Armstrong, Matthew 1975- (Matthew S. Armstrong)

Personal

Born June 9, 1975; married; children: one.

Addresses

Home and office—UT. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Illustrator. Worked variously as a comic-book artist, portrait painter, and artist for advertising and video- game industry; Incognito Entertainment (subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.), conceptual artist and writer.

Illustrator

C.S. Lewis, The Return to Narnia: The Rescue of Prince Caspian, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.

Jeremy Strong, Stuff: The Life of a Cool Demented Dude, HarperTempest (New York, NY), 2007.

Sidelights

Matthew Armstrong has been an illustrator of one sort or another since he was a young child; as he noted on his home page, in elementary school his teachers would often reprimand him because of his constant drawing. As a teen, Armstrong filled his head with comic-book stories, animes, and video games, and as a grown up he channels his creativity into the same entertainments he loved as a child, including comic books and video games. In addition to these media, Armstrong's black-and-white pencil drawings have been featured in two young-adult novels: The Return to Narnia: The Rescue of Prince Caspian and Stuff: The Life of a Cool Demented Dude.

A novel by British author Jeremy Strong, Stuff centers on a fourteen-year-old artist wannabe who is known as "Stuff." Stuff has several difficulties to deal with, including a new stepmother and a stepsister he dislikes; a girlfriend he is no longer infatuated with; and a new crush on Sky, a beautiful new girl at school. Stuff uses his personal dramas as fodder for the comic strip he anonymously publishes in his school magazine. The illustrations Armstrong contributes to Strong's novel have been recognized by critics for their ability to add dimension to the story, a Publishers Weekly critic noting that Stuff is "enhanced" by the illustrator's "manga-influenced" art. In Kirkus Reviews a critic credited Armstrong's comic-book illustrations for providing "a great look into the fantasy life and mind of an artist as a young boy."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, April, 2007, April Spisak, review of Stuff: The Life of a Cool Demented Dude, p. 344.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2007, review of Stuff, p. 129.

Publishers Weekly, March 12, 2007, review of Stuff, p. 59.

School Library Journal, July, 2007, Heather M. Campbell, review of Stuff, p. 111.

Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 2007, Jeff Mann, review of Stuff, p. 154.

ONLINE

Dark Inventions Web site,http://www.darkinventions.com/ (February 26, 2008), "Matthew Armstrong."

Matthew Armstrong Home Page,http://www.matthewart.com (February 26, 2008).