Michael Driver

0:20Cheers man so hello it's lovely to be here just before I get started just a few few things I'd like to say a massive thank you to it's niat who featured me on the graduates list and it sort of really kickstarted my career and since then I've sort of been freelancing full-time I got to sack in my horrible job at Green King where. I had sort of troubles like being able to understand what's calamari and what's onion rings and yeah I'm I'm really happy to be here the other thing is I've got some prints that they got done today and you're more than welcome to take one pass one on and and take it home it's just a nice sort of gesture because you know it's a it's a Christmas season and you know like whatever and you might not have heard of me I I don't know I've only sort of been graduated six months and if you don't like it just give it to somebody you don't like for Christmas you know saves you from spending any money and and yeah.

1:25So so I graduated six months ago from Kingston University and I've been working full-time since then we did dnad and The Graduate shows and you know that was pretty great and I'm not actually from London I'm I'm I'm from naum and it was I was in sort of this bit of a a loophole about whether I'd sort of stay in London or maybe move back. And I thought no I'm going to stay in London so me and my housemates we we moved into a house there's soon to be nine of us. And it's a hell hole yeah we we live under the district and circle line every four minutes a train goes over the top the entire house shakes when we moved in we actually a we had a few more housemates than we expected and and we found out quite quickly we got rats and mice and and we live under a bridge so we're kind of like trolls um and actually.

2:30This is my studio we lucky enough to sort of have an extra space I share a room with my girlfriend and sort of as part of the bathroom because there two couples we ended up sort of getting the studio space which is really nice however that door is actually a toilet so if anybody goes for a if anybody goes for a you're sort of left sort of sitting in that smell for a good 45 minutes and and yeah we get slugs come through one day quite early on I left some books on my floor and some slugs e through all of them and yeah I feel like if if Satan was spawned anywhere it was definitely spawned at 23 win for Road yeah. So it's been a really great year I did 56 projects outside of University I was featured on 29 blogs including Red Bull creative review and its ni I did 18 exhibitions as group shows with people like put Collective I did one the other week with which was Mel Gibson themed and I submitted to five competitions which was kind of nice and if you wanted to know what that sort of looked like it sort of looked like that.

3:49And sort of some of the stuff sort of in your left corner some stuff that I did quite early on and a lot of the stuff sort of towards down here which where the pallets of sort of brightened up a bit is is stuff that I've done more recently I wor I've been really lucky this year I've worked for the telegraph the times the guardian uh Women's Health I've done some also done some pitching on some branding and adver advertising jobs which has been really exciting out of all the competitions I I entered I also got I won a dnad pencil and the it's nice that studio really love this image because after the gra this is the day after the graduates night and yeah sort of it went graduates gone bad and I got really drunk and this was the same day we moved house and the night before we I was up till 3:00 in the morning sort of helping clean it. And sort of do my bit CU I couldn't help move because of it's nice that graduates thing and ended up getting really drunk my phone got stolen a Greek guy propositioned me and as me if I wanted to go back to his house and I wandered around London for 4 hours and I thought you know life's really good I did I did a nice presentation there.

5:08But then also life got really bad and and I had to wait around for 4 hours in the mid in sort of like waterl and South bankon and a Gentleman got very fond of me so after the whole it's niap thing I thought well you know I've got to get sort of behind stuff and I've got to start sending people stuff and I've got to try and do it cuz some quite a fair bit of work came in and I was kind of like I really don't want to go back to sort of my crap job at Green k that I had for like three weeks so so I got behind my graduate project which was sort of about social media and how rubbish it is and how you know like it's absolutely brilliant that we can stay really connected but you know like realistically do we do all that much with it. And I don't really think we do and sort of on the back of that I submitted this to creative review and I was really sort of Lucky in the sense that they picked me up and they they they emailed me and they said you know.

6:05I really like you to do the graduates list and they sort of ran this project with JC Deco who do a lot of the moving advertising boards sort of at train stations and supermarkets around the country and they said we really like your stuff so I tell you what we'll take one of your images and we'll we'll put it on our screen and what happened was for I think it was in September every 50 minutes my image would turn up in train stations bus centers and sort of shopping centers around the UK which was really really nice this actual image was for The Branding that I did for Bristol comic xen Fair which is really nice because I don't really make comics I'm sort of I was kind of weirded out when they said you know do you want to do it but he was he was kind of keen for me to do it and from that I did this image for the 88 journal and quite a lot of big people did stuff for it Matthew the horse did stuff for it Lee Dirk did stuff for it Maran madri did stuff for it and yeah. I really hate this piece I'm not going to lie it's yeah it was kind of a weird point I sort of just graduated and we were sort of packing up the house and stuff and it came to like a month or so on.

7:17And then just got a phone call and Kate who art directs it was like oh do you want to sort of come to the design Museum and we're doing a launch and the magazine is actually own owned and run by Jamie Cullum and it sort of acts as a nice little magazine but also is sort of the sort of thing that he sticks on his merch stand and I was like oh okay well I'll do something live and illustrate it and whatnot and yeah nobody was really that interested in me illustrating live at this event everybody had sort of come to Fanboy Jamie Cullum and Bey man who did some like sweet beat boxing and Jamie Cullum like played the piano and sung and it was beautiful and the technician sort of picked up on the fact that. Actually nobody really cares and he sort of said I tell you what I'll have a word with a couple guys and we'll project that image on the side of the design Museum which was kind of crazy because this is probably my highlight of this year one because it kind of sucked being just sat there in the corner but two because I never expected this would have happened this was a project that I worked on for mosic science it's probably my favorite editorial project that I've done to this date mainly because it's about disability my brother only has one hand and he works for remploy who uh they get people who are less abled into work. And it's about sort of breaking the stigma around disability and you know it's it's kind of fun it was at a point where. I was a little bit quiet so I had time to sort of mix up my color palettes and sort of you know really go for it as well as that I my nice out my it's nice my Instagram went viral and yeah I got 64k followers and I I had had followers that were like 12 years old and from like like this the South like sou Deep South America and then also like people from Dubai who own like tigers and lions and and and bears and it was kind of weird and then.

9:14I had this girl like right on one of like comment say I'm 12 years 12 years older and I draw better than you. And I just think that's excellent like this a sort of thing if you don't laugh about it you cry about it. And it's the sort of crying that you do when you watch super vets and and and the dog dies or something I've learned a lot this year. And this was a project that I did for Women's Health and it was the the first project I did where like somebody was really Keen to have me work for them because they really like my characters and what I realized was actually clients Really Love Changes like really love changes and actually the one they ran with was the lady with the shades but you know like she had like six different changes I think there might have been a few more that I just couldn't fit on the slide but you know I'm cool with that like illustration is an applied art form it's not art and you do it for a client and the client matters loads and you're just a pen for hire and you know.

10:11That's kind of how it is another thing I learned is that. Actually advertising stuff doesn't really happen or it doesn't really happen much this was a pitch I did directly after the SCE at graduate feature for all ofar brown who asked me to do some animation stuff and I kind of pooed myself a little bit because I don't really really do that much animation.

10:30But I got a housemate that does animation. And I I really wanted to put my all into these roughs hence why they drawn with a tablet and not like a cheap shitty brro and I was really into sort of like making sure that my housemate got the job because it was a five month job.

10:44But it never happened I sent these RS off and they were just like no I pitched on some weird Juice drink company thing. And this is still happening I pitched against three other people and they were sort of really the client decided that they wanted to do photography rather than illustration. And that's fine the the sort of these Asian jobs I've had through recently for Branding is always really confusing I had another one where it was 25 labels for a syrup company and one of the briefs was draw a Polo Bear skating on a kiwi glassier and I I I was just completely completely confused by that.

11:22So I spend most of my time alone working in this quite a cold and horrible studio and sometimes I get pretty down when things aren't really going my way.

11:31And I'm not too busy it's been a great year. But illustrations kind of like buses and you can wait 45 minutes or maybe four weeks and then sort of all of them come at the same time and my girlfriend kindly wrote this list which is sort of reasons and ways to stay positive and stay active and I think it's a great way to sort of look at and sort of think right I need to do these things so sort of quite quickly because I'm actually over time at the moment I'm working for the guardian on Day in the Life job and there's seven illustrations I'm doing one is a sexual health worker which I've really struggled to do because how do you explain sexual health but then get it printed in the guardian really don't know.

12:19That's why there's lots of people looking kind of embarrassed like this guy with the gloves putting on because I'm quite quiet at the moment I've also been trying to do a lot of self-initiated briefs I'm trying to really push forward my characters and how I I draw draw stuff I'm moving quite quite far away from sort of like the really obvious editorial stuff which is about at the moment which is sort of kind of really ambiguous.

12:40And I'm trying to move more into sort of like character design and sort of lastly my plans for next year I'm going to be doing possibly a book which I'm going to self fund hopefully through Kickstarter if people want to buy it I really don't know if not you can have it for free you know. And in February I'm going to drop like about 30 portraits of really big women in last year's fashion collections because I think that it's about time that people started to discuss body image and you know people that walked down catwalks aren't normal sized and I think that would be kind of fun and I'm also going to be doing some animated comics panels which sort of work on this idea of linear narrative but maybe suggest some other stuff it doesn't really look like anything it's actually meant to be baking a cake but heck thank you very much for having me cheers I'm my driver ♪