Danny Flynn - Creator of the Lunartics

Just who are the Lunartics and where did the idea come from?

I guess the original Lunartic is me, Danny Flynn – that’s me smiling whilst creating Timbookstwo and Gluzzik, with Enga-Wembi and Catta Stroffi looking on.

I’m sure I started painting before I could even walk or talk. By the time I was seven or eight years old I had probably drawn every creature in the world - except maybe a warthog - from my ever expanding collection of nature books. Around this time I would have been watching Lost in Space, Dr Who and the Gerry Anderson classics Stingray and Thunderbirds… then along came the seminal movie “2001 – A Space Odyssey”, coinciding with the Apollo moon missions of the late 1960s.

I was so disappointed that the astronauts were not greeted by welcoming lunar beings that I began creating my own moon creatures, having realised my doodles need not be limited to wildlife on Earth. There was a whole universe out there. My mind was made up. If I got overlooked to play for Man Utd, then I wanted to be an artist of aliens when I grew up – although living in the steelworks town of Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire, career opportunities in this area were somewhat limited... Anyway, now my drawings of creatures (giraffes for example) began to have at least three necks, more legs and an extra eye or two as I became an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy, enticed by the elaborate artwork that adorned the books’ dust jackets. As my school days came to a close and I had still not received the phone call from Man Utd, it was time to go to Art College… first of all to nearby Grimsby Tech College to do my foundation course, then eventually escaping to leafy Surrey to do my BA (Hons) degree at Kingston University.

My first professional break was to illustrate the covers of the Pippi Longstocking novels of Astrid Lindgren…not exactly SF or fantasy but I didn’t care - it was published work and I was absolutely delighted! Soon after, I was given two major titles to illustrate - the new Robert A Heinlein novel “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls” and Sir Arthur C Clarke’s “Expedition to Earth”. Over the next ten years I illustrated the covers to many hundreds of novels, culminating in the publication of a compendium book of my paintings “Only Visiting This Planet – the Art of Danny Flynn” with a foreword by Sir Arthur C Clarke.

Opportunities then came along to work as a concept artist in the computer games industry, with stints at Electronic Arts and Travellers Tales, where I worked on the Crash Bandicoot game “Twinsanity”... It was fantastic to see my ideas realised in 3D. The time now felt right to focus exclusively on my personal project, Lunartics.

With Lunartics, my ambition is to create an ever-expanding range of unique and colourful children's characters of every size and shape who discovered a magical secret world inside our moon - the last place on earth ☺ anyone would imagine to be teeming with life. Lunartics combines my enjoyment of creating quirky characters with my deep love of the natural world and "galaxies far far away". Four years' hard work and dedication has gone into bringing Lunartics this far. I hope you have fun browsing around the site and getting to know the characters.

Danny's has a website of his book-jacket art at www.dannyflynn.com.