About murpworks
murpworks is the creative home of artist mu and writer rp. Together, we make up murpworks (as we go along). mu draws, paints, animates & creates, rp photographs, writes & tries to co-ordinate. We are inspired and influenced by a variety of things. These include Our environment - we live aboard a narrowboat, music - we love Rock, Northern Soul, Prog, Techno, Symphonic Metal, Synthwave to name but a few areas of interest, art - pixel art is currently an all-consuming passion, animation - Akira, photography, comics, science fiction, Tea, fantasy, Coffee, classic horror, puppets, minimalism, comics, tea, cameras, , flowers (I love flowers, I always have), automatons, Glastonbury, Cyberpunk, rock, cities and a whole host of pop cultural references we haven’t even began to think about yet! Our current top loves The Human League, Silver Oak Coffee, Pro Motion, Aseprite, Moog Grandmother, Twoday Coffee Roasters, Fujifilm, Winsor & Newton watercolours, Simple Living on a boat, The Vegetarian Society, LEGO, Raves From The Grave, Worpress Narrowboat JourneysAbout murpworks Afloat
murpworks afloat! We live on Narrowboat Silverdale and we used to live on Narrowboat MIRRLESS. It inspires stuff. Read about it at murpworks AfloatAbout the m logo
m is for murpworks. It started out as just a simple m in Neue Haas Grotesk® but has grown into a representation of what we're feeling or working on at the time. Take a look at some past examples here
About mu
Artist. mu was born in Wiltshire in 1961. She spent her childhood in the countryside watching flowers growing, fruit ripening and cows grazing, developing an artist’s sensibilities. In deciding to pursue a career in fashion she went to Huddersfield to study a BSc in Textile Design – bad idea! This course was lacking in enough creativity, so she moved on, pursuing other fashion courses with more creative content, teaching at Further Education level and assisting primary school children in discovering art and information technology. She eventually went back into full-time education and gained a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. Mu completed a masters degree – MA Media (Animation) at the University of the West of England, focussing upon model-making for stop frame animation. Her practice was aimed at developing three-dimensional sets & models for Stop Frame animation. Stop Frame animation gave her the scope and opportunity to play to her strengths and pursue her passion at that time, for the medium. She therefore focussed her MA studies in this area. Love Around the Clocktower - a short film was the result, now lost in the mists of time. Since those studies, animation character design & watercolour have been a focus. This led to pixel art work and model building at murpworks. The direction since has been eclectic. A varied series of self-driven, creative projects have all contributed in some way to murpworks' current drive, to create MEET ME AT THE JUMPGATE. Experimentation and exploration has led to a simplified, more modern approach. In the archive you will see seemingly unfinished or rather 'on hold' projects but each project has built foundations. This approach has helped focus direction. mu came back to using watercolour as a medium with refreshed enthusiasm in 'MEET ME AT THE JUMPGATE', a webcomic, set in the far future with Max as the main protagonist. You can follow the development and publication of MEET ME AT THE JUMPGATE... With the move aboard Silverdale, the desire to create pixel art, resurfaced but she now spends all her days creating watercolours.
About rp
Photographer and Blogger. rp was born in Sheffield in 1960. A child of the 60’s, a youth of the 70’s he started his working life in a Public Analyst’s Laboratory. Analysis of rotting sausages, tomato paste mould spore concentrations and such like inspired him to leave to pursue a degree in Biochemistry in Huddersfield. This is where he met mu. Following on from this, in a time that saw Information Technology rise in prominence he got caught up in this flow but successfully swam as a programmer, a database manager and on to global team management. After many years in what he considered a soul-less environment he undertook the dramatic change of career direction to become a nurse. He gained a degree in Adult Nursing, worked as a Staff Nurse in a busy inner city A&E department, as a Staff Nurse in Intensive Care which led on to an Information & Data Analyst role in the Clinical Information Systems team for Critical Care. He currently manages this team. These diverse life experiences have provided a rich background for writing. Literary inspirations and influences include JG Ballard, Tolkien, HP Lovecraft, graphic novels and music tastes that run amok through Prog, Symphonic Metal and all forms of electronic (eclectic as ever). rp started out writting poetry as a creative outlet. He liked to think of himself as The Poet L’Oreal - because he’s worth it! To date he has written several short horror stories (Ooohh) owing a debt of gratitude to Lovecraft and this has led to his recent short stories/novels. Parts I & II of The Rising Tentacle are available to read and Part III is slowly spawning. FUTUREPERFECTED is Science Fiction - unfolding before your very eyes with a couple of short stories fractured from it. He is happiest when he is tapping some words into a keyboard, preferably in some semblence of a correct order. His focus is upon photography and blogging about music.