “Great narrative and great gameplay are the key elements in everything we do, and we just choose the most appropriate media available to convey them.”
Given the fact that they’ve crafted adventures utilising everything from Twitter and Google Maps to poetry hunts in St Pancras Station and urban chases featuring sinister black helicopters, I’m not about to accuse them of narrative narrow-mindedness.
Of course, not everyone gets to follow a breadcrumb trail as fortuitous as the Hons, so is there any hope for the aspiring bedroom puppet master? “It’s really easy to make an ARG these days,” beams Dan.
“If you know how to craft a story and have a basic understanding of online platforms, you’re halfway there. Just find a bunch of like-minded people, get out there and make something.”
Tags: 4talent, adrian hon, arg, bbc, channel 4, dan hon, disney, multi-platform, penguin, sixtostart, we tell stories
Words: Ian Ravenscroft
Photography: Jade Sukiya
With a bold colour palette, striking graphics and a dash of playfulness, this duo, both 26, aim to change the face of hip-hop promos. And they’re not stopping there.
James Knott and James Curran didn’t just have a name in common when they met in the unlikely setting of an entrepreneurship course in Nottingham four years ago. They discovered a shared passion for music video, and have since produced promos for the likes of DJ Yoda, Toronto’s Wio-K and even trend-setting super-producer Mark Ronson.
Heavily influenced by graphic design, the duo use bold colours, playful movement and a blend of live action and animation to bring a new angle to the crowded promo scene. Main animator Curran, whose video for Californian hip-hop group Ugly Duckling scooped an RTS Student Award, points out that these style choices are no accident.
“Particularly in UK hip-hop, a lot of music videos tend to look pretty similar, so we try and make ours stand out from the rest,” he reasons. “We try to push the boundaries and produce a recognisable visual style,” adds director Knott, whose affiliation with hip-hop producer Baby J has been another reason for the duo’s relatively rapid emergence from the promo-producing pack.
“I was asked to produce a video for Baby J, and the video ended up getting played on MTV,” Knott explains. “Myself and Baby J then set up a small company called Baby-Knotted Films, bringing James C in on the post-production side of things.”
“Having Baby J helping to push the music videos from the very beginning was a great advantage,” Knott concedes. “As you begin to get noticed and your name starts to grow as a director, the phone starts ringing. We are lucky that everything fell into place at the right time.”
One of these calls was from Brit Award and three-time Grammy Award-winning producer, Mark Ronson. “He was a fan of Baby J’s production and wanted him to produce a remix for the Valerie single featuring Amy Winehouse,” says Knott. “It was through this we got the opportunity to make the video.”
However, actually producing their breakthrough promo wasn’t quite so simple: “We started work on the concept before the remix was even finished,” explains Curran. “Then from the shoot we only had a week to complete it.” Knott is clearly still exhilarated: “Seeing the video I’d edited in my bedroom on MTV was a magic moment.”
Tags: Amy Winehouse, James Curran, James Knott, knotted films, Mark Ronson, music video, slimjimstudios
Words: Louise Thacker
Photography: Roland Lane
Brought up in a family of business-minded bistro owners and fudge-makers, it’s clear that entrepreneurship has always run through the blood of this 27-year-old MD.
It’s a cold, dark Sunday afternoon ‘up north’ in Leeds. I step into a quiet bar on the usually busy Call Lane, eagerly early for my coffee-date with the winner of the 4Talent Innovation award. I call him, and within seconds of putting down the phone, I’m face to face with the man himself.
Attempting to ignore the fact that a Wham! record is playing rather too loudly in the background, I listen intently to how Phil’s inspiring games company first came about. “It was after I’d finished university in 2004,” he begins. “It seemed like a pretty good time to have a go at a bit of a dream of mine, which was making games. A few of us got together and started Creative North, and it developed some momentum from there.”
Based in Huddersfield, Creative North started off exclusively making mobile phone games, but since branched into Nintendo DS and iPhone – an impressive achievement in a field dominated by big players. “Our expertise is really in handheld gaming. If it’s portable and you can play a game on it, the chances are we’ve developed something for it.”
Creative North’s international folio of clients includes O2 and Hasbro, but they have firm roots in the Yorkshire creative community, running an on-the-job Academy scheme for local students with their eye on the gaming industry. “We take maybe three or four students a year, and bring them in to work on a part-time basis alongside our full-time team,” he explains.
As we near the bottom of our coffee cups the topic changes to family life, and it’s clear that Phil’s close-knit family share his enthusiasm for enterprise. “My youngest sister runs a restaurant in Newcastle; my other sister was a snowboard instructor, and then started up a bistro – and then there’s my youngest brother, who makes and sells fudge at a local farmers market. It’s his little money-making scheme while he’s at college.”
True innovators always approach conventional tasks in unexpected ways, and this 27-year-old entrepreneur recalls one client that approached them for an electronic alternative to a bag of leaflets and guides at a New York event. “We devised a way to put all the information onto a Nintendo DS,” he smiles. And who would have thought of that?
Tags: Creative North, entrepreneur, innovation, mobile phone, Nintendo DS, Phil Mundy
Words: Frankie Ward
Photography: Katja Ogrin
His dauntingly dark Stanislavky EP is a huge U-Turn for former kids’ television presenter Iain Woods.
Recorded as a final project at art school, Iain Woods’ debut record is a sample-infused, soulfully performed and wonderfully produced piece of work, and yet Iain himself is effortlessly charming, despite having endured a couple of train journeys and a photo-shoot before making his way to be interviewed.
Four months after graduating, Iain discovered that he was nominated for the 4Talent Music Award whilst on work experience at London-based label Transgressive Records.
“I was saying to a guy that I’d been play-listed at BBC 6 Music, but didn’t find out until two months later. I asked him, ‘Could you give me some advice on how to stay on top of things?’ And as I said it I scrolled down the 4Talent website, saw ‘Iain Woods’ in the shortlist and thought, this is exactly what I mean!”
According to his MySpace page, Iain’s music blends grime and gospel – not exactly the genres that leap to mind when browsing his material. “I don’t really take the genre thing that seriously,” he shrugs. “It’s more to do with a sombre setting, than really syncopated Dizzee Rascal style grime beats.”
He once wrote that his work comprises pop songs about amphetamines and anal sex. So which tracks are about what? “It’s all a big web to be worked out by the listener, and not to be explained by me,” is his enigmatic reply.
“It would be really difficult and undermining to say that this song is about this, and this song is about that,” he goes on. “Some are written in ten minutes, others over a couple of months. They’re more about just general moods and feelings,” he reflects. So will enlightenment come with repeated listens?
“A lot of the people I listen to have really random lyrics, like PJ Harvey and Beth Gibbons,” he responds. They’ll often pointedly say something that’s completely nonsensical, and I really like that.”
This feels like a good time to raise the topic of his track 1994. On his blog, Iain writes in fragmented note form about the various happenings in that particular year – such as the death of Kurt Cobain, and Nelson Mandela becoming President of South Africa. “I’ve just got this thing about years, I’ve always found them really interesting,” he explains – this particular year having the significance of being the year his uncle was murdered.
“I’m quite a storyteller, but I don’t think you’d be able to tell what it’s about just by listening,” he reflects. “It’s about something generally dark: that was my first memory of something really, really serious.”
During the interview Iain says he’s not working on new material, but calls me later to apologise. “I don’t know why I said that; I’ve nearly finished a new EP,” he tells me. “I think I got carried away. You were my first interviewer.”
Tags: 4talent awards, channel 4, gigbeth, Iain Woods, Music, performance art, stanislavsky
Words: Chris Baraniuk
Photography: John Stewardson
For Andy Ward, 23, messing around on student radio was the perfect breeding-ground for his slap-dash brand of absurdist comedy.
“I’m over in the middle bit, by Burger King,” I shout down my mobile to Andy, mere metres away in Paddington station. We spot each other and, since neither of us is city savvy, slip in to a nearby Korean restaurant to avoid the bustle.
“I’ve just left Keele Uni,” he begins. “During my whole time there I was involved with student radio in some form or another. We were nonsensical. We did idiotic features every week, like a whole series based on rhymes and puns. Play your Picards Right was a gameshow that we made up as we went along – nothing to do with Star Trek,” he adds helpfully.
“We were nominated for a Student Radio Award for Best Interview after a show we did with The Hoosiers,” Andy goes on. “We didn’t want to do a conventional interview, so we brought ‘wacky’ gifts along – Vimto, champagne flutes, Space Invaders, that sort of thing. We thought they’d like it, but we ended up spilling Vimto all over them. They’ve stopped doing student radio interviews now. Who knows if that was our fault?”
It’s the irreverent style of his shows that helped garner popularity amongst fellow students, particularly his Garth Marenghi and Mighty Boosh influenced Ghost Stories series, which began as a one-off airtime filler.
“We got loads of texts and feedback from people saying we should do more,” he explains. “So we did. My Dad used to play us this tape of monologue ghost stories at Christmas, and I think the inspiration came from that – I really liked working with a single narrating voice. Not even any sound effects. With the monologue, you can really get a sense of how to drive the comedy forward.”
His sample reels don’t hide the fact that producing them was side-splittingly good fun. He hasn’t wasted time on editing out background laughter or wobbly lines. In fact, he says, that’s all part of the plan: “It was all deliberately amateurish. It helps the fun come across. We knew we couldn’t act or do voices properly, so felt it was better not to try too hard.”
But could that style be accommodated by professional radio? “Definitely. I think people really appreciate things that don’t try too hard to iron out the imperfections, like when actors in sitcoms can’t help laughing at each other’s jokes. But you do have to be careful with absurd comedy: it’s a bad idea to string random words together and hope that people will find it funny.”
As we’re finishing up I ask Andy how he would describe himself. He looks exasperated. “I have no idea. I always cringe at questions like that on job forms. I just can’t take anything that seriously. I need someone to give me a comedy job, or I won’t survive in the real world. Put that in capital letters. Save me from starvation.”
Tags: andy ward, comedy writing, Radio, radio comedy, spooy times
Words: Simon Harper
Photography: Jannica Honey
A former finalist in Channel 4’s stand-up contest So You Think You’re Funny, Rose Heiney, 24, has since decided that the pen is mightier than the mic.
Published earlier in 2008, her darkly comic debut novel The Days of Judy B saw Rose – daughter of broadcasters Libby Purves and Paul Heiney – become firmly ensconced in the literary world that she was first exposed to at an early age.
“I was very lucky to grow up in a house full of books, to be taken to films, to plays, and introduced to good TV programmes,” she begins. “They’re the places that you go when the rest of the world isn’t looking so brilliant. I learned to have a lot of respect for television. A brilliant half-hour sitcom can inform your outlook as much as six miserable weeks spent trying to slog through The Brothers Karamazov.”
Fittingly, much of Rose’s humour comes from exposure to a raft of British sit-coms, name-checking the likes of Hancock’s Half Hour, Drop The Dead Donkey and People Like Us among her favourite touchstones, alongside more recent triumphs such as Peep Show.
“I’m evangelical about the programmes I find funny – if I were braver I would be running down the street thrusting box-sets of Ever Decreasing Circles into the hands of strangers, shouting, ‘Episode three is life-changing!’ and then sprinting off to spread my message.”
Describing her own working habits as “haphazard”, Rose wishes she’d prepared another draft of her novel before it went to print – but she needn’t have worried. Her first offering won over readers and critics, with Victoria Hislop [The Island] lauding it as “one of the funniest, most profound book’s I’ve ever read.”
“It actually got turned down by an awful lot of publishers,” says Oxford graduate Rose. “Looking back, I can see why. It’s obviously a very ‘young’ book, and the draft on submission was by no means ready. I dealt with the rejection through a well-moderated regime of incandescent rage, hysterical sobbing and alcohol abuse. I was very, very lucky that a publisher saw fit to take a punt on it in the end, and that relief was incredible.”
Rose is keen to dabble in other media too, and is in the early stages of developing an online comedy. “It’s a bit of a departure for me,” she confesses. “I’m the kind of person who thinks that computers have eyes and that you can scoop up broadband in a bucket. Trying to explain widgets and platforms to me is like teaching a dog to play poker, but I’m doing my best.”
“There’s so much I’d love to try,” she goes on. “I’d love to write radio comedy, contribute to other people’s shows, and ultimately help create good television. It’s very early days, but if someone opens a door, writing-wise, I will happily peep through it.”
Tags: comedy, comedy writing, Libby Purves, Paul Heiney, Rose Heiney
Words: Chris Baraniuk
Photography: Ben Collins
Delusions of immortality, a shoestring budget and a lonely robot helped nab the Directing Award for this duo, aged 29 and 30.
“Humanity’s delusions of immortality and a robot’s loneliness,” is how Timo and Robert sum up their retro black-and-white sci-fi feature, The Big Forever. The narrative follows our lonesome bot as he visits a vast library of human memories following the race’s extinction. The robot is there in order to hear what their last messages to the universe were, and the effect the experience has on him, and the audience, is profound.
After The Big Forever was nominated for a Scottish Bafta, the duo got in touch with composer Clint Mansell [Requiem For A Dream, The Fountain, Pi] and asked him to have a look at their film. “He liked it so much,” they report, “that he wrote and scored an entire new soundtrack for the film. That was a very exciting moment for us.”
The visuals in the piece are a combination of live-action recording, Photoshop compositing and sprinkles of CGI, and the pair managed to put the whole lot together for an impressive £200 while finishing their degrees. In order to pull off such feats they’ve developed a strong work ethic, and when asked if working together so closely can ever become a problem, Timo insists their system is foolproof.
“For us, it’s a very good way to work. Any problems that could arise in production with two directors can easily be managed in pre-production, and so long as both of us know the answers to the questions, then everything runs smoothly. Directing can be a lonely place, so it’s nice to have company. It’s very easy for us to tune into what the other person is thinking, and a huge part of the enjoyment for us comes from finding that common ground.”
And there’s no sign of the partnership coming to an end anytime soon, as Timo and Robert already have plenty of other projects on the assembly line, including music videos, animations and another short film that looks set to continue their fascination with the dilemmas of human behaviour.
“It’s an homage to the sci-fi films of the ‘50s and ‘60s,” they explain, “but set around a bullied 11-year-old on a contemporary working-class estate. It’s like This Is England meets The Day Of The Triffids.”
Working closely together with creative zeal, they seem determined to express their natural enthusiasm for telling stories. “For me,” reflects Timo, “telling stories is about wanting to communicate something, which is inherent in all of us. I decided that film was my medium, and I wanted to tell stories from behind the lens.”
“My Dad always thought I would become a storyteller – or a political spin-doctor,” smiles Robert. “When I was younger I was always getting myself into trouble, so I would have to tell stories to get out of it. I got pretty good at it.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 4talent, 4talent awards, directing, film-makers, Robert Glassford, Timo Langer
Words: Catherine Bray
Photography: Kate Beatty
Having won a British Soap Award for her portrayal of Hannah in Hollyoaks, 19-year-old actress Emma Rigby explains why it’s time to bow out of soap and look to new acting challenges.
Too many interviews with actresses start with a description of their flawless skin and doll-like stature. But meeting Emma Rigby in a greasy spoon cafe in Birmingham, the contrast between the petite, impossibly glamorous girl and her workaday surroundings is difficult to ignore.
With her bright blonde hair swept up in a striking Sixties beehive, lethal heels and a gleaming white smile, I can’t help but think I’m probably about to interview someone who sets a lot of stock by their appearance. In fact, Emma is interested in being known for more than the way she looks.
“Nowadays there’s so much focus on the way you look, and the idea that you have to be a certain way to succeed. We should be concentrating on people that do great things, rather than people who are hailed as a celebrity because they have a lot of money to spend on clothes and are a size zero. I try to stay out of all that, because I want to act, not be in every single magazine. It’s fine if that’s what you want, but I don’t. I don’t read those types of magazine because I don’t have any interest in seeing those types of shots of people I don’t know.”
She also eschews the Heat magazine culture of candid interviews which many soap actresses find to their cost, then seem to give license to paparazzi to stalk their targets 24/7. “I work with some people who have fantastic success with the lads’ mags, they do gorgeous photos and it’s fun for them, but it’s not for me. For me, the money to be made is not worth it. I’d rather wait and try to find a good role I’d like to do.”
It seems Emma is intent on being known for the skills that bagged her this 4Talent award, announcing that she’s leaving Hollyoaks after three-and-a-half years because she doesn’t want to be pigeonholed.
“Hollyoaks has been a brilliant learning curve, but I’d like to move on and try something completely different. It’s so difficult, but it’s just about going to the auditions and putting the work in.”
Will it be tricky to find more serious work though, given the attitude much of the industry has towards soap actresses? “There is still this stigma attached to Hollyoaks. When it started it was known as a place without many serious actors; a place that wasn’t focussed on the acting as such. I can imagine there’s still that old reputation: ‘Oh it’s only Hollyoaks.’ But if you go into an audition and you’re right for the part, hopefully casting directors will see beyond that.”
It may help that Emma’s most famous storyline, and the one that scooped her a British Soap Award, was a serious story applauded for its sensitive handling of a potentially explosive issue. Emma’s character Hannah suffered from anorexia, triggered by a dieting pact she made with a close friend, who eventually dies of the disease. She was a huge success in the role, but reveals that her casting on Hollyoaks was a case of second time lucky, having unsuccessfully attempted once already: “I’d been for an audition the year before. I walked in and they took one look at me and said, ‘I don’t know why you’ve come, you look far too young,’ so I went away without even auditioning. But I came back the next year.”
If Emma’s hoping to moving away from soaps, what are the types of film and work that in an ideal world, she would like to be part of? “Well, I really love Jodie Foster, Hilary Swank, and Cate Blanchett; people like that. They’re the kind of people I look up to – they keep themselves to themselves a bit, they’re not constantly in the tabloids.”
“Veronica Guerin starring Cate Blanchett is a really hard role, but she was fantastic in it. I love serious drama, crime, thrillers.” Sounds she’d be quite a serious cinema date. “Oh, you’d never want to sit down and watch a film with me, because I’ll always pick a really depressing film.”
Tags: 4talent, 4talent awards, acting, channel 4, dramatic performance, Emma Rigby, hollyoaks
Words: Michael Leader
Photography: Hamish Jordan
With a mod mother and a beatnik father, Ben, 30 has a knowledge of music and passion for the culture that surrounds it that shines through on screen.
When I meet Ben in a Central London pub, he greets me with a bear hug, and indicates his ‘hair of the dog’ bottle of beer with a wink. I admit that I couldn’t find much about him online, apart from his showreel on YouTube, so where did he come from?
He takes a sip and replies: “I was the front man in a band until about a year ago, called Dirty Cuffs. But I got really bad tinnitus in the long run. I’ve been doing stand-up for the last eight months, but my first love has always been music and culture: talking about it, and communicating it.”
“I studied performing arts,” he continues. “But I could never see myself leaping into a pair of tights and going, ‘Alas, poor Yorick.’ I wanted to either be myself, or to play larger-than-life characters. For me, presenting and jerking around being comical was always natural.”
It shows. His video, a mash-up of an interview, a gig report and a stand-up routine, is anchored by his personable nature and an evident passion for and knowledge of music. “I come from this very liberal, hippy, background,” he explains. “Well, my Mum was a mod and my Dad was a beatnik. Because of that, they had a hell of a lot of music, and I was flicking through old copies of Melody Maker and NME when I was knee-high.”
Ben’s obviously an educated fellow: he peppers his speech with references, and within our short chat manages to quote Confucius, going on to relate an anecdote about David Bowie’s PR stunts in the 1970s. Does he feel the need to tone himself down for presenting gigs?
“I don’t want to come across like a snob,” he admits. “I dig a lot of commercial stuff that’s out there. Everyone has tastes, but when you go to work, you go to work. If you’ve got a love of music, you’ve got to embrace it and know it all. You could be an art dealer and particularly like Jackson Pollock and Picasso, but you’ve got to know all your masters as well, even though they may not be to your taste.”
Personality will only get you so far: Ben describes his jokes as “good… for a working men’s club in Bolton,” and is quick to insist that knowledge of your field is just as crucial. “If you don’t know that particular genre or interviewee, you come well-equipped, so you’re not just a pretty face. You take the facts, then imprint your personality on it.”
Tags: 4talent, Ben Chancellor, channel 4, presenter, tv
Words: Claire Spencer
As influenced by film as he is by photography, 24-year-old Hal has made an art out of his obsession, using still images to put a cinematic spin on the everyday world.
“I’m not sure obsession is a technique, but if it is, that’s how I’d define my process,” reflects Hal Sear. “I get wrapped up in the photographs, trying to re-stage a sensation over and over. Making the images is like day-dreaming; I go through the motions but my mind is somewhere else.” Hal’s photos tend to focus on domestic interiors, but with a theatrical edge that moves them out of the ordinary.
Hal won the South Square Trust Award earlier this year, and can now add the 4Talent Award for Photography to the tally. But it’s more than just an accolade to the young photographer.
“I’m just starting to develop a new project, so it means a lot that to me that the work I completed earlier in the year has been recognised,” explains Hal. “It’s important to me that a new audience gets to see my work.” His old audience was connected with his work at the Royal College of Art, where he’s just completed an MA. At the time, he feared that the course would limit his individuality as an artist, but as it happens, it embraced those qualities.
This is just as well, as Hal’s influences range beyond the confines of other photographers. “Film is a strong influence: screen beauty, or the screen enigma, interests me,” he expands. “Also contemporary French directors like Christophe Honore and Francois Ozon, and independent American film-makers such as Gus Van Sant and Gregg Araki.”
There is a certain disjointed narrative in his work: ‘Two Shadows’, for example, sees a strange juxtaposition between light and shade, memory and reality, warm and cold. Hal agrees: “I think my images are more like broken stories. Every picture is seductive, suggesting more than it reveals.”
Part of that storytelling process if reflected in the colour palette he uses; a faded brightness associated with dreams and memories. Hal acknowledges that he’s particularly interested in themes such as longing, and chooses the colours to intensify the audience’s reaction.
“The camera always lies,” he declares. “There’s a strong personal element to what I do, but it’s ultimately lost in the pictures. They are fantasy.” Arguably, our fantasies do as much to define our reality as the world around us, another theme integral to his work and illustrated with a recurrent isolated figure.
“He’s so different from me, yet at the same time familiar,” says Hal. “Within the image this kind of ‘dual’ persona is created, similar to a self-portrait, but with a barrier between us.” Finding the artist in the art can be difficult, and Hal claims that this has been important to viewers of his work to-date. “But then,” he concludes, “autobiography is the biggest fiction of all.”
Tags: 4creative, channel 4, Hal Sear, photography, rca
Words: Catherine Bray
Photography: Neil Parker
‘Thai brides’ are a sensitive issue: even more so when your father’s marrying a Thai woman 33 years his junior. Lorne Kramer, himself 25 decided to document this surprise partnership with touching results.
Mee And My Dad, the film that secured Lorne his 4Talent Award, is about as personal as it gets. But it also captures a truly international story. It’s a film about his family, specifically his father and his new wife: a Thai woman named Mee, of about Lorne’s age.
Having access to a story so sensitive and compelling is in many ways the documentary-maker’s dream. But when it’s this close to home, that must bring its own set of complications?
“It was hard in many ways,” Lorne admits. “Having your Dad tell you on camera that he feels like he’s ‘done with the role of being a Dad’ and just wants to be your mate was emotionally quite distressing. At the same time, being there with a camera gave me the power to ask questions I would never have been able to ask him if I wasn’t making a film.”
The original idea was to make a film about relations between Thailand and the West, but his tutor at UWE in Bristol helped him realise what the film really ought to be about. “He said, ‘What’s your USP? And I realised that my Dad and his relationship was the real story.”
Pioneering doc-makers like Broomfield and Theroux have successfully made themselves part of the story, but could turning the magnifying glass on your own father be seen as making career capital out of private issues?
“You have to be prepared to be challenged and criticized,” Lorne admits. “I’ve tried to be completely open about myself in the film, and hopefully people will see I’m trying to tell an honest story and react well.”
“Mee was upset with how she was portrayed, though,” he confesses. “I like her a lot, but she can be very difficult. She’s intelligent, but also manipulative, and we weren’t going to make a film that just showed everything in their relationship as positive.”
When we speak, Lorne is at Sheffield Doc/Fest, frantically handing out the thousands of business cards he’s at printed ahead of a screening of his film. From 1,500 submissions, just 140 are being shown, he tells me proudly – he’s nervous, but with justifiably high hopes.
“There are 1300 delegates here, and 150 buyers, so hopefully we might find someone who wants to distribute it, or even turn it into a different kind of film,” he asserts. “It’s 27 minutes long at the moment, but we shot 36 hours of footage, so it could be re-cut into a feature-length film.” More fool the buyers who pass over this early gem from a film-maker destined to go far.
Tags: 4talent, 4talent awards, documentary, Lorne Kramer, Sheffield doc fest, thai bride
Words: Etan Smallman
Photography: Anastasia Taylor-Lind
From the slums of Sao Paulo to the bright lights of London, a commitment to documenting untold stories has reaped rewards for 26-year-old Maria.
Awards can be a bit like buses. You tire away for years, honing your craft, creating masterpieces and yearning for a bit of recognition – and then three come along at once.
At least, that’s what happened to Maria Eduarda Andrade, a London-based Brazilian film-maker, who can add her 4Talent gong to a Royal Television Society Award, and the scholarship to study Screen Documentary at Goldsmiths that brought her to Britain in the first place.
The 26-year-old hails from a town called Recife in North East Brazil. “A city by the sea,” she tells me wistfully: “28 degrees in the winter; nice and warm.” It’s a world away from the setting of the work she describes as her “baby” – her touching directorial debut, Just Like Mom.
By chance, Maria heard of a Brazilian woman, Ana, imprisoned in Britain for trying to smuggle drugs into the country. She visited her in her Lincoln jail, but after the Prison Service refused permission to film, she decided that the only way to tell this desperate woman’s story would be to go to Brazil herself to meet her mother and two daughters.
In the process she would become the bearer of the worst of news, as her family knew nothing of Ana’s plight. The result is a stirring and heart-rending portrayal of three generations of single mothers and their struggle through poverty and destitution.
“It was a difficult situation,” Maria explains. “They come from a very poor background, but the characters were really, really amazing. It has a lot to do with the way I relate to my subjects: I have to be really in love with them.”
It’s clear that a burning sense of what’s fair powers Maria’s work. “What really drives me is injustice,” she confirms. “And of course I’m not happy with poverty; I come from a country with huge social inequality.”
It can’t be a coincidence that the time Maria came face to face with this social inequality – in the poorest parts of Sao Paulo – was also the moment that she decided to pursue her love of film-making.
“Before coming to London I was in Sao Paulo, where we curated film festivals with free entrance in very poor areas,” she recalls. “We made some documentaries to be used in schools, and that’s where I really decided that I wanted to do documentary film.”
It’s the “intense human experience” of documenting real life that is still the draw for Maria: “I want to keep making films that make you laugh and cry about real people,” she concludes simply. “And I think that real life is really more interesting than any fiction you can create.”
Tags: 4talent, 4talent awards, channel 4, Just Like Mom, Marai Eduarda Andrade, short documentary
Words: Etan Smallman
Photography: Elizabeth Gordon
On the crest of a radio wave, 21-year-old Veena V is out to banish boring radio with her fiery brand of presenting.
Veena V is a busy bee. Tracking down the budding – but seemingly elusive – radio presenter for this interview was no easy task, with call after call being met by the dead-end of her chirpy voicemail message.
A renowned broadcaster (whose name escapes me) once said that all it takes to be a good presenter is the ability to record a half-decent answerphone message. If that were the case, Veena has it in the bag. She also has the alliterative name and mega-watt smile that make her look as if she’s pre-packaged, primed, and ready to hit the radio big-time.
When I finally get to speak to the 21-year-old East Londoner, she tells me her ideal job would be on Radio 1. Chatting away to her, I almost feel like I’m phoning into her show, with her bubbly tones and cheery demeanour. But she’s no Fearne or Edith copycat.
“I don’t think there are many female presenters like me,” Veena proclaims: “I’m kind of quite out-there.” She rejects what she calls “the same boring old ideas” in favour of a highly energetic interviewing style.
In an industry driven by contacts, she knows how to play the game, and is sufficiently linked-up to secure interviews with the likes of the Pussycat Dolls (twice), Jay Sean and Gym Class Heroes.
But her proudest achievement came when she dramatically increased the listenership on one of her old stations – garnering a peak of over 100,000 listeners – and beating the station’s breakfast show, an almost unprecedented feat in the industry. It can’t have gone down well with the breakfast hosts. “No!” she giggles. “I didn’t really say anything; I just quietly smiled to myself.”
Live radio, though, has its pitfalls – and pre-recorded shows aren’t much better, as Brand and Ross recently reminded the nation. Broadcasting since the age of 16, Veena must have had her fair share of embarrassing on-air moments. “Nothing really; I don’t really get embarrassed,” she insists.
I persist with my line of questioning. “Well, on one of my old radio shows, I used to get guys literally calling up all the time for my number, which got quite annoying, but made for quite a good radio show. I’d take the mickey out of them and give them fake numbers.” And apart from inadvertently swearing live on-air back when she was 16, it’s been pretty slip-up free so far.
Veena’s known for using her former Club Asia radio show, Exposure, to discover the freshest unsigned talent. But the tables have now turned, and she’s the unsigned act getting a slice of recognition.
“I’ve got so many ambitions,” she enthuses. “Yes, I want to be a really good radio presenter, but I want to build the ‘Veena V brand’ and maybe one day have my own production company, or an agency to help new artists.”
Tags: Club Asia, Radio, radio presenter, Veena V
Words: Louise Thacker
Photography: Elizabeth Gordon
A research economist who’s actually funny? We kid you not: meet Ali Muriel, the 28-year-old playwright who’s breaking all the rules.
I wasn’t prepared to let 200 miles get in the way of me catching up with the winner of the 4Talent Dramatic Writing Award, so I invite Ali for a live web chat. The inherently witty playwright soon has me ‘LOLing’ at his accounts of the success he has already achieved through his work.
“As part of the Future Perfect scheme, which I’ve been on this year, they locked us – seven of us – in the Paines Plough offices for a weekend,” he recalls. “We had to write a ten-minute monologue to perform on the Monday. Terrifying. Not least because I wrote a monologue about a guy who cloned himself, in order to have sex with himself. I mimed intercourse with myself in front of my mother.”
It isn’t just Ali and his Mum that are drawn into his bizarre situations: his audiences are thrown into the fantastical and humorously funny dramas alongside the characters. An event at the Oval House Theatre saw Ali write a five-minute play that would be performed in a random space within the building.
“I’m rubbish at writing what I know, so I asked for the space I know less about than almost anywhere in the universe.” The Ladies toilets it was.
The play, suitably titled Ladies and Gentlemen, is the story of a young couple that first ‘got together’ in a Youth Centre basement lavatory. It’s now their third anniversary, and the fella has an idea for a romantic ‘where it all began’ gesture, as Ali explains with relish: “She hates the fact that they got together in a lavatory – she wants to forget all about it. And so he has to win her back by being unbelievably romantic. In a lavatory. It was fun.”
Far from the whiff of public toilets, the sweet smell of success was in the air as Ali won Soho Theatre’s Westminster Prize in 2006 for his play Furnace Four, which the Dancing Shadows Theatre company are planning on touring.
Writing may be Ali’s biggest passion, but his nerdy alter ego is also something he’s proud of. “I studied Econometrics and Mathematical Economics,” he admits. “It’s basically the course where even the economists think you’re a geek. Now I work as a research economist, studying education, poverty and inequality. Best. Job. Ever.”
He actually believes the two careers complement each other rather well. “In economic research you’re trying to figure out what’s really happening in the world. In writing, you’re free to make it up,” he points out. “One keeps you grounded, the other cuts you loose. What’s not to love?”
Of course, there are only so many hours in the day. “I have to spend most evenings and more-or-less every weekend writing,” he confesses. “Sleep suffers, and my Facebook wall degenerates into my long-suffering friends writing, ‘Are you dead?’ I call it my Wall of Death.”
Tags: 4talent, Ali Muriel, channel 4, dramatic writing
Words: Simon Harper
Photography: Sanna Charles
Perhaps best known as the eponymous tank commander in More4 satire Gary’s War, this Edinburgh-born, 28-year-old actor has a true gift for character comedy.
“It’s interesting what tiny things in life you just pick up on that can work,” begins Greg McHugh, on the issue of writing material: “I try not to sit down and go, ‘Right, I want to write about the credit crunch.’”
Topical gags about financial hardship and global economic meltdown might be near the top of the to-do list for several comedians, but Greg draws from a much more personal well of inspiration. “I’ll just sit down and think about small things that have happened, or people that I’ve met. I must admit, I think of people more than situations; I’m character-driven in that way.”
Greg studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama before appearing on the stand-up circuit. He’s already garnered widespread acclaim for his army officer character, Gary: Tank Commander, with More4 commission Gary’s War picking up a Scottish Bafta.
His earliest forays into comedy were behind a microphone stand, but Greg considers himself primarily an actor, not a stand-up. “I think you’re a good actor if you can do comedy,” he explains. “A lot of actors say, ‘Oh, I do straight stuff,’ and I’ve worked with a few that are good straight actors, but they can’t really get a grasp of comedic roles that well.”
“I see myself as an actor who’s done stand-up, but then even in stand-up you’re acting,” he points out. “If you have to do the same material each night, but still make people laugh, you have to act your way through that.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Greg has since found a fruitful outlet in sketch comedy – particularly with regular collaborator Will Andrews in The Incredible Will and Greg, and the award-winning Blowout – as well as a well-received run of short, sharp and delightfully silly sketches at the Edinburgh Festival.
Citing Coogan, Connolly and Whitehouse as inspirations, Greg has been commissioned by The Comedy Unit to write Gary: The Sitcom and increasingly finds himself being sent scripts to peruse as well as writing his own material.
“It’s worth trying new jokes even if they don’t work, because it’s the only way you get better,” is his advice. “Often it’s useful to think, ‘What is it that makes me laugh?’ Doing pilots is an essential way of getting people to see you, to meet commissioners and to understand the process of how things are made.”
Greg’s quick to point out that the daytime isolation of being a writer-performer can sometimes get too much, but there’s always room for distractions. “I’ve got one of these cinema cards where you pay a monthly amount,” he confides. “If I can’t concentrate, I go and watch three films in an afternoon with the other lonely, unemployed men that tend to do that. That’s my hangout.”
Tags: acting, blowout, comedy performance, Comedy Unit, e4, Greg McHugh, More 4, the incredible will and greg
Words: Claire Spencer
Photography: Sanna Charles
Littlenobody animation
The 28-year-old animation duo who go by the name Littlenobody share their passion for fabled worlds filled with magical creatures.
“I was actually on my first holiday in a decade when the announcement was made,” begins Liam Brazier, one half of the Littlenobody duo. “I spent the next twenty minutes excitedly calculating time difference and negotiating a Turkish keyboard to email a smile back to Karen.”
Over the past year their animations have made it onto big screens at film festivals worldwide, and this recognition is one step closer to making a long-term career out of their craft. “What Cassandra Saw being BBFC certified and put onto 35mm for cinema screening was insane, and a real privilege,” enthuses Karen. “It’s our first short, and I’m so glad it got the life and the audience I dreamt it could have.”
Their stunning films are a product of everything to pair grew up loving and absorbing, and have several common threads running through them. “We both love the charm of children’s storytelling and fables,” asserts Karen. “We want to make a world for our characters to inhabit. I very much like the idea of an unseen world, magic, and creatures.”
Both are passionate about the ongoing learning curve of the animation process. “Every venture seems a departure from the last,” believes Liam. “I’m terrified that I’d become eternally bored of what I love if we just repeated ourselves, as well as wanting to try something new.”
As such, the media that they use tend to vary, as do their methods. Karen explains: “Sometimes when we’re coming up with a story, one of us will say, ‘Ooh, cookie-cutters stop-motion,’ and the medium will lead the story. Other times, we go full-steam-ahead and worry about the practicalities later. I think I have a more holistic approach than Liam. He loves to get lost in the details.”
Both halves of the Littlenobody partnership find their inspiration from similar places – directors Gondry, Burton and Gilliam to name but a few – which helps cement their working relationship. But it’s their differences that really complement each other.
“Karen helps me actually get stuff done,” laughs Liam. “When I met her, I was up at six and back at eight every day, getting sunburnt by the monitor glare – and I hadn’t picked up a pencil in over a year. That’s truly shameful thing for someone who at one point wouldn’t have minded if his hands were replaced by a giant 2B pencil.”
He adds that his creative partner inspired him to get back into creativity as no-one else had. For her part, Karen believes that the animation process would be much lonelier without Liam. “I’m more certain that an idea will work when we both agree, and we push and drive each other to complete projects,” she says. “We are each other’s audience.”
Tags: animation, fairytale, Karen Penman, Liam Brazier, Littlenobody, stop-motion
Words: Anna Lord
Photography: Sanna Charles
Turning his back on a life of rock-and-roll, Richard Mead, 29, embraced electronica, set up his own studio and composed the soundtrack for the car in front.
Music can do so much to fuel our emotional connection with the moving image. Sometimes it’s barely perceptible, quietly doing its thing in the background, but occasionally production music becomes iconic. Take the menacing notes that signal the shark’s approach in Jaws, or the high-pitched strings accompanying Janet Leigh’s grisly demise in the shower at Bates Motel. Music can make or break the atmosphere of a scene, and yet the talent behind the composition is all-too-often unsung.
One such production music hero is 29-year-old Richard Mead. Starting out playing in a band, he soon developed an interest in electronica and music production, setting up a small studio in his house, recording and occasionally playing live. After composing a piece for a short animation, commissions started rolling in and Richard promptly quit his day job.
Beyond the staples of film and TV, advertising and increasingly new media have a growing need for composing talent. Working under the moniker Cranium Sound, he has crafted the music for numerous short films, and recently, along with his writing partner, had an album published by EMI’s production music library KPM Music House.
His versatile creations blend styles from industrial electronic beats to serene piano compositions. “It’s really important to get the tempo and pace of the track right in the first place,” he explains. “After that, it’s a matter of picking up instruments, plugging in synths and playing around with melodies – trying to create something that is memorable, but that won’t detract from spoken words on screen.”
Working into the night to meet a deadline can numb your sense of perspective, and Richard advises anybody hoping to break into the field to find a trusted mentor: “After hours of listening to the same track, your ears get tired,” he points out. “It’s really important to get another perspective, especially from someone who knows their stuff.”
He draws inspiration from a broad range of material, but name-checks Michael Andrews and Thomas Newman. “I love a lot of things on the Warp label, like Chris Clark and Jackson and his Computer Band,” he adds. “Philip Glass and Max Richter are great, and so’s Mr Oizo – he wrote Flat Beat for that Levi’s ad, but also does some amazing progressive electronic music.”
Currently working on music for a computer game ad and adding the finishing touches to a joint album of production music album with another composer, his career ambition are simple: “It’d be great to be at the stage where I have an established reputation as a ‘go-to’ guy,” he reflects. “It’d also be nice to find time to write an album just for me.”
Tags: 4talent, craniumsound, Music, production music, Richard Mead, soundtrack
Jannica Honey was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1974 of a Swedish mother and an Armenian father. After finishing her studies she moved to Edinburgh. After studying Photography and Digital Imaging she was the recipient of the Fuji award for fashion photography and collected a prize for Creative Photographer of the Year. She has exhibited her images in Stockholm, Glasgow, London and Edinburgh.
Tags: Jannica Honey, photographer, photography
Inkymole’s perma-stained fingers are as happy scribbling on adverts and books as they are records and chocolate, both of which she loves! She works in little a rooftop studio in England but has a glamorous agent in NYC, and draws for clients all over the world. Words and pictures are Inkymole’s world.
Tags: illustration, inkymole, lettering, typography