Grant Morrison

Although his work in comics seems to be most of his career, Morrison has had a hand in many other areas of art as well. He has made appearances in albums from The Mixers, The Fauves, and Super 9. He also did the artwork for Robbie Williams’ Intensive Care album. He has worked in game design creating the story concept for Predator: Concrete Jungle and the story concept and initial script work for Battlestar Galactica.

He also doesn’t just come up with story ideas for comics either. He’s pitched scripts and plot lines for major movies such as Teen Titans and Sherlock Holmes. His film pitch for Sleepless Knights, where a time machine breaks and the world is stuck on Halloween, almost came to fruition. It was sold to Dreamworks, but a director could not be found. No matter, Morrison has plenty to work on. Including the upcoming movie Area 51 (Vineyard).

For a guy with so much work, and so many deadlines to meet, how does he manage his inspiration and creativity? From my personal experience as an artist, that is one of the most difficult things, finding inspiration. Especially when it is demanded. Well for Grant Morrison, he simply takes a walk. It doesn’t matter where, a walk through the woods or down a riverbank. Anything in it’s natural state. Then he wonders. How did those elements of that one landscape come to be? How were they made? How did they get there? And somehow somewhere in the depths of his genius mind, a story forms. Maybe not the whole plot, maybe a chapter or two, or the color of her cape, or the design on his mask, but the idea sparked in that one moment. And that one moment creates a whole new story to tell. So he does what he does best. He tells it.

First, like any artist, he creates thumbnails. From that he sketches out the entire story, or what he has of it so far. Then he translates the images into words. He rewrites the entire story in text from the sketches he drew. He then sends just the text to the artist, so they can illustrate the text.

You can call Grant Morrison and accomplished man, an artist, or an author from the small town of Glasgow. Some have the honor of calling him friend; some have the honor of illustrating his stories or collaborating on projects. To me he is an artist, a storyteller, and one hell of a multi-tasker. As a Graphic Designer, I know how difficult it is to have a million projects going on at once. And I’m sure at some point some of the projects he’s worked on have collided with each other. But even with all that stress of having big name projects, one after the other, he still manages to tell a great story. If I can do that, if I can be so stressed out from the million projects I have and still keep the quality of my work half as amazing as his, I’ll have done my job.