Who are the artists that influence your work, personally I get the feel of Joan Miro and Picasso, especially, his painting Guernica?

I like Miro, Klee, a bit of Picasso, Schwitters, Basquiat, Twombly, Kandinsky, Gauguin... all those oldies are good.

Where did you study art, or are you self taught?

I participated on a fine art course in Nottingham, I think studied might not be the correct word to use. There wasn't much teaching of art taking place but plenty of free time and chin rubbing, which was all good and fun.

As an all rounder drawing, writing, painting, animation and creating stickers are there a lot of projects where you have combined visuals and words, can you mention some of the work?

I don't combine visuals and words very often, if I do it's only a few words. A lot of these sort of pieces can be found on my other site www.biro-web.com. Other than those pieces I combine words and pictures more for commissioned work when it's a bit more like what I imagine graphic design to be like.

The interesting Creatures website for The Sydney Morning Herald is brilliant, how did that come about? Can you describe what the newspaper wanted from you? Was it really difficult to create individual personalities for each of the six Interesting Creatures, and do any of them reflect your tastes with regards to music and film tastes as described on each seperate creatures blog?

The creatures where already pre-described by the advertising agency in charge of the project. They had contacted my New York based agents, Bernstein & Andriulli to get me involved in designing the creatures. So I didn't have a hand in generating content for the site or working on the creatures personalities, I just digested all their bio's and decided what they should look like. It was a cool project to work on, I think some very limited edition promotional toys are going to be made of a couple of the characters.

Another question regarding The Sydney Morning Herald, it comes across as a newspaper like The Independent in the UK, challenging people's rights and anti-Conservatism, is that an accurate portrayal of the paper, especeially in the creature's blogs with stories from the paper mentioning strike action and being anti-Howard? Was there any political motivation for this project, or was it purely work?

I must confess it was purely work, I was merely a doodler for hire, but I was happy that the papers stance wasn't the opposite to what it is.

What was it like working as one of the 40 artists in the Action Man 40/40 Show where the original 1966 Action Man figure was given a modern day make-over? Can you describe the idea behind your modern day make-over on your Action Man?

My customised action man was meant to be 'Skin Burn Action Man'. He'd suffered a lot of burns from his time in combat. It just happened that the red burns were in the shape of doodles and creatures. Somewhere along the line this got lost and the media that covered the event thought it was 'Gay Action Man' dressed in decorative leotards. Mainly I blame the photographer that took the press shots of my Action Man, as he put him in a very camp pose. Not that I really mind to be honest but my custom appeared on the BBC and in a few newspapers with the inevitable and sad shock that, gasp, Action Man had been depicted as homosexual.

Hotel 60 - The Miss Sixty Fashion Group got you to doodle on one of the rooms in their hotel in Italy...Shit it looks like a lot of work doing hand drawn doodles across that space, how long did that take you to do and didn't your arm fall off?

The hotel room, which wasn't completed at the time of my doodling, took about two days to do. One very long day and about half another day. I would of spent longer doing it, and working on the lower ceiling but the dust and fumes from the work still being carried out in the hotel got too much. My eyes were really watering. Though it might of been my bodies way of making me stop. My hand did feel like it was going to fall off and my brain was scrambled trying to think of new things to draw.

How did you get involved in doing board graphics for Science?

I'm not too sure to be honest. A friend of a friend or something...?

Have you done skateboard graphics before?

Not really no. I started working for an American skateboard company last year but they were not good to work with so I severed my ties with them. I've done about five snowboards though, and they were great fun to work on.

How big a part does skateboarding and skateboard culture play in your life?

I think the culture is pretty unavoidable really, it's crossed over into so many things, fashion, music, graphics... everything. Skateboarding itself, as an activity, doesn't enter as much in my day-to-day life. I used to skate as a youngster in the 1980's but haven't been on a board for sometime now, I'm not sure my knees could take it anymore to be honest though.

For more information
www.jonburgerman.com