Freak factory was the first picture I drew for Firebird, who were the software arm of British Telecom. Someone I knew had a contact there and had suggested I send in my demo disk. The disk included my Uridium picture - probably the best one I'd done up 'till that time, and I think that's what got me the job.

I had a 'phone call from Colin Fuidge of Firebird who wanted me to draw a loading screen for a game from their Silver (budget £1.99) range.

Firebird would pay me £150 per picture, plus they'd send me reference material such as box artwork or the actual games themselves so that I'd have something on which to base my artwork.

Colin said for this picture he'd like a nice big Firebird logo, so I drew a nice big one. The actual picture was problematic. The game wasn't brilliant and it didn't really inspire me that much. Consequently the picture wasn't fantastic, but it did get me more work from Firebird.

Looking back at it now, the monster was obviously inspired by the aliens in Lucasfilm Games C64/AtariXL game Rescue On Fractalus, which was one of my favourite games back then.

My signature is vertical in this one, probably because there wasn't much room.