I never wanted to be an artist. I always wanted to be an archaeologist. A member of the Young Archaeologist Club at 8, unfortunately when I grew up I got all the looks and none of the brains. Plus, I found out I am dyslexic. So I couldn’t have done the essays anyway. But since when I was a fifteen year old NME reader getting decked at school because no one had heard of Sonic Youth (“Pavement’s a shit name for a band” POW!), I’ve always wanted to make a cartoon and direct a music video. Not as a job. Didn’t really think people did that as a job. Just wanted to do it like I imagined people did Courtney Love.

Fast forward to now and I’ve been Elbow’s drawing gimp for two albums now, something I’m really quite proud of. It was the bands and their manger’s idea to get me to do a video for their next single ‘Open Arms’ but we all had to pitch it to the record label. So I did a storyboard based on the song lyrics, gave it to their manager then crossed my fingers.

They liked it and we were on for the video. Time was a bit of an issue so we had to get cracking the day we got the green light. I was to be working with an animation company in London called Trunk. I live in Manchester so I’d only be making two trips down, one as a meet and greet and to thrash everything out, flesh out the storyboard and that, and one at the end so everyone could pat me on the back and we could practice our Grammy acceptance speeches.

There were things they needed drawing before others like the band and stuff
But I’ve always wanted to draw cartoon backgrounds so despite not really needing them right away I knocked a few out. The song and the video are set in a church community hall type place in Whitefield called St Bernadette’s

I loved doing the backgrounds. Probably the best bit. The whole thing was a collection of best bits. It was all best bits. Ticked off two life long boxes in that now I’ve done a cartoon and a music video. I couldn’t be more made up. Here’s a load of art from the process then. Hope you liked the video. x
The Stage:
Backstage:
Hall entrance:
Cityscape:
Side of the hall:
Corner of hall
The Moon charcter, some kids and some booze
Characters and some rain
‘Ribbon kids’ designs.
and some smokers

“And you’re not the man who fell to earth
You’re the man of La Mancha
And we’ve love enough to light the street
‘Cause everybody’s here

We got open arms for broken hearts
Like yours my boy, come home again
We got open arms for broken hearts
Like yours my boy, come home again”

The album cover:

And the single:

and more than that, at his blog and at the official Elbow You Tube channel, East has been busy putting art to music in a series of little animations. Little perhaps, but very lovely. This is Dear Friends….

(Charles Burns provides the art for Iggy Pop’s Brick by Brick, back from the days before iggy was busy schilling for insurance companies – really, Iggy, the last one we’d have believed would do that…)

CBR’s Comics Should Be Good column is delving into the realm where music and comics art combine, with a look at some of the album covers created by comics artists over the years, from Crumb to Simon Bisley. They’re also looking for suggestions, so might we suggest Blighty’s own rock star comics creator Oli East for his work for Mercury Prize winning band Elbow? And as Richard noted last weekend, Oli is providing cover art for Elbow’s next album too:

Yep, Oliver East (of Trains Are … Mint) is doing more work for Guy Garvey and Elbow. New album cover and singles covers.

(cover art for Elbow’s Seldom Seen Kid, art by Oli East, (c) Oli/Elbow)