About the Author
John White is an Illustrator and Graphic/Web Designer
Former long-standing member of Illustrators Ireland (Formerly Illustrators Guild of Ireland)
Born in Liverpool 1968
Living in Ireland since 1977
johnwhiteillustrator.com - portfolio
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Ballymore Eustace, County Kildare
Circa 1978?
Three Little Pigs App - 2011
As far as I was concerned, I was going to be an artist - of some description - and spent most of my childhood and young teenage years, not playing football but drawing and reading comics. When we arrived, from Scotland, to a small Irish country village in Ireland in 1977 it more or less coincided with the Star Wars phenomenon. This provided a wonderful escape from the isolation of Co. Kildare and lots of inspiration. By the time I was 12, I was pretty certain I'd be a comic artist; though I'd no idea how that could be brought about. By then I'd adapted Star Wars, most of Alien and a made dozens of other comics.
I took a first wrong turn when I discovered rock music and electric guitar from about 1984 on, but I still got an A in art in my final school exams and went to Limerick College of Art. I was pretty much a philistine, with some terribly embarrassing stuff in my portfolio. I just hadn't had the exposure to high - and pop culture that I needed. But, in my interview for art college I was still adamant that I wished to be a comics artist.
After the foundation year in 1985-86 another big sidetrack happened: I went to Dunlaoghaire Art College in Dublin to study film in the hope of doing animation. I probably should have stuck to graphics and illustration. Without any proper animation education or preparation for life after college I inbetweened Saturday Morning style animation for 5 weeks in 1990. I then stupidly turned down a rough-inbetweener job with a large Classical Animation studio and freelanced for another much lesser one until they went bust.
After wandering in the dark for a bit, but doing a small number of animation projects for TV, the animation boom - busted in Ireland. After '93, I finally did a couple of years of illustration for newspapers and magazines. I should have been practicing this, my first craft all along. That wasn't much of an earner though, and in '96 I enrolled on a web design course. I've predominantly designed websites but also identity and print design since then as an employee of various companies.
In 2010-11, whilst freelance again, I collaborated with Marino Software in Dublin on my most exciting professional project to that point: An interactive story App - The Three Little Pigs. A big illustration project which included plot brainstorming sessions, storyboarding, all the illustrations and some animation.
Since the economic downturn really hit Ireland in 2011, I've been back to working in Graphic/Web/UI Design.
But since then, I also created my new grown-up webcomic Between * Wars—a comic based in 1970s Ireland—and it was nominated for Best Webcomic 2015, by Irish Comic News (ICN)
Reviews!
"You must read this - It's super-underground - it's all kinds of incredible - magic was made."
Peter Hall - Movies.com
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