Thursday, April 14, 2011
Dave McKean - Mirror Mask
He has done so many things. His art seems to create another world. It takes the viewer out of reality and into whichever fantasy or nightmarish world he is creating. The viewer is immediately struck by his use of "collage" or cut and pasting look in some of his images and his figures that are wholly imagined.
I want to talk about the film Mirror Mask. McKean has done many works and Mirror Mask was the first feature length film that he designed and directed. Basic plot is a young girl working in the family circus as wants to leave to join the real world. Soon after a fight with her mother, her mother gets ill and she feels responsible. This is where things get interesting. She gets taken to The City of Light, which is being consumed by shadows. She is trying to find the fabled mirror mask to get back home and save the kingdom (she also has a doppelganger who was the princess of the Land of Shadow - she is currently in her place in the real world acting radically different than she would). There's a lot more to it including the fact that all her drawings actually created this world and they are the portals into it (which the princess from the Land of Shadow is trying to destroy).
You really need to watch the film to understand, but his construction of the other world puts the viewer in another place and actually creeps them out, which I feel is the intended effect.
Alberto Seveso
Alberto Seveso is a digital artist from Milan living in Rome. He did not go to school/take classes for digital art and doesn't believe the profession requires one according to some of him interviews I've read. He taught himself how to use Photoshop and Illustrator and he doesn't use a tablet (he claims to be bad at classical drawing). He is most well known for his "sperm shaping" technique, which is what he uses in the fourth image above.
He was inspired to make the "sperm shaping" images, which are part of the A me mi place la gnocca! series, because of a joke. He didn't think they were going to be particularly great, but people responded to them. The title is loosely translated to "I like the pussy." His images use shapes that follow the curves of the body to emphasize the sexuality of the figures. In all of his work, the shapes/colors/patterns on the body and coming out of the body add emotion to the figure in the image.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Trembled Blossoms - James Jean
James Jean was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1979, but was raised in Parsippany, NJ. He graduated with a B.F.A in 2001 from The School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. Since then he has done work with several commercial corporations like Target, Rolling Stone, Prada, and Playboy. He has also done a lot of work for DC Comics as a cover artist, which is how I discovered him. I am a huge fan of the graphic novel series Fables. He has worked on The Umbrella Academy as well, which is pretty cool. He's won six Eisner Awards for "Best Cover Artist" amongst several other awards.
The work I am going to write about is an animated film Trembled Blossoms. It is a work which James Jean wrote and designed, but was directed by James Luna and animated by Sight Effects. I thought it would be interesting to talk about this piece because it was create for Prada to prelude the presentation of their Spring/Summer 2008 fashion line at New York Fashion Week. I found the work while looking at some interviews with James Jean.
The film starts with a flower that gets pricked by a hummingbird and turns into a nude girl (or nymph, I suppose) with white skin. She acquires shoes from bugs that morph to her feet, then walks through a pastel forest where copies of her with patterned skin pass by and one becomes her dress. She continues to walk and finder herself meeting Pan in a much darker forest (or version of the same forest). He gives her a handbag that was made out of a tropical fish in his pond. His exterior then cracks and he turns into the same type of flower the girl came from. Her purse opens to reveal the same hummingbird from the beginning and flies toward the flower. This is where the film ends.
The work is clearly about fashion derived from nature. The girl literally has nature become what she wears. It is clear that the film is trying to emphasize Prada's inspiration for their Spring/Summer line by using an intensely colorful version of the world and wrapping the "buyer" in it. The film also emphasizes the beauty of nature in a highly stylized way. It is the idea of the fashion being the embodiment of Spring, which is made clear by having Pan (being the Greek god generally associated with Spring) essentially becoming the girl (fashion).
The concept art of James Jean is much more successful in showing the beauty in nature than the film itself. The major downfall to the animation is how low the quality is. Making the 2D drawings 3D and animated would ideally make them even more overpowering because they are brought to life, but the animation simply falls short of fully capturing James Jeans concept art. The only parts I feel look as enthralling as they should are the beginning before the flower turns into the girl and the ending where pan turns into the flower. The image of the flower is beautifully created. The forest backgrounds are lovely, but do not compare to the concept art. Also, the mix of the backgrounds with the figures don't mesh because of how they were digitally put together. The technical aspect was my main problem with the work. I think the meaning is clear and while it is incredibly obvious this was created for advertisement, I almost don't mind. I think the beauty of the animation would have been focused on more closely if it hadn't been solely about advertisement. I also think the advertisement would have been better if there were more emphasis on the art, but I also understand that making things obvious is important for appealing to a wider audience. I would love to see James Jean do more animated work that isn't associated with advertisement.
P.S: He has an exhibition called Rebus at the Martha Otero Gallery in Los Angeles, CA until April 30th. It looks amazing.
The work I am going to write about is an animated film Trembled Blossoms. It is a work which James Jean wrote and designed, but was directed by James Luna and animated by Sight Effects. I thought it would be interesting to talk about this piece because it was create for Prada to prelude the presentation of their Spring/Summer 2008 fashion line at New York Fashion Week. I found the work while looking at some interviews with James Jean.
The film starts with a flower that gets pricked by a hummingbird and turns into a nude girl (or nymph, I suppose) with white skin. She acquires shoes from bugs that morph to her feet, then walks through a pastel forest where copies of her with patterned skin pass by and one becomes her dress. She continues to walk and finder herself meeting Pan in a much darker forest (or version of the same forest). He gives her a handbag that was made out of a tropical fish in his pond. His exterior then cracks and he turns into the same type of flower the girl came from. Her purse opens to reveal the same hummingbird from the beginning and flies toward the flower. This is where the film ends.
The work is clearly about fashion derived from nature. The girl literally has nature become what she wears. It is clear that the film is trying to emphasize Prada's inspiration for their Spring/Summer line by using an intensely colorful version of the world and wrapping the "buyer" in it. The film also emphasizes the beauty of nature in a highly stylized way. It is the idea of the fashion being the embodiment of Spring, which is made clear by having Pan (being the Greek god generally associated with Spring) essentially becoming the girl (fashion).
The concept art of James Jean is much more successful in showing the beauty in nature than the film itself. The major downfall to the animation is how low the quality is. Making the 2D drawings 3D and animated would ideally make them even more overpowering because they are brought to life, but the animation simply falls short of fully capturing James Jeans concept art. The only parts I feel look as enthralling as they should are the beginning before the flower turns into the girl and the ending where pan turns into the flower. The image of the flower is beautifully created. The forest backgrounds are lovely, but do not compare to the concept art. Also, the mix of the backgrounds with the figures don't mesh because of how they were digitally put together. The technical aspect was my main problem with the work. I think the meaning is clear and while it is incredibly obvious this was created for advertisement, I almost don't mind. I think the beauty of the animation would have been focused on more closely if it hadn't been solely about advertisement. I also think the advertisement would have been better if there were more emphasis on the art, but I also understand that making things obvious is important for appealing to a wider audience. I would love to see James Jean do more animated work that isn't associated with advertisement.
P.S: He has an exhibition called Rebus at the Martha Otero Gallery in Los Angeles, CA until April 30th. It looks amazing.
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