Biography
Tom Cleary, born in Rochford, Essex, England and a long time keen comic illustrator, writer and designer.
It sounds cliche, I know, but I can't remember an age when I wasn't drawing something. I started making comics when I was about 11 years old. It was a nice little hobby at the time with a comic series I called Trixton Comic; a series about 3 men who work in an office and went on the odd adventure.
At the age of 17, I decided to restart this series of comics and suddenly found a great new excitement for it. I was suddenly really pleased with the work I was creating and became hooked. Then, after about 4 years, I had built up a huge back-catalogue.
With this, I decided to take them to the next step and see how far I could go with these homemade comics. So now and then I would pack them into a large folder and take them along to markets, conventions, open days or even if I had heard of an artist being somewhere in the room. Alas, being naive I was expecting someone to simply say "Yeah these are great! We'll get them published for you!" which of course is not the way these things work.
I decided after a little while to take a break from the comics and went to college to study video production and animation. It was thanks to my large folder of comics that I was accepted into the course. During studies I was interested in and had a go at many things; Stop-motion animation and music videos were my favourite projects to work on for the course, personally. On the side I had a go at being in a band which was great fun and our first gig was an excellent experience. But after that, there was no real hunger to carry on, which was worrying at the time. However, the song writing and music video directing for the band carried on for a couple of years after this.
College was fantastic fun and a real eye-opener. I decided to treat my sketchbooks and theory work as another book project on the side of the practical work. So this became a sort of obsessive project in itself. What was even more encouraging was that this book work was getting top marks and tutors were telling me that they found the books entertaining to read. One project we worked on in 2011, I rememeber, gave us the opportunity to research an artist of our interest. I chose to write about and exhibit Gerard Hoffnung, the eccentric public speaker, comedian, broadcaster, conductor, tubist and, of course, illustrator. I was hugely inspired by his drawing style of simple objects (often musical instruments) and transforming them into characters or something completely different, and in such a simple way. He is a big inspiration to me.
Other works I began taking more interest in were those by R. Crumb and Alan Moore, as well as old favourites Viz and The Beano.
Two years later in 2012 I started studying Film, Radio & TV at Canterbury Christ Church University. One evening I decided it had been a long time since I had done any comic drawing, so to test the water I started a short comic strip called Inspector Spy. Then somehow, the first entire Ident TV book was created!
As university went on, the comics were being produced constantly. I found it a great escape from 2010s television, pop music and, thanks to my mood at the time, people. Everything on TV, radio etc seemed so watered down and 'safe', which I grew so bored of. So the comics were also my way of creating something I was so looking to see. This time it was just as fun to do as with the Trixton series, but with a little bit more knowledge and common-sense to take it seriously enough to perhaps take further.
It was 2014 when the editing and publishing finally began and now in 2015; here they are! Published/being published, online and available to the public.
Comics are still being made - I am currently focusing on the online strip series Box 'O' Shorts, which is available to view for free on this site. It is thanks to these projects that I have finally found what I know I want to do in life, which is illustrate in my own style. I've always decided to stick with hand-drawn techniques; it's just so much more honest, I feel, and not over complicated. Plus, it is far easier to stand-out among the other illustrators.
I am currently looking to work on other projects; I have been comissioned work for leaflets and album covers which will be available for viewing very soon.