June 29, 2010
Hey Everyone,
Just a quick one to let you know that all of a sudden I’ve just recieved a whole swathe of great press! I just had to let out the excitement somewhere :) My dinosaur character that came to life on my iPad has been featured in .NET Magazine and Mac Format! And to add to that, Voodoo Controllers has been featured in .NET Mag too, scooping site of the month! What a lovely contrast to all that god awful hacking and copying!
You can take a look at all the coverage over in the press section.
Oh, and I also got a rather lovely mention in the 3 Circle Studio Podcast last week too! They ran a podcast on ‘The Most Inspiring Creatives‘ and they chose to include little old me (about 33mins in)…flattered is a bloody understatement! Thanks guys!!
Mike.
Categories: Fully Illustrated,General,Press,Sketchbook Pro,Update,iPad
June 25, 2010
Hey Everyone,
Just a quick note to let you know that Fully Illustrated has been under attack recently from some unscupulous hackers and pirates. This past week has seen the site hacked and copied a number of times. I’ve got a number of people helping out at Media Temple, WordPress, Codefor plus assistance from a kind friend Ben Hogan, so a quick thanks to you guys for all your continued support and help, its much appreciated!
Fully Illustrated gets ripped off about once a month, but recently the site has been copied no less than 6 times in 4 weeks, which is very annoying and time consuming, as speaking to the relevant hosts, infringer’s, and my solicitor, becomes a full time job. But rest assured, anyone that copies this site will be followed up via legal channels.
A quick thanks to the kind folks that let me know when they see my work being used elsewhere too!!
So, if you spot any strange goings on, on the pages of Fully Illustrated, it will be down to this, so please bear with us as we sort the issue out.
Thanks.
Mike.
Categories: Fully Illustrated,General,Update
May 28, 2010
Hey Everyone!
Wow, things have been ultra quiet on the site recently, sorry about that! I’ve been buried under some sersiously intense deadlines for some seriously fun projects. Here’s a few specific updates to let you know what’s been going on…
Websites:
I’ve been working on a whole host of sites recently, all of which are awaiting release and most of which (bizarrely) are MMO related! I’ve gone from doing almost no MMO related games and sites to working on 5! Crazy and immense fun at the same time!
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Games:
Wii:
I’m back to work on the Wii game that I started over a year ago (which was paused for about 6-8months) so there will be loads more info on that beauty as it becomes public. I’m bloody loving this project!
Steam & X360:
For the past few weeks I’ve been working (hard…very, very hard) on the menu’s, HUD and general UI for a kick ass new game that’s due out on Steam and X360. This is one of, if not the most amazing project I’ve had the honour of working on, its been a blast! Again, more info soon.
iPhone & iPad:
Man, this industry is booming right now and the amount of iPhone related enquiries I’m seeing is mind boggling. At the moment I’m working on (working on also includes completed and as yet un-released) 4 new iPhone games and 1 iPad game with a mixture of companies, all of which have been great to work on! Unfortunetly, none of them are under the Joystick Generals as JG is on pause for the next few months until both Chris and I can settle our current crazy schedules.
Web:
Yep, I’m dabbling in some web games at the moment, actually, more specifically Facebook games on the whole, creating the UI for 3 MMO’s. This is fairly new territory for me and has been amazing to work on. I cannot wait to get them into the portfolio.
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Email Delays:
I know I post this message about every 2 months, but its back again. Due to my workload there has been A HUUUUGE backlog on my email replies and I am doing all that I can to get back to everyone, so if your waiting, thanks for being patient, I havent forgotten about you and I WILL be back in touch as soon as I can.
Thanks everyone, watch this space, there is lots to be released :)
Mike.
Categories: Fully Illustrated,Games,General,Update,iPad,iPhone
February 16, 2010
Hey Everyone,
I just thought you may like to know that I was recently interviewed by the guys over at The Design Inspiration and its now online. The Design Inspiration is a great resource, and is one that I use for Illustration inspiration all the time as they’ve always got some great articles and artist showcases on, so it was rather nice to have been invited along!
The interview covers a whole host of things, which hopefully some of you may find of interest.
Take a peek…
http://thedesigninspiration.com/articles/the-founder-of-fully-illustrated-micheal-heald/
Thanks.
Mike.
Categories: Fully Illustrated,General,Interview,Press,Update
February 10, 2010
Hey everyone,
Just a quick post to say that I’ll be back to full speed really soon.
On top of the huge influx of enquiries that have been flooding in (thanks everyone!!), I became a dad a couple of weeks ago, so life has just got a whole load busier and brilliant ;) He arrived a little earlier than expected, so its played havoc (albeit rather amazing and wonderful havoc) with my calender, and I’ll be getting back to everyone as soon as possible. So if your waiting for a reply, I do apologise for the delay and I will be back to you very soon.
Added to all this, Super Turbo Action Pig went into Beta testing recently (thanks for the testing everyone) and is now having a some cool extras thrown in based on some very awesome feedback. Soooooo, the game is going to be ready really soon (I know I’ve been saying this since November ;) and the site is launch ready!
2010 is proving to be a rather marvelous and exciting year!
Catch you all soon.
Mike.
Categories: Fully Illustrated,Games,General,Super Turbo Action Pig,The Joystick Generals,Update,iPhone
January 18, 2010
Hi everyone,
I just wanted to post a quick apology for the current delay in email replies. I’m seeing a huge influx of enquiries at the moment and the result of which has meant that I am struggling to reply in a timely manner. So for anyone awaiting a reply, I apologise for the wait.
I’ll be getting back to everyone as soon as I possibly can.
I hope the delay doesnt cause you any inconvenience.
Thanks.
Mike.
Categories: Fully Illustrated,General,Update
January 15, 2010
It’s a little late, but happy new year everyone!
2009 was simply a brilliant year, so many fun projects and so many fun clients! The past year was a dream come true for me, as after 10 years working in this industry, it is only now, since setting up on my own, that I am finally doing the kinds of work I’ve always dreamed of. I want to say thanks to all my awesome clients and the ace folks that keep popping back to this little site to see what’s been going on!
My dream had always been to be working with games companies, and just shy of 2 years into my voyage, I seem to be living that dream and I feel so thankful to everyone out there that has helped me to this point. My very first games jobs were for the guys at Toribash and Data Realms, so to Hampus and Daniel, I say a BIG THANK YOU for both your business and your kind referrals, as I truly believe that it is you that helped set the wheels in motion.
2010 is shaping up to be pretty bloomin exciting too, I’m soon to be launching the Joystick Generals with Chris Wilson, I have a lovely line up of exciting projects and to top it all off, Trenches, the first major iPhone game that I was the Art Director on, has hit the top 5 best selling paid apps worldwide, blooming awesome! Anyway, I’m starting to get all emotional lol, so without further ado, I want to say a big hello to 2010 and I cannot wait to see what you have in store!
Mike.
Categories: Fully Illustrated,General,The Joystick Generals,Trenches,Update
October 3, 2009
I just wanted to post a quick thanks to everyone for the overwhelmingly positive feedback that has been arriving via twitter, facebook and email over the past week, its been nothing short of inspiring! The fact that you’ve taken time out of your day to send these kind words is just awesome! I promise to make the most of this new blog and will be turning it into a useful creative resource with a whole host of great links, resources and generally tasty creative stuff :)
Thanks again everyone!!!
Mike.
Categories: Fully Illustrated,General,Website Release
September 21, 2009
Welcome to Fully Illustrated V3.0! It’s been a long time coming, but finally version 3.0 is now live and kicking! As with most creative agencies, it’s your own site that gets done last, due to the fact that you are pouring all your creative juices into your paid work, so the company site always gets dropped on the back-burner.
Well, this time Fully Illustrated is back with a bang! This lovely new shiny site comes with a whole host of new features, all of which I’ll list below:
- The FI-Blog – Yey, finally I catch up with something that people have been doing for years. Its tooled up with all the usual bits too, so there is an RSS feed over there on the right, so for those of you who like to keep up with my latest releases, it’s now a bucket load easier than just checking back all the time (yes, I’ve finally listened to all the requests, so thanks for asking :)
- Branding section – Again, this an answer to the maaaaany questions I receive asking ‘do you also do branding?’, to which I have to mail back a long winded reply explaining that I do, but I just don’t have a section on the site about it. So now it’s here for all to see. I hope you like it.
- Dedicated iPhone site – Yep, there is now a dedicated iPhone site too! As a lot of the work I do these days is iPhone related, I wanted to have a nice welcome screen dedicated to my favourite mobile device. Take a peek at the piccies below if you don’t have an iPhone.
- Evolved look and feel – After playing around with lots of ideas, most of which were simply overkill, I realised that what I really needed to do was evolve Fully Illustrated, not put it through a full on revolution. So I dropped the full flash concepts pretty early on and finally settled on this new design, I hope it’s to your liking. The main goal has been to expose more content, to show off some of the work that you may not have seen before and keep the site feeling fresh, so as you move around the site, you’ll see little promotional areas for other random pieces of work from other sections.
- Epic About section – Again this is something of a response to the many emails I’ve received asking me for more info about my interests, inspiration, background etc, so I decided to create a much more in-depth about section. In here you can read all sorts of information, including…
- Overview – A run down about all the main info you need to know
- Services – A detailed page of information about each service available
- Awards – A page dedicated to all the individual projects that have won awards
- Background – Covering my personal career history
- Inspiration – A page dedicated to all things that give me my inspiration
- The Monster Games Collection – Yep, a page dedicated to my MONSTER games collection. I’ve mentioned this to sooo many of my games clients that I just had to feature it on the new site. Over 30 consoles and hundreds of games…not forgetting my arcade machine!
- Press & Publications – A feature of all the books and magazines that Fully Illustrated has been featured in.
- Twitter feed – Yep, I tweet, but not many people know about it as I’ve never advertised the fact. But if my ramblings seem of any interest to you, you are more than welcome to follow me.
- Top of Page – Yep, another point raised by so many people ‘Please add a button to let me get back to the top of the page’ so that now, when you reach the bottom of any portfolio entry, you no longer have to aimlessly scroll up, you simply need to click the ‘top of page’ button :)
- Celebratory Art - To celebrate this new launch I decided to indulge myself in a few days personal work, to create a collection of 3 (as this is version 3, see the link ;) new digital art pieces. These were intended to capture the main theoretical elements of creating a new site, starting with ‘Matter’, the stage of envisioning an idea, or collection of random ideas. ‘Destruction’ the sometimes harsh process of removing the old ready for the new (kinda like the theory of fire and earth, fire aggressively destroys, but in turn creates rich nutrients to fertilise the land for new growth) and then finally ‘Conception’ the point where the ideas spark into creation. Wow, that was all rather over the top wasn’t it…yeah ok, ok, I just wanted to create three shiny new images :) Anyway, here’s a link to the images, so feel free to take a look and I hope you like them.
- More to come! – There are other sections coming too, which will include a shop (for a rather cool range to t-shirts I’m brewing up), a downloads section and a whole host of other things. I just didn’t want to wait any longer on the release, so those will be phased in over the coming months.
So in a nutshell there has been a lot added to this new site, so I hope you all enjoy the new additions and feel free to send in your thoughts and opinions, they are all welcome and always appreciated.
So without further ado, say hello to Fully Illustrated v3.0! I hope you enjoy your visit.
Thanks.
Mike.
Categories: Fully Illustrated,General,Update,Website Release
