Rob Ryan

Stylist Christmas Issue

Posted by on Tuesday 16th December, 2014

We are very excited to announce that Rob has taken over Stylist Magazine’s Christmas issue and it is out tomorrow!!

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Rob was approached by our good friends at Stylist earlier this year. Each year they produce an illustrated collectors edition of the magazine at Christmas and this year they wanted Rob to take over the entire issue!!! Rob obviously said YES!!

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Rob has been working on the issue for the past 7 weeks and has created 38 pages of artwork for the issue which was then completely papercut. Needless to say it has been a very busy time in the studio of late!!

We worked very closely with the brilliant Tom Gormer at Stylist who sent over the content so Rob could create specific artwork for the stories on each page. We had a flat plan with the order of the pages set out and Rob crossed them off as he went.

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Once Rob had drawn a rough sketch for each page or feature this was sent across to Stylist for approval. As we have worked with Stylist on several covers and features previously they really understand Rob’s way of working.

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Stylist were very understanding of the pace that we need to be working at, because there was so many hours of papercutting involved in creating the issue we needed to move each page onto the next stage fairly quickly. As soon as the artwork had been approved Rob would draw in greater detail and once complete it was then passed to Rob’s studio team to be cut out by hand.

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The papercuts were stored together until the time came when we had half of the issue to colour, we did this in two stages as there were so many papercuts to spray, mount and then photograph.

Libby scanned the papercuts and mocked up colours in photoshop so that we could look at the entire issue together and work out the right colours for each artwork.

Once the colours had been decided for each papercut Michelle and Tom then got to work spraying each one.

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The papercuts were very lightly mounted onto paper before being sent to Packshot Factory for photographing. Peter has been photographing with Rob’s papercuts for years now and is so good at capturing the delicate paper quality that the papercuts have. Libby was on hand to manipulate the papercuts so that the shadows were captured in the best light possible.

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The photographs were then sent directly across to Stylist’s art department who then fit the artwork to the page and their copy around it.

Tom brought the copy over to us last week to show us before it went to print – it was just like The September Issue!!! It was both a nerve wracking and exciting moment to see Rob’s artwork laid out and in the issue. We were very happy with it and pointed out any changes that needed to be made before it went to print. We are now eagerly awaiting a delivery of the final printed magazine!!!

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The issue is available to pick up FREE on Wednesday in major cities across the UK. If you can’t usually get hold of a copy, you can subscribe, download or get a free copy (from Wednesday onwards) and with every order placed in our online shop and for every purchased in Ryantown we will include a copy *whilst stocks last!

A big thanks to everyone who made the issue possible – the brilliant team at Stylist: Lisa, Tom and Sorrel. Perry Curtis, Peter at Packshot Factory and of course Rob’s team: Libby, Michelle, Tom, Lorna, Louise, Laura, Debora and Yuko!! We couldn’t have done it without you!!!

Sarah McPhee
Studio Assistant