 Another web show so soon after last week's you've been knocking them out haven't you left them right literally fantastic interviews galore I know well this week. It's a very creative artistic web show Also relating to this you might have heard of flash Gordon the movie and you might have heard of the documentary about it life After flash life after flash appears on this box set And you can also get it on another blu-ray and DVD available from life after movies Sorry, where was that available from again life after movies? No, but in all seriousness Matt Ferguson is an artist who did this cover. Oh, so I wish I could draw I mean this guy's work is Incredible we were pouring over the website of all the different designs he's done and they are just amazing Can I talk about my favorite? You can talk about your favorite? I love the movie They live hence this and he did an absolutely incredible poster that we've actually ordered. It's amazing I've already got the spot in the house ready for it In fact, he does a whole series of John Carpenter films that I'm a massive fan of and just hats off I mean just incredible work. I can't even draw a stick man. I know well We're so incredible fans of Matt Ferguson So I was very excited when he said yes to an interview on the web show. So let's get straight into it Matt Ferguson Today's guest on the web show incredibly talented you probably know his name But you will definitely know his artwork also a fellow 80s film lover Matt Ferguson is here. How are you today Matt? I'm okay. Thank you. Yeah. Well, first of all for the audience who may not know Your actual career path or what you've done before tell us who you have worked with who you work with now What is what is it you do for a living in general? I'm an artist, but I make Film posters, I guess I'm known most for doing sort of Marvel But I also do posters for lots of 80s films and because I started out doing work in the Sort of alternative movie poster scene and it's all just sort of led on to all sorts of things So yeah marvels probably the key back track to kind of the beginning then Did you always know that you wanted to be an artist you I Imagine had this like amazing talent from a very early age. How did your career kind of progress? I've always been sort of artistic and I've always liked drawing pictures and stuff. So yeah, um But I kind of got dissuaded at school when I failed um my A levels in art And basically just stopped doing it. I started out when I was about 17 making sort of Skins and textures for computer games like Just sort of by myself on my own and then that sort of didn't go anywhere Then I did a film degree for a bit which I also failed and then I made a picture of samurai jack For my now wife. She was my girlfriend then and they were everybody was like, wow You should do more of this so I did more And then like a few months later I did an avengers poster and that led straight into working my first ever job proper job was on that I was on the avengers so So was that just a one-off commission or had you been hired by the the company to do More at that stage I did the posters off my own back and put it online and they saw it Mark workflow wanted a copy of it and then I guess that must have gone around the offices and stuff And then they hired me to do artwork for the box set a marvel box set That was sort of spun off from that initial avengers poster that I did So when you get a commission do you do they just kind of do you see the film and you have free reign? Do they give you design briefs? Like what is your kind of process from when you get asked to do a poster? Well, I guess I'm quite lucky because I'm I think When I get hired people hire me because they want me to do something in my style and it's quite It's like the alternative poster scene. So they sort of usually just go do what you think is best Which is quite good But then you always have parameters because obviously like with a film poster There's likeness rights. There's this there's that so you've kind of get approval to do everything When you're doing it officially and then that can change things. But yeah, no most of the time they just kind of Let me do what I want ish Do you tend to have Inspiration pretty quickly or do you like have to go through a few iterations before you kind of get your final one? Nine times out of ten. It's quite quick inspiration because it's usually something that I like So like if I'm doing something like flash golden poster, I love that movie So I kind of like just do my dream version of that what I would like to see So that's kind of like what that's my kind of one rule is what would I like it? What do I want it on my wall? So I just try to do that. Well, I have speaking of that Epic also plug for the box set. It's amazing studio canal. Um epic poster artwork I also picked up your one of your flash gordon vice pins that you were doing um You have a pretty interesting flash gordon story that I know you have told before but I would love to hear it again Is it about how I was born at home? Certainly is So I was born at home in 19 christmas eve 1983 and the reason why I was born at home was because it was the Premiere the tv premiere in the uk of flash gordon and my dad really wanted to watch it and I was the third child that they had and so they My mum was sort of like, oh, it's fine. It'll be fine because she's done it all before and anyway things happened really quickly And so then I was born at home to flash gordon and then that story kind of like got put about And then we watched flash gordon every year a really important film to me because of that I mean the 80s were an exceptional decade for everything especially movies like clothes tv shows Um What is it? What films did you grow up with that you absolutely still love today from the 80s? Well, there's lots obviously but Flash gordon is right up there transformers the movie the 1986 animated film I was obsessed with that film used to rent it from ritz video every week. I like fantasy films. So like, um labyrinth um dark crystal Willow I really think that because we like lord of the rings our family we used to listen to the to like the old radio show of lord of the rings and then fantasy stuff Was a big part of making me growing up. So yeah, I loved all those never-ending story That was another one like flash gordon where we were just Obsessed with it and it scared me so much the the wolf I'm not seeing it in ages, but there's the painting. There's the paintings of everything happening, isn't there? I can remember this it's like the story and a tray you see in the story And then there's the painting of the wolf in the wall and then the wolf is in the wall Why do you think that 80s was so brilliant? I think it's sort of like If I think about it in terms of a timeline it's sort of keys off of what happened in the 70s with star wars where there was that explosion in um genre films and special effects And it there's sort of like a sort of one-upmanship going on in the 80s So as the decade goes on, they just got more and more wild But they still had a sort of like a handmade feel to them. They were less designed by committee So like a film like something like labyrinth, which is David Bowie singing with puppets Wouldn't necessarily get made today because I think somebody would probably go that's just silly what you do Also when you describe it like that it sounds pretty stupid Exactly, but then they made it and it's brilliant. So that's kind of why the 80s is they're kind of like just They didn't seem to have a filter for a lot of the films. They just did Whatever they wanted and it shows in the films because they're just they last they've really lasted a lot of those films Good thing with 80s films like the goonies was that they didn't hold back for the sake of children You know, like we watch these films and there's horrible things happening and they're really freaky and scary like Return to Oz and films like that That's that's why they're good. So going back to your art and I'm Very naive when it comes to like knowing how to do art apart from like with a pen and a piece of paper How what is your actual technical process for like do you Hand draw it and then you put in a computer like how do you how do you get it from your brain to a finished product? So I used to be a sort of traditional artist But then with the computer games where I used to work for computer games I taught myself photoshop, which isn't really just photoshop. You're not editing photos So I have like a pen and you draw one to one on the screen But even then that can't quite be drawing by hand So I'll often do sketches and thumbnails to start off with by hand because it's Much faster way to get your ideas down On to paper and you sort of know whether it will work or not because of the way that works used nowadays I do it all digitally because you do a poster for somebody, but it's not just that poster They'll want to do it on the dvd. They'll want to use it on a banner on Instagram So you've got all the different elements and you can quickly rejig it into a different format So that's kind of like the good thing about digital But it's also quite difficult to make it look like a What I would call a real poster which is it's not It's no such thing as a real poster But I call it a real poster because it's kind of like in my head The posters that you saw when you were kids like you drew strews and posters and stuff So you mentioned Drew Strews and who famously I love the Goonies So I love his Goonies poster and you did a brilliant Goonies poster by the way I think it's amazing who inspired you growing up or still today new artists inspire you Like you didn't know the names then so Drew Strews and Inspired a lot of people what you wouldn't know his name. We just knew the posters But there's also um, there was a poster artist called John Alvin who did a lot of really good posters He did the willow poster cocoon poster Arachnophobia and I think he's probably the key influence on me because Drew Strews and like an amazing artist with lightness So for example, you've got your back to the future poster Which has got that amazing lightness of Michael J Fox and it almost looks like a photo until you look properly and you see How amazingly well-painted it is John Alvin did a lot of sort of airbrush work and more scenic Setting a tone with his artwork and that that's kind of I always keyed more off of that kind of style So stuff that's pulled back and you see a bit of the environment So John John Alvin was probably my number one influence And again, I didn't know who he was until Just a few years ago when um, his wife brought out a book And I was like, oh, oh, oh, he did that. He did that. He did that and it's like, okay, that's the guy So when you work on a poster, I guess it's um, how long does it take From inception to having it finished? Well, that all depends really ideally like Like a month or just forever really just carry on making a poster forever because you don't never want to give it up But when you're doing sort of client work, it can be Two weeks, which is a very tight timeline, but then that sort of drives you to be really creative so A deadline is really good. So two weeks to a month From inception to the end. Yeah And then sometimes sometimes a week and it's like I can't do it. Which one did you have to do in a week? I've recently just done one in a week for a tv show, which I can't talk about but yeah, that was like That's stressful And then another quick one was empire strikes back I did the 40th anniversary for that and I did that in two weeks But because you don't have that time you can have to go with your gut more and so I latched onto an idea And I just plowed through it and I actually quite I actually like that poster a lot of my posters I look at and I can't I don't like them. I'm like, what did I do and you just see everything you did wrong But that that one the empire strikes back one actually I actually do quite like Do you have to work on just one at a time as well? Or do you can you work on multiple? I usually work on about two or three At once and then you can flip between then which is quite good because obviously you can get quite fatigued doing one thing and that you feel yourself how this is and So instead of taking a break like a normal person, I'll just move onto one of the other projects that i'm working on which is Maybe not the best way to work, but it's what seems to work for me Of all the posters that you have done, what are you most proud of? The one that's had the most impact is that style was empire strikes back Well, the one I'm most proud of is flash gordon Because of the personal Attachment that I have to it and the fact that like I had to pitch for that job Usually people come to me, but they they they contact me and they said we're looking at some stuff There's a few other artists You know what and so I sort of pitched for it and I really went all in And I and I got that one and because it's so important to me. I'm probably most proud of flash gordon What was that pitch process like what were the steps for you to finally get it just sort of going going? Yes, I want to do it um Telling them sort of stylistically What I would like to do so you show them some of your past work or even other artists work sometimes and just go sort of like this and then The next stage then they that you would do like a little sort of thumbnail to give them a sort of idea That was totally different though the initial concept for the flash gordon was totally different to what we ended up with but Yeah, it ended up better probably Did you for that one have a lot of kind of um Cooks in the kitchen for that design if it was different or did you just naturally change the way you were going the only Thing I remember them having was they wanted a sort of bullet style composition So sort of the flash gordon in the middle and then everything sort of shooting off But I they let me just do what I wanted. I was like, I need to have Hawkman. I need to have the floating city I need to have this I need to have that the only thing That we couldn't do was I wanted to have a a photo strip So all posters sometimes would have photo strips where they had like little box outs of the um actors Uh to show the stars that were in the film and I thought if I did that then I could get all the characters in So like klytus and prince baron and stuff But like with likeness Issues and stuff that just couldn't happen. So we didn't get a photo strip That's the only thing that didn't make it on flash gordon Do you come up with a lot of um, we'll come up against a lot of rights issues for I know flash gordon is complicated But for other films like maybe the star wars or marvel or do you often just have free reign with everything? How it goes is usually you have free reign to start off with Unless there's any big issues and they go like you literally cannot draw this guy like With with batman you can't have michael keaton's face So that kind of affects how you're going to do the poster But usually what it is is you do your idea your initial concept and then they go Yes, do a bit more and then it'll go to a different department. So like legal department and then they'll go Oh, sorry. We can't have that You can't have the empire's state building because we don't have the like License to use it. So you just have to sort of figure out how to do a poster with new york without the empire state building Or for example, so yeah So that's the the only issues from even posters is when there's just legal issues. That's that's the only yeah Are there any movies that you would really love to do a poster for that you have yet to Well, there's more john carpenter movies because i'm a big john carpenter fan So I would like to do posters for like big trouble in little china and halloween Because i've done a bunch of john carpenter ones And then there's obviously all those 80s films that we talked about because my ones I enjoy doing the most of the 80s films. So like you're willow and Never ending story and those those sorts because again the imagination just runs wild with what you can do If there are any artists out there budding artists that want to be doing what you're doing What advice would you give to them? Well, I can only go off my own experience really so I would say Just be yourself and Put yourself out there I mean with with the way the internet is stuff can get picked up because that's how I how I got My start was being picked up online. So You just have to put yourself out there, but obviously like a lot of people think I can do this and then sell it But obviously you don't have the license to sell stuff So you can do fan art and you just put it online and it's for your own gratification But then if you start selling it you get into sort of legal issues and stuff And that might put off some studios from wanting to work with you That's my that's something I never really did. I didn't sell stuff until I started doing it officially Do you know of anyone else that has your artwork hanging on their walls? I do james gun has some of my artwork for guardians of the galaxy Most of it's I find out about it after the fact. There was something really random like the the drummer from anthrax One of my start was poster. I was like, I hope you still love anthrax. Cool Oh, I gave I gave tyker with with tea tea a poster in person at new york comic on that was really good Because he was really funny and nice Just a really nice man Does sam have a copy of your flesh golden poster? Yes, he emailed and I almost like had a heart attack and I was like, oh my god You have no idea how important you are to me I'm just this random guy who did a poster anyway And then he was just so nice in the email and he was just like I'd really like to be able to get some and I was like, yeah And he wanted to know like how to get them to buy them or something I was like, you can just have them. Maybe you'd sign me one and he was like, oh, yeah, but he signed me one. So That was just amazing I bet your parents were just beside themselves when they found out you were going to do the flesh golden poster I imagine I think it kind of like goes completely over their head Because they're they're always kind of like a little bit like oh, that's good and they don't kind of realize Sometimes they get really excited like they were excited about the flesh golden thing, but He's had I don't know why they kind of they're just classic parents about stuff. It's like, oh, that's nice Thanks mom. Yeah Do you have anything else you mentioned something that's quite secret But do you have anything else coming up that you can Share or do you not really reveal it until the artwork has been released? Well, I'm usually under NDA. So I can't But we're working on transformers stuff at the moment. So that's quite exciting because I love transformers And then the other thing is I've got another thing, but I'm under NDA on that so I can't say Well, if anyone wants to see more of your art or wants to buy some of your art, where can they go? Just google my name Matt Ferguson. That's the best way And I'll come up straight away or you can go on my twitter, which is cakes and comics Yeah, that's about it really just Google me that works. Well, fabulous. Well, thank you so much for chatting. It has been a pleasure I'm such a fan of your art incredibly jealous that you have that skill. I would love it And thank you for chatting me today. It's been lovely. Thank you. Yeah, it's been really nice. Thanks Hope you enjoyed that chat with Matt. Hope you were inspired by his incredible artwork You should be I mean if if anybody's got aspirations of how to get into that world then thank Thanks again to him for giving us his insight It's very difficult sometimes when you're a young aspiring artist to work out how you can actually do it So chatting to somebody like him or in the past we've chatted to Alex Ross Some really big names in the in the world of kind of illustration and design So hopefully you enjoyed it a skill. We will know how I know I don't think you can learn that I think you've got it inside you and yes, you can grow it and nurture it But I think he could sit me down for six months and my stick man would still look like a stick man to be honest Don't forget to check out all our other videos on the web show. Don't forget to subscribe Comment what do you think of Matt's art? Do you own his art? Who would you like us to interview on the web show next? Maybe you want to share the video to some high volume sites that you're part of so other people can enjoy these fantastic interviews Just a suggestion until we come back for the next web show Have a great weekend