Tim Bradstreet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Timothy "Tim" Bradstreet (born February 16, 1967, in Cheverly, Maryland), is an artist and illustrator, best known for his work on comic books (covers and interiors), book covers, movie posters, roleplaying games and trading cards. Bradstreet and wife Missy live in San Diego, California.
Bradstreet has been working professionally ever since he graduated high school in 1985. He is primarily self-taught, choosing - instead of institutional training - to begin shaping his talent under the tutelage of fellow illustrator Steve Venters at Fantasmagraphics. With Venters' guidance, Bradstreet began illustrating role-playing games, honing his skills while pursuing his long-time ambition to draw comics. In 1990, he got his big break, working with industry legend Tim Truman on Dragon Chiang.
His work on role-playing games continued with GDW’s Twilight 2000 and FASA’s Shadowrun. Bradstreet’s revolutionary work on White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade garnered him much critical praise and ensured his place in pop-culture history. This, in turn, led to the addition of many major comic book publishers to his clientele. He has since drawn for scores of comic and game related projects including Activision’s Vampire: Bloodlines video game, Dark Horse’s Hard Looks, Another Chance to Get It Right (With Author Andrew Vachss), and Star Wars, Clive Barker’s Age of Desire, Marvel's The Punisher and Blade, and Vertigo’s Gangland, Unknown Soldier, Human Target, and Hellblazer. In 1997, Bradstreet was voted Best Artist By the Horror Writers Guild of America. He has also been nominated for the Eisner Award.
In 2000, he joined director Guillermo Del Toro as a conceptual artist helping work on the visual design for the film Blade 2. In the fall of 2003. Bradstreet began working on a number of movie posters for the Marvel/Lions Gate film, The Punisher.
Bradstreet is also the regular cover artist for two books, Marvel’s The Punisher and Vertigo/DC’s Hellblazer. He has created over 70 covers for each series in the past five years and has played an instrumental role in the development of both characters.
In 2006, the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden used Bradstreet's design for the cover of their album A Matter of Life and Death.
Bradstreet’s style is a distinctive one, once described by him as ‘stylistic photorealism’. His work combines the use of posed photography with painstaking pencils, inks and coloring. This method is in keeping with the icons of gritty urban horror that are often the subject of his work. This is not to imply a limited range as Bradstreet has worked on subject matter ranging from high fantasy to science fiction, tied together by little other than his trademark photorealism and an ubiquitous brick wall or two.
