Here's a new Wordpress blog which I'm using to keep track of interesting things I've watched, read, or dug up on the internet as well as in the beautiful world of flesh and blood. It's sex and inspiration, nonsense and garbage, often at the same time, kind of like the net itself. And I've begun using Dance of the Dead as a staging area for ideas I'll likely abandon, but forward motion feels good.


Here are the notes from the first session of a defunct Call of Cthulhu adventure, hopefully at some point we will all pick up the books once again and get right back into it, until then one can only dream. Incidentally I turned down an opportunity to be interviewed by the Discovery Channel today for the 30th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons - Cameras tend to make me gun-shy.


Here's where I'll be uploading sketches, drunken sketches, collaborative nonsense and artwork that inspires me. Mostly it's meant to serve as an online swipe file. I've tried to credit images which aren't mine effectively to the proper owners, if you notice anything that doesn't seem kosher, don't hesitate to let me know.


The Global Girl was site a did for a friend of mine, who has since moved on to another venture. It's a shame really, I think the site really a captured the essence of what she was going for. Sophisticated, weirdly and accessibly feminine - suffice it to say I had to do a bit of research on a number of woman-oriented sites before I felt I had reached a viable aesthetic.


Diginiche.com is one of the last jobs I worked on and certainly one of my favorite pieces of the recent year. I think it stands as a testament to how sometimes marketing departments actually know what they are doing. The client was meticulous and would even call late at night for a revision for the next morning - this is fine with me usually as long as jobs don't overlap, and because I'm usually up late into the evening, drawing, writing, or more often than not watching some old Doctor Who or other 'b' grade science fiction or horror fare.


Below is an invitation I did for a private party (which was the only reason I was comfortable ripping off Edward Gorey's brilliant illustration for the cover of The Gnashlycrumb Tinies) last Halloween. I think the piece took about fifteen minutes to do, and turned out wonderfully. One of the designers I know, simply said "I can feel it." Which I feel is a pretty nice summation of the thing. It's creepy and playful all at once - mostly due to the illustration, if not solely because of it... A pretty clear example of how the right illustrator can be all you need to pull off a nice piece of work.

That said, I was thinking about how I keep returning to things that I enjoyed and inspired me as a child and throughout high school. As if all the reading and film going of the past decade had been washed away. The same can be said for some music that I had dismissed as typical eighties new romantic claptrap. Hence the title Enola Gay. Nice tune.

I know I was a bit lost throughout the nineties, but it scares me that I may have had so little of real inspiration throughout said decade. Maybe we are still to close to it, and in another ten years I'll be yearning for old John Woo movies and Greek food, but somehow I doubt it. It's as if I'm growing out, rather than growing up. I suppose if growing up means a suburban hell somewhere, I'll pass. But being financially secure? Having a beautiful family? Being ruler of the free world? These things are no longer as scary as they seemed.

Though truth be told, I'd still take a post-apocalyptic world where I fought 'freakies' and 'jackalmen' any day. Which reminds me I'll have to post a drawing of a 'jackalman' otherwise I just sound crazy.

Liam Nickerson
May 6, 2004

A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress. - Lord Byron



Launching the website yet again, as the online extension of my brain, basically a place for me to try and organize my various pursuits. Now as the site ramps up I expect there will be quite a few problems and glitches, all of which I'd love to have reported to me if in fact you stumble on one - and for now, as I bone up on my php, there may be some navigation issues in both the news and sketchbook sections.

In the news section I will try to get into the habit of posting something of a journal regarding design and my various creative endeavours. But I will also be posting the odd story I like (so long as it rests in the public domain) - it's this kind of cross pollination of ideas I think that feeds solid and not-so-solid creativity. You need to be feeding the mind. Something other than beer anyway...

The portfolio area has not been updated since June of last year. This is a big problem as I've worked with some huge clients since then, and I'd love to get that stuff up, to step potential clients (and those who are interested) through my design process. That way you can see how some clients have improved upon my designs, and how some have, well, 'taken them in their own direction'. I think this is important as it gives one a real sense for how some projects are vastly improved by strong project management and marketing input, while other are a good example of clashing egos and vision drift.

In any case it was a couple of recent projects which were the catalyst for this site, so sometimes you have to thank the tough jobs, for at the very least they give you a clear picture of what not to do next time.

Liam Nickerson
April 28, 2004

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist
has always to be out of step with his time. - Orson Welles