Aidan Hughes

Aidan Hughes is a commercial artist. He was born in 1956 in Merseyside, England, and was trained as an artist by his father, himself a landscape painter.

In the 1980s, Hughes published a pulp-style magazine called "BRUTE!" which earned him notoriety. "Brute" has become an occasional pseudonym for Hughes as well.

Hughes usually works in a very high contrast style, often black and white, but more often black and white accented with one other color. He claims influence from American comic book artist Jack Kirby, John Martin, and (most apparently) from Russian propaganda posters.

Aidan Hughes is best known for creating most of the album covers for the industrial band KMFDM. Two of KMFDM's music videos ("A Drug Against War," "Son of a Gun") were animated versions of Hughes's artwork. Hughes's KMFDM pieces mostly depict violent or sexual scenes, either explicit or implicit, and often has themes of domination, or repression.

His other work has included outdoor murals, including the 75 metre mural in Barga Italy during 2003 [http://www.barganews.com/whats_on/2003/brute/index.html] which has since been covered over with an earth bank; and a wide variety of advertisements, including pieces for the Bank of Scotland, and Guinness.

Hughes is credited for the art design and concept of ZPC (Zero Population Count) [http://www.mobygames.com/game/zpc/cover-art/gameCoverId,12689/] [http://www.galorebot.com/games/zpc/zpc_reviews.htm] , a first-person shooter computer game developed in 1996 using the Marathon 2 engine.

References

External links

* [http://www.bruteprop.com "BRUTE! Propaganda", Aidan Hughes's official site]
* [http://www.kmfdm.com KMFDM official site]
* [http://www.barganews.com/whats_on/2003/brute/ Article about Hughes' outdoor murals]
* [http://kmfms.com/ "KMFMS"] (Anti-Microsoft website for which Hughes has designed artwork)