When in charge of all world news at a daily newspaper, it occurred to me (eventually…and not all at once either) that the existing coverage relied on a preponderance of syndicated photos (to which our competitors also have access) and too little on creativity. The end result was that I took on the task of creating special news graphics whenever time permits. Below follow select efforts.

This post includes some earlier art for the magazine format, including one about UN peacekeeping operations in Africa in 2010. I have also included a guide map of the game world in FarCry 2, as I am big aficionado of the game, even though it is now dated. So scroll through and take a look.

Avro Lancaster NE114, 166 Squadron  |  Published in April 2016

Although I had created dozens of similarly colored Lancasters over a decade ago – and proudly of having done so at the time – my perception towards that type of aircraft known as the bomber has changed. When I was a boy, my grandfather held a shotgun up and said, “this is an instrument for the taking of life.” It was a statement that failed to resonate against the smug exterior of youth. But the message eventually sunk in, years later. And so, if the gun is the instrument of a living being’s death, the bomber is an instrument of wholesale destruction.

Latest developments, Paris Attacks  |  November 19, 2015

The Paris attacks  |  Published November 14, 2015

Hollywood on rails — The Arras train incident  |  Published August 23, 2015

MH370 resurfaces – A flaperon found  |  Published July 31, 2015

A nuclear world  |  Published July 14, 2015

A nation emptying – Syrian refugees  |  Published July 9, 2015

Islamic State vs The World  |  Published June 19, 2015

“Bloody Friday”  |  Published June 28, 2015

Abandonment of Iraqi military equipment to Islamic State  |  Published June 9, 2015

Palmyra |  Published May 22, 2015

All photos © Joseph Eid, Agence France-Presse

Published July 5, 2015

Nepal quakes  |  Published May 15, 2015 

Foreign Military aircraft in Nepal  |  Published May 12, 2015

Cyclone Pam  |  Published March 16, 2015

Flight 8501  |  Published January 13, 2015

The Toll of War in Gaza, July to August 2014  |  Published August 16
The Siege of Mount Sinjar, August 2014  |  Published August 11

Mosul Dam, August 2014  |  Published August 19

  Coalition Airstrikes on Syria, 25 September 2014  |  Published September 26

The Ebola Crisis, West Africa, September 2014  |  Published September 3

Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, October 2014 |  Published October 4 The interesting thing about the “Umbrella Revolution” in Hong Kong, so called, because the student protesters use umbrellas to shield themselves from tear gas, is that most of the students are too young to remember China’s brutal crackdown of that other great Chinese student revolution, at Tiananmen Square, in June 1989.

Already an iconic image has emerged from Hong Kong — of a lone student engulfed by tear gas, his umbrella held up high. Whether this figure will be as every bit as iconic as Tiananmen’s “Tank man” — that anonymous everyman who temporarily stopped a column of tanks by standing in front of them, remains to be seen, and whether China’s response to the crisis will be as unforgiving.

Royal Fleet Auxiliary Argus, British Ebola Task Force, Sierra Leone, November 2014 |  Unpublished

When it was disclosed in late October that the RFA Argus would be dispatched to Sierra Leone to assist in combating the Ebola outbreak there, I was intrigued and thought that I should perhaps I should have some “art” ready for a future story involving the ship.

The name Argus is not exactly esoteric. In Homer’s Odyssey, Argus is Odysseus’ faithful dog who recognizes his master after twenty years and immediately dies of happiness. Then there is the World War II-era HMS Argus (the world’s first aircraft carrier).The new Argus is regarded as the “strangest ship” in the Royal Navy. It carries three Merlin helicopter. It also took on 32 Toyota Hilux pickup trucks for use in Sierra Leone, and with a 100-bed hospital with 200 doctors, nurses and medical staff.

Note: This is the first time that I’ve used Adobe Illustrator to create art of this kind (including the ship badge). The problem with vector art is that it has a tendency to look flat (compare this with an image of HMS Illustrious (CV7) that I did in Photoshop back in 2003; Below). The above art took about 12-14 hours in total.

Noway, July 22 – The Anatomy of an Attack  |  2011

Jan Baalsrud- The Strength of Human Will  |  2011

A note on the process: The base 3D map was created in E-on Vue 9 CGI software with data from Google Maps. The rest of the image was completed in Adobe Photoshop. The dimensions of the ship on the upper left corner are obviously exaggerated for effect.

Baalsrud in the late-1950s, while serving as a consultant for the film about his life, “Ni Livs” (Nine Lives), which was in effect Norway’s first notable motion film. (Young, Vernon, A Condemned Man Escapes: Five Films on the Subject, The Hudson Review, Vol 12, No 4, Winter 1959-1960). Both Photos: Scanpix.

The Conquest of Mount Everest  |  2011

Some choice quotes from the summiters:

“  Well, George, we knocked the bastard off. ” – Edmund Hillary to friend, George Lowe, after coming down from the mountain.

“ It has been a long road … From a mountain coolie, a bearer of loads, to a wearer of a coat with rows of medals who is carried about in planes and worries about income tax.” – Tenzing Norgay in Man of Everest, 1955.

The United Nations in Africa |  2011

FarCry 2 |  2017

I created this guide map as a sort of farewell gift to the fans of this flawed and increasingly obsolete first-person shooter as I will probably never play it again.

The remarkable thing about FarCry 2 is that designers chose to portray as much of the African landscape as possible, and the game world depicts breathtaking landscape from the Zimbabwean bush to the Kenyan Savannah to the dense jungle of the Congo to the Dogon villages of Mali, to the Sahel. The game mechanics are passable and the game narrative which is promising (the protagonist is tasked with tracking down an enigmatic, Nietzsche-quoting arms dealer, much like Conrad’s Kurtz), is ultimately stultified and underdone. But landscape… that is the real star of the game.

For a printable, 300dpi version of this map, click here  (34 MB)