NICK MILLER was born in Oxford, UK, and grew up in the depths of rural Shropshire. The son of two artists, he learned to draw from an early age, but received most of his formal training as an artist from Shrewsbury School of Art. Having worked as a graphic designer throughout the 'Eighties, he switched to cartooning and illustration full-time in the early 'Nineties and has been deleriously happy with his choice ever since. He currently lives in Lancaster, UK, which is handy because that's where he keeps all his stuff.

ANTONELLA CAPUTO is a native of Rome, Italy, where she worked as a restorer of paintings and ceramics, and in the cinema and theatre, before turning to writing. Her first published script was Casa Montesi, a twelve-episode family drama which appeared in Il Giornalino. Working in Italian and English, she has written plays and short stories for children, a recipe column and over 200 pages of scripts for Graphic Classics, a series of graphic novelisations of works by famous authors published in the US. She shares a home with her partner Nick Miller, and is ruled by three cats.

TEAM SPUTNIK is the professional partnership of Antonella Caputo and Nick Miller. Although they continue to work with other artists and writers, Nick and Antonella's Team Sputnik collaborations take up most of their time, and have now been published in the US, UK, Italy and Luxembourg (listed in descending order of GNP). The Team Sputnik on-line portfolio can be viewed at www.teamsputnik.co.uk

Tuesday, February 13, 2007 10:06:03 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Working today on the 20th anniversary edition of a strip I've been drawing since 1987, called The Really Heavy Greatcoat. It's been appearing in a variety of local news media since John Freeman and I thought up the strip during a rather odd night in the Moorlands pub, Lancaster. Neither John nor I have ever been paid for it, although it has led to us getting noticed and getting other, paid, work. We just do it for fun. Anyway, John pointed out that the 20th anniversary is coming up (on the 21st February, it's a good job John keeps track of these things because I tend to forget my own birthday), so we thought we'd better do something to mark the event. So John wrote a two-page special featuring just about every character who ever appeared in the strip. Thanks, John!

I had an odd phone conversation with my sister. I had sent her, at her request, a cartoon of our Dad, who passed away recently. She wanted to know what media I had used. I explained to her that I had used my normal working method of drawing the pencil or ink outline by hand, then scanning it into my computer and colouring in Photoshop. She seemed surprised, she had thought I'd used pencil crayon. I said that's just one of the many custom brushes and pens I've set up in Photoshop, and that I can simulate anything from flat fill-in colour to crayon, watercolour, oils or something like this:

...so what I'd actually sent her was a printout from the computer, which I'd then mounted on card and set in a hand-drawn and hand-coloured frame.

I thought that everybody could tell when I was working in Photoshop, but my sister is an artist and she was completely fooled. Funny.

Monday, February 12, 2007 8:34:50 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

It's true about the mallet, though.

Sunday, February 11, 2007 8:42:09 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Ok, here we go with the first entry of the Team Sputnik blog. My Name is Nick Miller, and I'm a cartoonist. My partner is Antonella Caputo, a writer, and we work together as Team Sputnik, once described by an American comics reviewer as "the Pan-Europeancomics creative partnership", which must refer to the fact that I'm English and Antonella is Italian. Anyway, we loved the description and added it to our website www.teamsputnik.co.uk

Antonella and I also share a home in Lancaster, North-West England, with a bunch of ungrateful cats.

This is my first go at blogging. I have to say, from reading other people's blogs, that it seems to take an unselfconscious nature to make a successful blog, whereas I am by nature shy and retiring, but never mind, I thought I'd give it a try.

In this blog I intend to post cartoons I have drawn, stuff Antonella has written, comments, moans, whinges, the occasional lame joke (if I actually possessed a sense of humour I wouldn't have become a cartoonist) or whatever seems appropriate on the day.

Actually I can see where this could be fun. I've never been any good at keeping a diary - I keep wanting to turn to the back page to see how it all works out. But a diary is private. A blog is out there in the open. People might actually read something I wrote, a daunting prospect for a shy person like me. But perhaps, with a little practice, I can get over my natural bashfulness and make a successful blog! 

Sunday, February 11, 2007 5:14:13 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Be sure to visit all the options under "Configuration" in the Admin Menu Bar above. There are 16 themes to choose from, and you can also create your own.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005 7:00:00 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0]