2012 marks the 25th anniversary of Where's Wally? Wally has reached celebrity status! He has appeared in the primetime American TV shows Frasier, The Simpsons and Friends; on the 1000th anniversary cover of Rolling Stone magazine as a cultural icon of the last 40 years; and on Google Earth.
Martin Handford spent much of his childhood drawing and his earliest influences were cinema epics and playing with toy soldiers. At art college he continued to draw what he calls "busy and militarily correct battle scenes" which led to his job as a freelance illustrator specialising in drawing crowd scenes for numerous clients. Martin now gathers his inspiration from a huge variety of sources; films, visiting museums and art galleries, reading comics and books, and collecting ephemera and trivia. He is fascinated by crowds, and is attracted to their vibes, patterns and details – especially humour; "I love their movement and energy." Gradually, from all this meticulous research, the inspiration for a picture emerges, which Martin embellishes with his own ideas to create astonishing scenes. Each picture takes Martin months to draw. "As I work my way through a picture, I add Wally when I come to what I feel is a good place to hide him," he explains. Read more about the author here.
