C64 Art Gallery

The gallery is arranged into years, with a short section describing what happened that year. Click on each picture for a larger view, and for more information about the picture.

 

1985
This was the year I started drawing on the Commodore 64. I drew all these pictures for my own amusement, but they eventually formed the basis of a demo disk I sent off to various game companies. At the time I was working in a computer shop called 'Silica Shop', in Sidcup, Kent, but I wanted to get into computer graphics for a living.

I signed my name as 'SIR' because it's nearly my initials, but SJR didn't make a word, so I substituted 'I' for the 'J' to make SIR. On each picture I also appended the date, e.g. SIR'86, which makes it easy to identify which year each picture comes from, fortunately for me!

It was also the year some of my art was featured on the ZZap! 64 letters page.

 


Spaceship

 


Starwars

 
Ghostbusters

 


ZZap! 64

 


Koronis Rift

 
Thing On A Spring

 

Monty On The Run

 

1986
This was the year I sold my first picture: R.M.S. Titanic for Electric Dreams. Shortly afterwards I started doing loading screens for Firebird. I was still working in a computer shop (though a different one - The Advanced Technology Centre in Eltham, SE London) on not a very high salary, and with the extra money from my art I eventually bought an Amiga 1000.

It was also the year I joined the Commodore 64 network called Compunet, and was lucky to get my ID as SIR. I was also one of the unlucky Compunetter's satirised in ZZap! 64's Compunet article.

 


R.M.S. Titanic

 


Uridium

 
Freak Factory

 


Harvey Headbanger

 


Olli & Lisa
Warhawk

 

Happiest Days Of
Your Life

 
The Sacred Armour
Of Antiriad
Twinky Goes
Hiking

Microrhythm

 
Tripod		 max_headroom.gif (4135 bytes)
Max Headroom

The ZZap! 64 Team

 

1987
The computer shop closed down, and I lost my job. I did a couple more pictures for Firebird, then got a job doing a c64 shoot-em-up called Blazer for Nexus.

After that I joined Andromeda Software, based in North London as a full time artist (though actually self-employed), so I didn't produce a lot of C64 art that year, though I did do some Amiga art.

Andromeda was the first job I had to do a lot of commuting for, the journey taking over an hour and a half from my home in Kent!

Andromeda was run by Robert Stein, who was the guy who introduced  Tetris from Russia. They'd published some excellent games from Hungary and Eastern Europe, including the classic game Scarabaeus.

Unfortunately my time at Andromeda wasn't a particularly good one. I didn't work on anything there that I was particularly proud of during that time.

I worked on a Nigel Mansell F1  game,  a Judge Death game,  one of Kevin Tom's football manager games, and a conversion of some SSI games. Unfortunately most of these were never finished and never saw the light of day.

While at Andromeda I started working for Hewson in my spare time, doing loading screens.

 

Imagination

 
I, Ball
Blazer

Ocean Conquerer

 

1988
Eventually I left Andromeda, due to a disagreement with one of the managers, and went freelance.

For the first time I didn't have a full time job to support myself. Luckily I was living with my parents who supported me so I could work from home. I really must thank them for putting up with me, and supporting me until I got a 'proper' job.

Hewson gave me a lot of work this year, and I'm very grateful to them for giving me the opportunity to do some loading screens for some classic C64 games.

It was during this year that I worked on the Amiga version of Hewson's Cybernoid, the only Amiga game I ever worked on. That eventually involved moving in with the Programmer for a couple of weeks, and working flat out to get the game finished!

 


Nigel Mansell

 
Eliminator		 \\
Scorpion


5th Gear

 
Slayer
Exolon


Cybernoid

 
Golf Master
Tower Toppler


Marauder

 
Gribbly's Day Out

1989
In 1989 I gave up doing computer game graphics, and got what my parent's called a 'proper job' with a semi-conductor company, working on silicon chip layouts. I'd done this mainly to get some steady income, as freelance work was getting harder to come by.

Two years later the company relocated, and I lost my job.

I decided to go back into computer games, and joined Argonaut Software as an artist. I worked on quite a few SNES games including King Arthur's World, and Vortex.

Eventually I migrated to become the leader of Argonaut's QA department, later leaving them to join Philips Media as an Assistant Producer, where I remained for a couple years, before they closed down.

I then worked for Cranberry Source with industry veterans Jon Ritman (creator of the classics Matchday and Head Over Heels) and John Cooke for a few months before joining Particle Systems in 1998 as a game designer.

At Particle Systems I worked on the award winning space sim series Independence War, and was the Project Lead and Lead Designer of Independence War: Defiance.

Following that I helped design Independence War 2: The Edge Of Chaos. In 2003 Particle Systems were bought by Argonaut Games - after 10 years, I was working for Argonaut again. Sadly in late 2005 Argonaut Games closed down, and I lost my job but I secured a job with another major developer, and I'm still working in games today.