Carl Flint

Chesterfield born artist Carl Flint was a frequent contributor to the NME between the years 1989 to 1992 and 1995 to 1999, his illustrations regularly accompanying albums reviews whilst also drawing for the paper’s weekly ‘Thrills Believe It Or Not’ feature.

During his break from the NME Carl drew for the monthly strip ‘Disco Inferno’ in Select whilst working for organs as diverse as Sky magazine, the Guardian, Marxism Today and Time Out but he is also known for his comic strips in Deadline, Sonic the Comic, Red Dwarf, Japanese weekly Comic Morning and, more recently, Self Made Hero’s anthology ‘It’s Dark In London’.

Carl currently spends his time storyboarding for clients such as Channel 4 (he drew the boards for the award-winning channel idents – ‘Pylons’, ‘Council Estate’ and ‘Street Market’ etc.), MTV, Ridley Scott & Associates, and Nickelodeon. He has also boarded the cut-scenes for the game version of ‘Terminator:Salvation’ and has completed a range of illustrated books that include ‘Thatcher For Beginners’ (Icon), ‘Time Out Film Guide’ 1998 (Time Out Publishing), ‘Introducing Joyce’ (Icon), ‘Sick Office Syndrome’ (Victor Gollancz), & ‘It’s Behind You!’(Macmillan).

Between the years 1987 and 2005 Carl lived in London before heading for the sunnier(!) climes of Sweden, living firstly in Malmö and then Göteborg. For some inexplicable reason Carl recently relocated to Sheffield, which is where Geoff Loop caught up with him for an exclusive interview which you can read here.

“Jarvis Cocker said I’d made his nose too small, the bassist from Gene threatened to hit me, and one of the NME staff that I was once commissioned to depict was quite upset ‘I’d always thought of myself as quite a good looking guy’ he sobbed.” Carl.

“Having shared a flat with Carl in Leeds and London for several years, and seen him working his magic with photocopiers and Pritt for the Beatles, Blur and other bands beginning with B, I formed the CUD Band solely to get him to illustrate me in an NME Album of the Week pic. Though I am happy to have the said illo framed, I have been self-conscious about the size of my jowls ever since.” William Potter from CUD.

“I wanted to grow up to be either a comic artist, an astronaut or a newsagent. I have been involved with one of these careers!”