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.
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