Radio Times Christmas Quiz 2024 | Creative Retouching, Photo realistic illustration & AI
Merry Quizmas! There are 52 clues to the titles of TV, streaming & radio programmes of 2024. Happy Puzzling…
There are prizes to be won, so I’m not answering any questions until the competition has closed.
Curious about how these quizzes are made? https://www.ianmckinnell.com/behind-the-scenes#/christmas-quiz/ a complex combination of photo realistic illustration, retouching & AI and lots of research.
Need some help? There are a lots of forums of people trying to solve all 52. Nobody’s got them all yet. Try here
Radio Times Crime Drama Quiz
The visual Crime Drama Quiz in this weeks Radio Times, a combination of retouching, illustration and AI. It was fascinating to research. I always felt that Jason King was weird, but the further you delve the weirder he becomes. He lied about everything!
Radio Times Paris Olympics Cover 2024
It’s that time again. The medal is made with 3d modelling and rendering (Modo), but this time the background is mostly AI, Adobe’s Firefly, though with a great deal of reworking. The unretouched AI version is below. The official medal wasn’t very interesting this year, so we designed our own.
Wedding Disasters
Out today in the Guardian on Saturday. One of the most complex illustrations I’ve ever created, Modo 3d, Photoshop with a little AI. You can read the article here
Radio Times Euro Football 2024
I’m becoming something of an expert on footballs as they change for every competition. The background was very low resolution image of the the Berlin stadium, but the only atmospheric image we could find. It needed a lot of work by hand and by AI to make it useable. There are different versions for each nation. Wales & Northern Ireland didn’t make the competition so they got a generic Euro version, my favourite.
Japan
I’ve just returned from a couple of weeks immersed in the alternate universe of Japan. I can’t wait to go back!
Boat International: I love magazines!
There’s still nothing like the pleasure of going to the newsagents and opening up a well printed double page spread. Even if there’s an embarrassing bit at the front…
Radio Times Christmas Big Picture Quiz 2023
It wouldn’t be Christmas otherwise. This is the first year I’ve been able to use AI for a few of the clues, such as the sausages. AI can be amazing, but It can also be laughable. Adobe in particular have a long way to go - I mostly used Bing Image Creator.
The background image is of Ledbury in Herefordshire, taken by Joe Daniel Price. No questions answered until February as prizes are involved!
The Radio Times 100th Birthday Picture Quiz | Creative Retouching
It’s the Radio Times 100th Birthday this week, so they commissioned me to create a new quiz with 100 clues to the titles of radio & tv programmes of the last 100 years. It was fun to make, and yes, it did take ages! I photographed the background; Broadcasting House, Portland Place W1A. The building in the foreground is All Souls Church. I used to pass by there everyday walking to school with my children. We called it Thunderbird 3, it shares the same shape.
Women's World Cup Football Radio Times Cover
I like women’s football. I now get to create TWO World Cup Covers every 4 years. I especially enjoy the challenge of creating 3d models of the different footballs for each competition.
Watercolour: the antidote to AI
Artificial Intelligence is having an enormous effect on my profession. I’ve been working with it, amazed at the quality & speed of the results. But I’m becoming disillusioned at handing most of the creative process to a machine. My response has been to go back to my beginnings, works on paper. I’ve been experimenting with watercolour and really enjoying the process. I miss command z though!
The Paper Shop in our building has sadly closed after 23 years. They were very friendly & helpful & stocked a huge range of magazines, one the of biggest in London. I’ll really miss them. We had a party on their last day & I made this watercolour for them.
A friends house in Norfolk. You can see it’s long history, doors blocked up, windows moved, small cottages joined together. I really enjoyed painting the flints in the walls, listening to podcasts.
AI
Like the rest of the world I’ve been experimenting with AI. It’s amazing and (as an illustrator) scary too. Fascinating & frustrating. I hope you enjoyed Valentine’s day. Notice that one of the images has a picture libraries watermark on it.I understand the controversy. A search through the AI databases has brought lots of my images…
The Radio Times Big Picture Quiz 2022
Radio Times World Cup Cover Qatar
A big issue for the Radio Times. Every 4 years I get this 3d model of the trophy out from the archive & try and make it better, but it’s a tricky/ugly thing. And as it’s nearing the end of the year and another event…
Commonwealth Games Radio Times Covers
The Commonwealth Games are hosted in Birmingham this year and the medals have been proudly made in the City. The medals were designed by three students from the City’s school of Jewellery. What a great start to their career! I created a 3d medal in Modo for these covers. The medal is based on the roads and canals of Birmingham. There’s a video about the medals here:
Radio Times Women's Football cover
Out this week. The first Radio Times cover for women’s football and a new football to model. A helpful shop assistant in Niketown spent 10 minutes explaining the difference between professional and amateur footballs. This is definitely the professional NikeFlight.
Breadbasket of Europe
A Canadian friend, Don Komarechka, the amazing macro nature photographer, is currently living in Bulgaria as waves of Ukrainian refugees arrive, some to stay, some passing through.
As well as helping distribute packages of food & clothes, Don had the idea to bake Ukrainian style bread in the shape of the Ukrainian coat of arms to help make the refugees feel welcome and enlisted me to help make a giant cookie cutter to make them.
You can read about it here, along with bread recipes and we’ve made the model free to download (under Creative Commons 4.0 licence) so that you can get one 3d printed for yourself. You can download the model here.
It was an enjoyable technical challenge. I’d love to see what you cook up with it!
Coronavirus Graffiti
My son found this wall painting today in Quay Street Bristol.
I’m not sure whether I’m angry or flattered or both, as that’s certainly my Coronavirus bauble that I created for Christmas 2020 and was used in the Radio Times Christmas Issue. A credit would have been nice kin1official !
Sensitive by Hannah Jane Walker
Out this month. That’s my neon lettering on the cover.