Jamie Hewlett

Jamie Christopher Hewlett (Horsham, England; April 3, 1968) is a British cartoonist and designer, known for being one of the creators of the comic Tank Girl and co-founder of the band Gorillaz with Damon Albarn. in addition to being present in several animation projects, collaborating with animators such as J. G. Quintel

Biography

First comic strips and Tank Girl

While studying at Northbrook College in Worthing in west Sussex, England; Hewlett, Alan Martin, and a fellow student named Philip Bond created a fanzine called Atomtan. This attracted the attention of Brett Ewins. After leaving university, Hewlett and Martin were invited by Ewins to create new material for a new magazine he was creating with Steve Dillon in 1988. The magazine was called Deadline and created a mix of comic strips produced by British creators and articles based on music and culture.

Martin and Hewlett created Tank Girl, an anarchist comic series about a punk girl who drove a tank and had a mutant kangaroo as a boyfriend. The strip was an instant hit and quickly became the most talked about section of Deadline. Hewlett's unusual style became popular and she began working with bands such as Senseless Things and Cud, providing covers for their albums.

I also design the decor for a club called The Factory in Worthing. The design consisted of red and green lines, a wall with torn panels of Tank Girl against ones from the '70s, a Ford Escort hanging from the ceiling, and toilets with pages from old annual comic strips taped to them. The Factory has since been refurbished and renamed several times.

By 1992 Hewlett had become a major creator in the comic strip industry, and one of the few to enter the mainstream industry. He worked with writer Peter Milligan on Hewligan's Haircut in 2000 AD in installments 700 through 707. The series were later collected into trade books. He was also involved in doing the covers and art for Shade, the Changing Man, also written by Milligan for DC Comics.

Tank Girl was considered to be turned into a film by MGM after being considered among many others by Steven Spielberg. The film was released in 1995 and featured Lory Petty as Tank Girl. It was a commercial and critical failure, and was rejected by fans who claimed that the film had not captured the essence of the original strip. Hewlett was very little involved in the film.

Hewlett also directed a Tank Girl miniseries for DC Comics' Vertigo imprint written by Peter Milligan, as well as helping to create a film for Vertigo. Hewlett continued to be involved with bands in the mid-1990s, including illustrating a comic strip about the Pulp song, "Common People."

Deadline was eventually canceled in 1996 due to declining sales in a changing market and with Hewlett concentrating on working on television commercials and scripts, most notably the children's series SMTV Live i> alongside the comedy duo Ant & Dec. He also created the comic Get the Frebbies published monthly in the fashion magazine The Face . The stories, such as they were, followed the exploits of Terry Phoo, a gay Buddhist law enforcer, and Whitey Action who was an enigmatic young anarchist with a bad attitude, and They were fighting against their archenemies The Frebbies Gang of the title. The dynamic between the two heroes was very similar to that between Tank Girl and her mutant kangaroo boyfriend Booga—her being the smart one and him being the dumb one—with the episodes being told from the female lead's point of view. The primary function of the comic strip was to allow Jamie to air his opinion on the media idols and fashions of those days, the story sometimes took second place to the jokes. The comic strip continued for a year but the second series was canceled due to a change in the publication's editorial team.

Work with Damon Albarn

At this time he moved into an apartment with Damon Albarn from the band Blur. After breaking up with his girlfriend Justine Frischmann - an original member of the band Elastica - it was while they shared the apartment that they conceived the idea of creating Gorillaz., the first virtual band. Albarn would work on the music, while Hewlett would work on the character designs, and both had ideas for the band members. The band's first single was released in 2000 followed by the band's first album in 2001, then in 2002 they released G-Sides as the B-side of Gorillaz, taking in this material that had not been used on the first album. In 2005, their second studio album Demon Days was released. In 2007 Gorillaz released an album titled D-sides, being the same as G-Sides for Demon Days. In 2010 they released The Fall and Plastic Beach, and in 2017 they released their album Humanz. All of his albums have been popular hits. The band also performed "live" on several occasions during 2005, including performances at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards, a performance at the Manchester Opera House and a similar one at the Apollo Theater in New York, where the band played including the Hewlett designs. Currently, the band plays live with real people. A film about Gorillaz was proposed but never made, although a documentary was obtained: Bananaz.

In January 2006, Hewlett's work on Gorillaz earned him a nomination by the Design Museum for designer of the year, an award he ended up receiving in May of that year. On May 25, 2006, both Hewlett and Albarn won the joint award for "Composers of the Year" at the Ivor Novello Awards.

In 2007, Hewlett and Albarn released their first major work since Gorillaz, titled Monkey: Journey to the West, a new version of the ancient Chinese legend Journey to the West. Albarn wrote the music, while Hewlett designed the set, animations and costumes. Written and adapted by theater director Chen Shi-zheng, the show featured 45 Chinese circus acrobats, Shaolin monks, and Chinese vocalists. It premiered at the Palace Theater in Manchester as part of the Manchester International Festival on 28 June 2007. Hewlett and Albarn created the animation sequence that the BBC used to present coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. sequence, titled Journey to the East, uses the main character from Monkey: Journey to the West.

Influences

Throughout his career as a designer and cartoonist, Hewlett's works have contained a diverse selection of influences from a variety of different artists.

Hewlett has stated that his main influences have been the works of cartoonists such as Mort Drucker, Carl Giles, Jack Davis and Ronald Lowe. In a 2012 interview for Absolut Vodka, Hewlett also listed Harvey Kurtzman's American satirical magazine, MAD, as a major influence on his art. Hewlett has also mentioned that he is greatly influenced by the works of American animator Chuck Jones of Warner Bros. Animation, and cites the works of British artists Ronald Searle and Mike McMahon as influences on his art. work of art. Hewlett was influenced not only by the works of Chuck Jones, but also by several UPA cartoons. Hewlett has also admitted to being greatly inspired by the personalities of artists such as Robert Crumb, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Martin Kippenberger and Richard Caton Woodville, recognizing the impact his art has on his own work.

During a 2012 interview with Alfred Dunhill, he also mentions the first film in the Star Wars series as another major influence on his artwork.

Hewlett admitted to being a great admirer of the works of Brendan McCarthy, more specifically his work on his comic Strange Days. Hewlett has said that the French cartoonist Moebius is a great influence on his art, calling it "incredibly inspiring" and saying that he considers it "one of the best." In addition to Moebius, Hewlett has been strongly influenced by the works of artists such as Tony Hart and Tanino Liberatore. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Hewlett also mentioned that he was a fan of American animator Brad Bird and his work on Family Dog, as well as American cartoonist Charles Schulz's cartoons, Peanuts.