Born in London in 1970, and raised on a diet of Richard Scarry, Hergé, Asterix and Judge Dredd, Jarvis studied illustration at the University of Brighton and at the Royal College of Art in London. He has worked for international clients such as Sony, Nokia and Parco and contributed to a number of international style publications including The Face, Nova and Relax. He has also contributed to a number of art book projects and had a collection of his sketches published by Relax magazine in Japan. A Japanese friend suggested that Jarvis should turn the characters drawn in simple, sparing strokes in his illustrations into toys which he did by creating the engagingly raffish Martin, a moulded plastic model, for the London-based fashion company Silas. Jarvis then developed equally engaging characters to live with Martin in the World of Pain, the imaginary world inspired by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings which he invented for them and depicted in a book and website. Eager to create different characters, who would not necessarily fit in to the World of Pain, he then invented the In-Crowd series of figures.
Hergé and Richard Scarry , Gary Panter and Gustave Doré were maijor influences to Jarvis. The Bauhaus and the whole of the modern movement has always influenced Jarvis as well.
I found this q&a to be a good one.
Q. What is the process for developing and producing your characters?
A. When I was at college I was massively influenced by Gary Panter and Javier Mariscal. I spent a lot of time aping their visions. I was encouraged to draw more from reality, so I went out and made a lot of drawings of car parks and other urban environments. When I came to populating these environments I came to rethink and refine the kind of characters I had been drawing. I started to reduce them to the simplest possible shapes and features while still retaining a ‘personality’.
Q. How have these processes evolved as your career has progressed?
A. I am always rethinking and refining.
This is also a good site that shows some of is illustrations and design projects.
http://www.formatmag.com/features/james-jarvis/
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