Neil Duerden creates super-punchy advertising illustrations and designs for clients such as Nike, Virgin, Sony Ericsson, Costa Coffee and loads of other big brands. He combines photography and vector graphics with digital effects to create collages that jump out at you. It’s all about grabbing your attention and keeping it for long enough so that you register the product. This style is absolutely brash, but with reason; I’m sure it is very effective advertising.

Lorenzo is an Italian illustrator currently living and working in The Netherlands. Although he has a broad range of styles (as many creative people working in animation do), his passion seems to be 1950s style animated characters. In the 50s, the animation industry threw out the rule book and creative employees were king over their employers. This creative freedom lead to several great shows such as ‘Gerald McBoingBoing’, ‘Mister Magoo’ and ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ It’s always great to see illustrators today keeping this style alive and giving it their own personal touch. Lorenzo also works in 3D and graphic design. You can find this and more on his website.

Bryan Ballinger creates illustrations in both 2D and 3D, whilst maintaining his own style in both mediums. Does his style look familiar? Remember the award winning CD-ROM encyclopedia ‘Encarta’? Bryan was the lead illustrator on that project. He has also worked for five years as the 3D Design Lead for Big Idea Productions and as a professor of Digital Media Arts at Huntington University in Indiana. Buthat’s not all; visit Bryan’s website to find out more! Thanks for getting in touch Bryan.

I recently joined Dribbble, a creative social networking website. That’s where I discovered Evgeniy Ivanov, an incredible vector/raster artist and designer from Russia. His illustrations are almost super-realistic, even better than real life. His apples look tastier and his pearls shinier. I believe he sells his work exclusively through iStockphoto and Getty Images. But check out his site for a truly amazing vector art portfolio.

*Mikeinel is a self-taught illustrator based in the Philippines.

New York based animator and visual developer William Trebutien has some excellent 2D and 3D work on his website. He also keeps a blog here.

Do you remember ‘Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?’ It was a great little educational TV show. I remember even buying the game for my Sega Megadrive (or at least I think it was the Megadrive). Jason Sadler started his professional career designing and animating this project, before he went on to work on other interesting projects such as the ‘Heavy Metal Guy’ series. Since 2005 he has worked as a character and environment designer at Blue Sky Studios on features such as ‘Horton Hears a Who’ and ‘Rio’.

A truly versatile talent, Jason applies his visual ideas in both 2D and 3D, using various styles and palettes. I for one am looking forward to seeing what Jason will bring to our screens in the future.