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Roy Of The Rovers artist scores new success
Sharnbrook cartoonist produces new DVD for European referees
Football cartoonist Paul Trevillion has scored a new success with a DVD for referees across Europe.
The man who illustrated legendary strip Roy Of The Rovers in its glory years, and is also the artist behind the famous You Are The Ref series which has appeared in newspapers for more than 50 years, has provided artwork for a new Referee Academy DVD-ROM.
It will be used for training by the professional game's match officials, and is backed by the Football League, the Football Association and the Premiership.
Just as with You Are The Ref, Mr Trevillion, from Sharnbrook, has worked with his friend and former referee Keith Hackett.
Mr Trevillion said: "Keith has been in Geneva, giving talks on the state of refereeing, and he has given copies of the video already to the top referees at UEFA, the body which runs European football.
"The artwork shows things that you don't necessarily want to show footage of real players doing – like spitting or bad tackles.
"The reason it works on video, rather than in actual footage, is the movement in the images. You tend to forget that you are watching a video of a drawing, because it moves like live football."
Mr Trevillion said his unique style was inspired by a meeting with Milt Neil, the legendary Disney animator who won an Oscar in the 1940s.
He said: "When I was a young artist, I thought I could make it as a animator. So Milt asked me to draw in 20 frames of a Union Jack flag blowing in the wind. But I just couldn't do it.
"Milt then picked up a pen and the 20 pieces of paper, and went bam-de-bum-de-bum over the pages. He then just flicked the sheets and it was incredible, it just moved perfectly."
"Milt called it mini-animation.
"Roy Of The Rovers wasn't such a big strip when I took over the artwork but, the way I drew, it looked like he was really moving, rather than like any other cartoon character.
"It wasn't like Dennis the Menace or Desperate Dan, youngsters really believed he was a real person. I still have people in their forties and fifties asking me to sign their Roy Of The Rovers comics with my signature and with Roy's!"
Anyone who has been into a bookshop in the last month will have also seen that Paul's You Are The Ref cartoons have been collected in a book.
And another tome called The Art Of Football will appear next summer, which he is creating with Don Howe, the one-time Arsenal manager and assistant to three England managers.
Mr Trevillion said: "I did a book with Don on tactics for the 1982 World Cup, and it had something like 50,000 words. This one is down to 500.
"Players come in at half-time and a manager wants to tell them what they are doing wrong, or how they want to change the play. But it often doesn't sink in because it is all words, or when they are back on the pitch then the adrenaline gets going again and it all just goes from their mind.
"This book is about illustrating the point with pictures that have all the movement. As soon as the player sees the picture, the idea is that they will know exactly what they should do."
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Friday 25 May 2012
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