Meet the Illustrator: Chris Baker
Here's a chance for you to get to know one of the Redwall illustrators, Chris Baker, a little better.
Chris Baker is the artist who paints the cover illustrations for the British editions of the Redwall adventures. He's also the artist who provided the models of each character from which the animators of the Redwall television series worked. You can check out his work in the Redwall Library.
Chris was born August 17th, 1960 in Birmingham, England, the youngest of three children. He continues to live in Birmingham and has a ten year old son.
He uses the pseudonym Fangorn when signing his artwork. It's the name of the oldest living creature on Middle Earth in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
Here's Fangorn's story, told in his own words:
From a very early age, I began to draw in those blank spaces that you find in textbooks. I carried on drawing throughout my school life and first started to sell my work in my early teens. At the same time as I began a short stint at art college (aged 16), I was encouraged by some friends at my local science fiction bookshop to exhibit at science fiction and fantasy conventions. This allowed me to show off my work and also to sell most of it. Further down the line, people in the industry began to take an interest too. After a year and a half of studying design, I then went into full-time employment at a design studio in Birmingham.
My style developed enough during my time at the studio to enable me to have work published on book jackets and game boxes. Then, after nearly twelve years of working full-time, I decided to become a freelance illustrator and have been self-employed now for ten years. During that time, I have produced a wide range of work from book covers, graphic novels, game design and picture books to concept design for film and television. One of the major highlights of my career so far has been the two and a half years that I spent working with Stanley Kubrick on his AI project and his last film, Eyes Wide Shut.
I began working on the Redwall series in the early '90s, taking over from illustrator Pete Lyon. Most of my cover work is painted in acrylic (these days the computer is used as well for other elements of my work) and each one can take from a week to two weeks to complete. At present I am involved in producing a series of Redwall covers for the German market, which gives me the opportunity to go back and perhaps improve on previous versions I've done.
When I began illustrating the Redwall books, it only took a short while to get into the groove as far as the depiction of the characters was concerned -- I knew that I wanted to portray the characters quite realistically but at the same time make them look as if they could wield a sword. The inspiration for each character obviously comes from Brian Jacques' text and it grows naturally from there.
It was quite difficult to re-interpret these characters for the forthcoming animated series as you are basically working with just an outline, which means that much more exaggeration is needed to bring them to life on the screen. There was an initial desire to reflect the style of my original covers but this would obviously make for some very painstaking animation! However, I think that the final result still captures the spirit of Redwall.
My involvement with Brian Jacques' Redwall books has been very good for me and has produced some of my most pleasing work.
Outside of illustration, most of my interests are still visually based -- photography, cinema, special effects and computer technology. I am also an avid reader of biographies these days as I am finding truth more fascinating than fiction! In the future, I am keen to produce picture books developing my own ideas, but my ultimate goal professionally is to go on to direct movies. Whether they are huge Hollywood blockbusters or animated shorts on computer doesn't matter to me. It would simply be very satisfying to have produced a piece of film.
