All About Me

Hello there I'm Gareth Lancaster, a 38 year old artistic thingymabob from the United Kingdom. From my home studio, nestled on the cusp of the Peak District, I try to explore as many different mediums, methods and processes as possible to be creative. Whether that be through painting, drawing, markers, my Wacom tablet or vector goodness, my style veers between the abstract and cartoon and hopefully presents something unique and, above all, something that leaves the viewer with a smile, a warm fuzzy feeling or an emotion they might not have been expecting.

I also take my artistic cravings in other directions, such as children's poetry, iPhone games and even a period of 3-4 years where I wrote copious amounts of ambient music under the name Pamplemousse.

My biggest fans, and my most honest critics, are my children. If they respond well to something I know I'm on the right track but if my son pops in and tells me I've gone over the lines, I know it's not up to scratch.

Children's Poetry

I started writing children's poetry in 2000 and setup a site called FizzyFunnyFuzzy in 2002 to see if anybody else was interested in reading it. The answer was yes and now the site contains 85 of my poems and gets about 2 million page views a year. It has also led to some of the poetry being published in English language books around the world, used on examination papers in the United States in several states and both virtual and real school visits to share the poetry in person. It's something I still love doing and I want to merge my children's writing with my illustration in future projects.

Hiqup - iPhone Game

My "real job" has always been as a software developer and I decided to put my design and developer skills together and produced a game for the iPhone / iPod Touch called Hiqup which was released in September 2008. It was a game I'd had going round in my head for years and producing it for the iPhone allowed me to get it out of my system. Unfortunately the game is no longer available due to recent iOS updates.

Music

From the late 90s to the early 2000's I produced a lot of ambient and electronic music under the name Pamplemousse. I was fortunate to obtain a publisher, had music used to advertise the London Eye and appeared on a couple of compilations. Mostly though, I gave the music away from free online, first at mp3.com (those were the days) and then at a number of other sites. I haven't tinkered for around 5 years but you never know, the mood does take me occasionally, even if time won't allow it.

Download my music here

Second Life

If you've ever used Second Life you may well have first heard of the name Moopf through that. I first joined back in 2001, using Moopf Murray as my name, and basically made a name for myself by producing virtual roller skates, complete with ridiculous tricks and stunts, and virtual bubblegum. The bubblegum is probably the most distributed item in Second Life, with over 5 million pieces having been sold in the years it has been available.