Hi!
I thought it would be a good idea to jot down some notable points in our working history, mainly because I am forgetting, and because I thought someone might find it interesting! so here goes...
David and I met at uni in Leeds, graduated in 2002, moved in together in 2004 and started working as Peskimo making little Gocco prints and things out of felt, selling at craft fairs in Bristol. We got a lucky break with MTV, creating some short ident animations for their Bitesize series. MTV found us on the Pictoplasma website, so we have lots of love for those guys! We were really into collecting and customising vinyl and wooden toys and figures, our peers and the artists we admired were into it too, we've made life-long friends through that world - it was a wonderful time! We spent a year backpacking in 2006/7 and came up with our series of vinyl figures for KidRobot called Bamboo Zoo, lots of the names coming from places we visited. We also worked with Crazy Label, Hong Kong, to make Monster Burp, using an unusual to toy making production process to produce bubble type forms. We created designs for a few other toy companies to go into their series of blind box figures, such as the UK series of Dunny's by KidRobot.
In 2006 we curated a group exhibition called Monster Mash. We invited creatives to make a monster and give it ratings which we then made up into a Top Trumps style game. The exhibition was hosted at Here Gallery in Bristol and Playlounge in London. There's a nice write up about it here on Creative Bloq.
We moved to Bristol in 2007 and in 2009 moved into our own house, enabling us to get set up with screen printing kit and to make a bit more mess! The print scene is strong in Bristol, and David started getting illustration commissions and signed up with Synergy Art so our work naturally moved and evolved in that direction.
We've created artwork for group exhibitions with some lovely folks over the years, including Lazy Oaf, Clutter Magazine, Mattel for 40 years of Action Man, SOMA Gallery in Bristol for their 10th and 20th anniversaries...
We have had illustration work featured in and for: Creative Review, Computer Arts magazine, Vodaphone, The Natural History Museum, Janod toys, Mudpuppy puzzles,
In the last few years David has created a lot of work in the form of the Block books he illustrates for Abrams Appleseed. There are 21 in the collection. He has also illustrated an array of food packaging for Target's Good & Gather children's food range.
There is a blog post over on our Substack too, which I'd forgotten all about - I told you my memory was terrible!
Bamboozoo photo credit: https://daftbunziblogger.blogspot.com/2011/07/bamboo-zoo.html