Shaun Anderson’s (B.1973) Art Portfolio 1989.
First idea to make money (1985-6)
In 1985 or thereabouts, my best friend, Mark, and I went to the local shopkeeper, and I asked him if we could deliver messages for old people from the shop on Saturdays and Sundays.
They said yes. I think we got £3 each for a couple of trips on both days. We worked for some weeks until the owner returned, found out our ages (around 12), and that now he was, in the eyes of the law, effectively a slaveowner.
Our first business venture was dead. Mark was only dead a few years later. I wonder sometimes how it might have been different if they had let us do it. I think of him for a few seconds every day. Around about this time, I got a Commodore 64 from my father and started coding with it. Between then and 1989, I spent my time playing games, playing football and spent most of my school time either drawing, animating or hiding in the art department. I upgraded myself from Commodore to Atari ST to Amiga 500, with the help of a part-time job in Tesco by the early 90s.
First real design job (1989)
On November 10, 1989, I received a letter from The Crolla Ice Cream Co. Ltd in Glasgow regarding the artwork I had submitted for their new “Jimmy Gelato’s” product. I was recommended by my uncle Jim to do a better job than a designer had submitted.
They informed me that my drawing would be used on all the lids for this product.
The letter, signed by P. Crolla, also indicated that a copy of my drawing, as it would appear on the lids, was enclosed, along with “a small token of our appreciation.”
This ice cream lid is an example of the final product. It’s a “JIMMY GELATOS CHOCOLATE Ice Cream” lid for a 1-litre container, featuring my caricature design.
I liked getting paid for designing stuff, and I wanted more than Crolla paid me – they used that design for a decade, I think – so I went to college. My lecturer said Jimmy Gellatos’ lid was poorly designed. She said my portfolio was as good as she had seen, which gave me confidence in my artwork.
Also in 1989, I made a video animation on an Amiga that was being used to sell Amigas in the Corner Video Shop for over a year.
You can see that here – (Coming soon)
Everything was very rudimentary, so I went to college to learn about design and animation. Eventually, I formed Vision Design in 1997.
See the fine art portfolio when he was about 15-17 years old, pencil portraits of his family and his SCI-FI drawings, paintings and models. His pre-Internet work experience exists too, which includes first design projects, first lead generation ideas, and Inshops.