About Dave McKean

A short bibliography on the man

Dave McKean was born in 1963 in Maidenhead, England. He attended Berkshire College of Art and Design from 1982-86,and he started working as an illustrator while in college. He met Neil Gaiman right after college and a long and fruitful collaboration started. They have worked together on several projects, Sandman, Violent Cases, Black Orchid and Mr. Punch can be recognized as some of the most successful. The highly successful story of Mr. Punch has also been made as a cd-rom by Artemis Communications, where Dave McKean was the producer. Another graphic novel created by Dave is Arkham Asylum, which is still the single most successful graphic novel ever published.

Over the course of a prolific artistic career that's spanned the past decade and a half, British mixed-media artist Dave McKean's striking and influential works have won him many awards, a worldwide following of fans and admirers, and a highly-respected reputation as an artistıs artist. He has many different artistic styles, accomplished by using a lot of varied media like line-art, painting, model-building, photography, digital manipulation, typography and all variations of mixing these medias together. He has proven himself as a superb artist and illustrator, has an amazing eye to details, and his work often reflects his somewhat macabre imagination. This is even reflected in the poster series he did for NIKE.

Dave McKean is also a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, and frequent illustrator/ photographer/ designer for record and book covers, including releases by Alice Cooper, Rolling Stones and Tori Amos.

He has also made his way into the world of film, cd-rom and music projects. Dave McKean has made some short films before, thereamong "Asylum". His recent movie project is "Mirrormask". This is a low budget film, but the critics are saying that if McKean can craft a motion picture that looks as cool as the designs shown to the Comic-Con crowded, "Mirrormask" will be an revolution in filmmaking, turning in a gorgeous, imaginative fantasy film for a ridiculously modest budget. The movie is scheduled to be out May 2004.

One of the things I find most appealing about McKean's movies, or at least "Mirrormask", is that he in not looking for Star Wars-type super realism. He uses up to date, high technology, but is not trying to create something as realistic as possible but something that is true to the type of film he is trying to make. What I have found in many recent releases is that the producers rely to heavily on stunning technology to carry the movie. This doesn't always work. "Matrix - Reloaded" is an example of this. Dave McKean says: "Things will look illustrative and the perspective will be flattened of. I love imagery like that. But there is a narrative reason for it as well. One of the leading characters falls asleep and enters a city of drawings that exist on her wall."

This kind of rough, sketchy style is something I really find fascinating and would probably try to push that kind of design and style in my own animations. Mixing 2D and 3D animation has been done for a long time now, but I think we will see in "Mirrormask" that Dave McKean has been able to do something unique and inspiring.

Here are some links to check out:

:: This is probably one of the best sites about Dave McKean and his art.

:: Some reading about the TV-movie "Asylum", made in 1998.

:: Links to different sites commenting on "Mirrormask", idesfactory.com, comicbookresources.com, and toughpigs.com.