Singing your heart out!

Wonderful to hear an old lady on the Victoria line this morning sporting HUGE headphones & singing her heart extremely LOUDLY out completely oblivious to all the other passengers - cue outbreak of smiles amidst the usual 'tube embarassment' - priceless!

Magic friendly unicorn headpiece™!

Make up for personality deficiencies & general awfulness with a magic friendly unicorn headpiece™.

Everyone loves unicorns huh? Nobody likes you? Unicorn wins every time, job  done!

World Cat Day - official merchandise

Yes, it's World Cat Day (apparently) so why not purchase an official* World Cat Day Collar of Shame™?

(* this is a rather loose definition of 'official' - may contain lies)

Monster Facts #10

Monster Fact : Monsters do not receive mandatory holiday pay & rarely take time off - it is considered wise not to disturb them when they do*

*This also applies to freelance illustrators, crocodiles et al. Dogs, as EVERYBODY knows have Wednesday afternoons off.

Dennis the Menace - Rollercoaster Riot!

 Diary of Dennis the Menace 3 - Rollercoaster Riot written by Steven Butler & scribbled all over by me is published today by Puffin books!

All aboard THE VOMIT COMET! Guess what fellow menaces - The World's Biggest Rollercoaster is opening in Beanoland this summer! I just need to win an easy-peasy competition to be the first Bash Street School student to ride it - and I might have to trick a few Softies as well . . .

As usual this has been a riot to draw (see what I did there?) & am looking forward to the next book immensely - KEEP MENACING KIDS!

Silly Name for a Monster - publication day!

 'Silly Name for a Monster' written by Timothy Knapman & illustrated by me is out today published by Scholastic.

'Once upon a time if you wanted to be a hero, you had to have a proper, hero-sounding name. And if you wanted to be a big scary monster, it was no good unless your name was big and scary too. But when all the proper-sounding heroes can't defeat the most menacing monster in the kingdom, the king offers his whole kingdom to whoever can beat it. Could Stinkpot succeed? Even with such a silly name?'

It's got scary monsters, heroes, donkeys, knights in pink frilly knickers & INCREDIBLY SILLY NAMES! I think you should go out & buy it!

You can order it from here or preferably get your best pair of pink frilly knickers on pop into your local bookshop & get it there!

Wednesday hedonism!

Monster Fact #9

Monster fact : Very BIG monsters can fit through very SMALL holes

Damned lions!

For old times' sake I bought a ticket to see The Damned a couple of days back then due to another conversation I was inspired to think about how a lion with Dave Vanian's* hair would look - goth lion anyone?

*Could also apply to Morticia Addams & possibly Caitlin Moran

Permeablity technologist at work

Musing at breakfast over the weekend at the optimum time for tea bags to be infused & realising how unsung the job of the Permeability Technologist is.

It's Thursday! Jump around in your pants!

It's Thursday, the sun's out, it's probably the only sensible thing to do. Tell your boss 'Steve said it'd be fine'* grab a glass of something cold & head out there!

*NB 'fine' can be a somewhat moveable feast

When cocktails talk back

Monster Facts #8

Monster Fact: Monster breath is terrible. Many beautiful would-be monster relationships are de-railed early on by halitosis*.

(*See also monster diets)

Monster Facts #7

Monster fact: Up to 95% of domestic 'lost sock' incidents are the result of monster activity

Monster Facts #6

Monster Fact: Monsters love ice cream, but mainly when it's somebody else's ice cream.

See also monster diets

Monster Facts #5

Monster Fact: The dark is composed of at least 70% monsters (& at least 10% horrible creepy crawlies) - very much like the percentage of cocoa solids in posh chocolate but much SCARIER!

Monster Facts #4

Monster Fact: You know when people say "they won't hurt you they're just being friendly"? * or, "they're more scared of you than you are of them"?*

These are abject BIG FAT LIES. Run away now!

(*see also big vicious dogs with dumb owners)

(*see also spiders)

Monster facts #3

Monster fact : Vegetarianism is EXTREMELY uncommon. Their favourite dinner is invariably YOU!

(yeah, yeah, wear the monster deflective tofu armour if it makes you feel better #futilegesture)

Monster facts #2

Yep, sorry to break it to you kids, I'm not making this up...

Sleep tight huh? x

The Wednesday creature

Monster fact : Bloodthirsty monsters always have Wednesdays off to catch up on laundry / e-mails etc.

Here is a candid pen & ink picture of a monster washing his smalls (the artist was nearly devoured in the process of drawing this, monsters are NOTORIOUSLY touchy - I don't make this sh*t up you know!)

Disappointing sandwich

We've ALL been there.

How to draw Dennis the Menace and Gnasher

Me pulling some stupid faces & demonstrating some drawing stuff & nonsense

PS...this is my REAL drawing face

Silly Name for a Monster!

I just received a copy of 'Silly Name for a Monster' by the very funny Timothy Knapman which I illustrated earlier in the year.
The fact that I laughed out loud when I first received the text was definitely a good start & I thoroughly enjoyed illustrating this. It's a hilarious book with a big scary monster, some cowardly knights & a little boy called Stinkpot. Can he succeed in defeating a monster with such a silly name?

I'm not going to tell you that. You'll have to wait until August 7th until it's actually released so there!

In the mean time, here's a sneak preview...

Happy Tramp

A while back I was approached by Inbetweeners movie director Ben Palmer & Zeppotron co-founder Neil Webster who were in the process of launching Happy Tramp, a new independent production company specialising in scripted narrative comedy to design a logo which would work for print in various formats with the idea of making it move at a later stage.

Armed with only a copious amount of extra strength lager (for research purposes) I initially sketched out a few ideas... & we fairly quickly decided on the finished logo. I tried a few handwritten typefaces but we settled on trusty old Gill Sans

 After the Special Brew hangover died down a few months later I took the character & directed & animated the short clip. I sent the guys an initial animatic to which they replied -

Thanks for this. We've got a lot of notes...
1. We love it.

Why aren't ALL jobs as fun  painless as this?

You can see the clip here

Happy Tramp from Steve May on Vimeo.

LOOK! NEW ANIMATION!

I have become acutely aware that to  iPads/ iPhone users the little 'Bat Van' animation on my website homepage which has served me well over the years has been unviewable due to technology issues too dull to be spoken of here. (something to do with a hissy fit between Apple & Adobe etc. etc.)

Basically, instead of a pleasing animation loop all the Apple device based punter would see was a white space...now I like minimalism as much as the next person but...


....LOOK! NEW ANIMATION!

 I've just introduced these little rascals in preparation for a bit of an overhaul of the site in the next few months - do come in & have a look at http://www.stevemay.biz

Stranded pachyderm

Werewolf? There wolf!

One more lycanthropic image inspired by Friday 13th's full moon (which I completely failed to see due to my impossibly glamorous social life ; ) - Happy Monday!

Full moon tonight! Altogether now... "AAAAWWWWOOOOOOO!"

I know LOTS about werewolves but very little about astronomy but apparently... 

'A full moon coinciding on Friday the 13th is not all that uncommon, occurring every three or so years.

But having the combination of a honey moon and Friday the 13th is rare, last occurring on June 13, 1919, according to the popular astronomy site Universe Today. We'll have to wait until June 13, 2098, for the next one.'

(thank you National Geographic)

(illustration from 'Making Monsters Happy' by Susan Gates)

Felt tip RUMBLE!

(no made-up beasties were hurt in the making of this image)

Brave (& rather literal) bear saying 'boo' to a goose.

cat trumpet

The man in the Apple Store asked me what I was drawing.

I explained it was Tuesday morning so naturally I was drawing a cat playing a trumpet.

That seemed to satisfy everyone. : )

Fry ups (& bad language)

Drawn waiting for an Apple 'Genius' to look at my IPhone this morning whilst pining for breakfast

It went that-a-way!

Subtitle for the hard of thinking

Bad hair day.

Monster on vacation

I spilled espresso on this I'm afraid. Am pretending it's an artistic effect. Shhhhh!

Ineffectual beastie

Chinese burn...don't do it kids

(Don't say I didn't warn you)

Skelly-cycle

Out-take from a job I did a few months back.

I usually hate drawing bicycles*

This was more fun.


(*unless I can make them up!)

Meet ze monster(s)

On Britishness... passive-aggressive tutting - a guide.

(see also 'Epidemic of tuts')