Draft:David Heinrich

• Comment: None of these sources even mentions him at all. Sophisticatedevening🍷^(talk) 01:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

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David Heinrich is an illustrator and graphic artist based in Adelaide, probably best known for his work in publishing, comic book art, cartoons and caricatures. He has also worked extensively in advertising, game design, tattoo design and webcam animation.

Dave Heinrich was born in Gawler, South Australia in 1967. As a child he was first taught how to draw cars and aircraft by his father Max, a technical draftsman at British Aerospace.

Heinrich grew up religiously watching Warner Brothers animated cartoons on television and discovered Mad magazine as a teenager. At high school he read his first graphic novel, Asterix in Switzerland, and saw The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta in art lessons. He soon began collecting Heavy Metal magazine, developing a passion for fantasy illustration and comic book art. Dave was also fortunate to receive the encouragement of his aet teachers at Gawler High School. Along with practical instruction, they exposed him to the theory and appreciation of Symbolism, Surrealism Art Deco, Art Nouveau and German Expressionism.

Heinrich studied painting and film at the South Australian School of Art, where he was part of a group recognized with a Young Filmakers' Award for a stop motion animation. He cites fellow painting students Kit Chambers and Justin Pfeiffer as influences there. While at art school, he began caricaturing for his local football club. As Dave pursued his art, many of his high school friends pursued music, so he was soon doing posters and stage design for many local blues and heavy metal acts in Adelaide. Heinrich stayed on at university to complete a second degree, a Bachelor of Education in Art Teaching. During this time he wrote his first book, The History of the South Gawler Football Club 1889 - 1989.

In 1990, he began working as a high school design and technical drawing teacher in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, before accepting a posting in the rural Southeast region of South Australia. He then went backpacking in South America for most of 1991.

Upon returning to Australia, Dave went part-time as a teacher and set up Ursis Illustration and Design. Gradually he moved away from teaching, combining playing country football with relief teaching, to become an independent commercial artist. His first regular client was a local newspaper in the region, The South Eastern Times doing courtroom drawings.

He was first published by Mad magazine in 1991 and then established himself in the Australian comic book revival during the nineties firstly through the underground scene with Nervous Breakdowns, and independent publisher Issue One's Zero Assassin.

In 1990 Heinrich started collaborating with Glenn Lumsden and David de Vries. At this time the Australian Football League published Heinrich's Champions Comics, reportedly the biggest selling independent Australian comic book ever. Unfortunately Champions was not to last, but Heinrich was enlisted by Lumsden to help on Paul Jennings' graphic novel Round The Twist for Penguin Books and The Eternal Warrior for American label Valiant.

In 1994 Heinrich returned to Adelaide to join Lumsden fulltime on tackling a major adaption of The Phantom; Ghost Who Walks for Marvel. Shortly afterwards, Lumsden, de Vries, Rod Tokely and David G. Williams formed a cooperative called Barossa Studios. Another project entitled Ninjak for Valiant soon followed, and then they landed Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight for DC Comics.

By the late 1990s, the group diversified by teaming up on various projects for Mad, Cracked and the adult magazine Picture Premium. Heinrich also teamed up with Rod Tokely on Elvira for Claypool Comics and Martin Reilly on Conan The Barbarian for Marvel.

With a love for muscle and custom cars, Dave collaborated with Lumsden on the strip Full Boar for Street Machine, and worked with Tokely on the outlaw biker strip Stinkfinger and various other cartoons for the magazine Live To Ride. Dave also circulated his own creation Diflok The Dinosaur Slayer for Fast Fours and Bingle the Bandicoot for Auto Action.

By 1997 Dave was increasingly working solo in graphic design or illustrating for corporate publications. Having begun technical diagrams and spot illustrations for the fledgling Zoom magazine, he soon took on an art director's role. Also in 1997, Heinrich was invited to the Wiltja Program to tutor Anagnu and Pitjitjantjara aboriginal boarding students in cartooning at Woodville High School. He also taught cartooning at the Townsend House school for the visually impaired.

In 1999 Dave undertook his first major print design project, a hard-bound automotive reference book with former Zoom editor Julian Edgar. Edgar also later founded the AutoSpeed webzine, which Heinrich initially helped out with. In 2000, Heinrich moved from traditional illustration and graphic design into multimedia and web design, drawing for 2D Flash animation with old art school friend Loressa Clisby's Digital Artisan for the Threshold Entertainment webcam network out of Hollywood. He drew the cartoon serials "Where Are The Toons Now?"; a Hollywood Babylon-style parody of famous old cartoon characters, and "The Producer"; starring the voices of Tom Arnold and Jerry Springer. These cartoon serials were nominated for Pixie Awards (the Internet Oscars) in 2001. He also designed characters for and illustrated the opening sequence of the Warlords: Dungeon and Warlords 4: Havoc's Gate Playstation projects respectively for SSG Gaming with Alister Lockhart.

Heinrich's interests in fine art always remained throughout his life as a commercial artist. In late 2001-2002, he undertook a Masters degree in Art History at the University of Adelaide in conjunction with the Art Gallery of South Australia, while a webmaster for the Nunga IT between 2001 and 2002.

In 2002, Heinrich drew a Dharma The Cat graphic novel called "The Silk Road Adventures" – virtually an illustrated history of Buddhism, before beginning as a graphic designer and web developer at a studio at Flinders University. He and good mate James Fosdike enjoyed a resounding success with their joint exhibition called "Hung, Drawn and Sorted" at the 2005 SA Living Artists' Festival. Around this time Dave also joined forces with John Engelhardt on some stage art for the Hilltop Hoods.

Currently he is a medical illustrator at the Medical illustration and Media Unit of Flinders Medical Centre. In recent years he has been illustrating children's books such as The Goblins' Picnic, a major Halloween project for Little Hare Books, along with maritime-themed The New Moon and X Marks the Pot. Dave helped Darren Koziol set up local horror anthology Decay and continues to contribute to it, most notably with 2000AD's John Higginson. He recently contributed to Horror Australis' Cthluhu Down Under and illustrated a Sherlock Holmes and Doctor – What!? short written by Superman editor Denny O'Neill.

Dave 's recent work includes Dave: Zombie Hunter, Steve Carter and Antoinette Rydyr's (aka SCAR) Savage Bitch and Weird Sex Fantasies, and Dr Mike Cooper's The Universe Gun. His other passion is his 1973 Valiant VJ hardtop. A life member of the Chrysler Car Club of South Australia, Dave is renown in the custom and classic automotive enthusiast scene throughout Australia. He is the editor and designer of the club's acclaimed magazine Torqueback. While his car show posters and automotive art are much sought after collectors' items in this community.