If there is one artist who encapsulates the way the art
of the
Fighting Fantasy gamebooks developed during the series' original run with Puffin Books, in terms of tone
as well as subject matter, it has to be
Martin McKenna.
Martin doesn’t attribute his success to one big break: “It
was probably more like a lot of little breaks. Really early stuff like
meeting Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone in ‘86 was helpful. They liked
the fanzine work which had included a Fighting Fantasy spoof, and they
recommended a submission to
Warlock
magazine. Coincidentally Marc Gascoigne had seen my fanzine stuff and liked it,
and he was then editor of
Warlock. Most importantly, an invitation came from John Blanche, then art director at
Games Workshop, to produce work for him. John’s initial contact came as a
result of me entering an art competition featured in the
Citadel Journal."
Martin McKenna was still at school when he started doing illustration work for Games Workshop and John Blanche encouraged him to send some samples to Puffin Books, which resulted in him being commissioned to illustrate
Daggers of Darkness when he was only seventeen years old!
If you would like to own some of Martin's work yourself, you will be pleased to hear that prints of Martin's FF art are available for purchase from both
ArtPal in the US, and
Artmajeur in Europe.
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