Welcome to the Royal Easter Egg Hunt!

It's Easter, well it was, but due to some technical issues I wasn't able to launch this over the Easter weekend as intended. So better late than never I bring you the late, great Easter egg hunt.

The game is simple: there are 5 spotted eggs hidden within my site, each of different colour. It's your objective to find these 5 eggs. I will be dropping clues via twitter throughout the day incase your struggling as some of the eggs are rather well hidden.

Once you have found all 5 eggs send an email to info@bensteers.com with the location of all 5 and I will select 5 people at random to receive some special Easter goody bags which will include limited edition prints, postcards, stickers and more.

You have until midnight tonight to find those eggs, so get cracking.

Design your own Easter Egg character

For a little bit of fun I thought I would set up a gallery of Egg-pic proportions. I have created an Egg template for you lovely yolk to download. The idea is simple: download the pdf file from the following link, extract the Egg template, create your very own Easter Egg character and send it back to me at info@bensteers.com.

Every entry I receive I will post up on my blog and give a plug on the social networks. The best designed egg will also be sent a goody basket containing prints, postcards, stickers and more.

It's just a little bit of fun, so get cracking and if I get enough entries I may even put them together as a one-off downloadable wallpaper.

Bit late but happy Easter y'all!

Digital Artist Positive and Negative Space tutorial

I recently completed a tutorial for the folks at Digital Artist magazine on how to use positive and negative space within your work to best effect. I wanted to try something a little different to what I was used to in the way of subject matter and style. I based my tutorial on the cranes of Bristol's harbourside and used the negative space created by the arms of these cranes as my subject matter. I was pretty happy with how the image came out and the issue contains some work by some great artists including Bex Glover,Marc Aspinall of Treehouse Press and Ollie Mundan.

If your in your local newsagents, why not go and pick up a copy...

Final day of Berlin and Pictoplasma con...

Final day of Berlin and Pictoplasma con...

Final day of Berlin and Pictoplasma con...

Final day of Berlin and Pictoplasma

So the final day's brought sun and exploration as head hit up the last of the talks and screenings and took advantage of the good weather by heading in the cultural districts of Berlin.

We visited the East Side Gallery where 1km of the original Berlin wall stands in the shadows of an O2 arena big enough to house all of Justin Bieber's twitter fans. I slightly ironic salute to the extent of development to the area in just over 20 years.

Following this we spent time wandering the streets of east Berlin, finding little bike shops and floating bars all drenched in the beautiful afternoon sun, a sun that we had been massively lacking over previous days.

The final night of the festival brought about the final performance, marking the end of the festival for 2011. A 2 hour show entitled The Missing Link focused on the subject of this years event. Beautifully crafted yeti's prancing and masturbating on stage were followed by some incredible live music visual displays as well as some not so incredible piano playing and singing (I say singing, I mean moaning).

The after-after party went on into the night and saw the big names mingling with the audience until the early hours. A fitting end to a mixed bag for this years Pictoplasma festival.

Berlin and Pictoplasma Day 4 con...

Berlin and Pictoplasma Day 4

Day 4 saw an earlier start and feeling slightly fresher than the morning before. The morning kicked off with an hour long screening of some of the newest commercial and self-initiated animation. Shorts included work by the likes of H5, Jamie Hewlett & Pete Candeland, David Wilson and Mathieu Auvray.

Followed on from this was talks by the very funny Ryan Quincy, Motomichi Nakamura and SFA-Zentrale.

The afternoon brought sunshine and an excuse to ride bikes around the city and a ridiculously slow pace and visiting the Bauhaus Art Museum and East Side Gallery. Plenty more in store tonight but will have to let you know more about all that tomorrow.

Berlin and Pictoplasma Day 3 con...

Photos from the uber talented McBess, Rilla Alexandra, Jeremy Dower and Bristol's own Gav Strange as part of the Lunartik tea cup exhibition

Berlin And Pictoplasma: Day 3 con...

Random assortment of flicks including Guitar by McBess, characters by the Crim Collective and Miss Fran Pearce inappropriately touching a plush Dude Factory toy!

Berlin and Pictoplasma: Day 3 con...

Photos from the JeremyVille and Lunartik shows

Berlin and Pictoplasma: Day 3

Day 3 saw the launch of the Inkygoodness Totem show as well as the Pictoplasma Character walk where 25 galleries within a square mile open up their doors to all things character based. Gallery openings included shows by the likes of Matt Jones aka Lunartik, McBess, Jeremyville and Rilla.

Following a 4 hour walk round some incredible galleries, we headed back to the Inkygoodness show and witnessed a steady stream of people come through the door all night. Ryan Quincy, Director of Animation for South Park who hosts the gallery adjacent to ours was roaming around sporting a huge hand crafted outfit of one of his characters.

Following the success of the launch we headed to the after party at HBC and drank rum to the sounds of German techno.