Ben Redlich (Illustrator for Jack and the Aliens and Jack and the Skyhook)

Ben Redlich has been drawing since as long as he can remember. He recalls drawing on the walls of his mother's womb, which caused her a great deal of irritation. Ben was born — pen first — on May 23, 1977.

In his school years, Ben found the classroom environment, especially mathematics, to be an ideal setting for perfecting his talents in cartooning and illustration. It was here that he established a poor taste, low-budget comic, The Adventures of Snot & Poo, where many of his less favourite people (including teachers) made cameos. These days of foolscap pages and ballpoint pens never left Ben completely.

In the late 1990s, he started to perfect the pain-staking craft of ballpoint cross-hatching. He used this technique to illustrate his first book, The Shikker Co-La Cows, written and self-published by Andy Small. When the time came to printing the book, the six-month project proved to be a disaster. Ben felt he was probably the first artist to have his work pronounced as 'unreproducible'. Two years later, Ben used the same technique to illustrate Jack and the Aliens. Despite going lighter on detail, the exacting artwork still made it difficult to reproduce the drawings to an exceptional resolution.

During 1995-1997 when Ben studied art at Morningside TAFE in Brisbane, he completed three short animated films. He also helped on numerous other short films as technical advisor, director and sound editor. He was also adept at voice characterisations, and provided boisterous screams or psychotic laughs when needed. His proudest achievement from this time was being able to take credit for the sound room needing to be appropriately soundproofed.

Ben's years at TAFE gave him a passion for independent filmmaking — both animated and live-action. He would love to be making films 24 hours a day, but sadly lacks the cents to do it. Good quality films are expensive to produce and are often very time-consuming, especially animated films. Ben says that there's nothing too costly in scribbling on a sheet of paper. He works as a freelance cartoonist and illustrator as well as a smelly church cleaner. One day he hopes that he can drop his job as an artist and go into cleaning full-time ... or vice versa.

Usually, poor, starving artists are eventually recognised (sometimes before they die) and Ben has been approached by Lothian Books Australia to illustrate two picture books, t' Circus Carnivore by Mark Svendsen and The Great Montefiasco by Colin Thompson. These books will signify Ben's leap from black and white books into the world of coloured picture books. Whether he works as a filmmaker, artist or illustrator, there is little doubt that Ben Redlich will be content in one creative form or another.