Archive for the 'illustration' Category
Austen graphic novels
Liz Wong, painter and a freelance illustrator, is making a graphic novel of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It should be fun to see how it progresses. I looked around to see if there have been other Austen graphic novels, and yes there are. Anne Timmons’ Northanger Abbey is included in Gothic Classics: Graphic Classics Volume 14. Here is a sample drawing. And a manga style version of P&P, illustrated by Tintin Pantoja is due to be published in about September 2007. If you take the Sequential Art link on her site you can see her version of the first proposal.
In addition to the decisions on how to break up the page, what to zero in on, how to convey action, and what interpretations are being made through image rather than word, I was interested – but not surprised! – to see the influence of Andrew Davies’ 1996 adaptation of P&P.
Green things
I’m taken with this lovely leaf logo which belongs to a new green blog Earth2Tech (a new part of the GigaOm blog network) which will focus on the business side of green and clean technology.
And check out the cool Power of Wind ad produced by Nordpol+ Hamburg for EPURON, a renewable energy company based in Germany.
(via Laughing Squid)
Just to dig it all an’ not to wonder
A postcard I picked up while travelling 9 years ago.
His Dark Materials illustrations
I’ve finished reading Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials now, and I thought it was wonderful. The ideas and characters are still floating round in my head. One of the charms of the trilogy is the little little symbolic illustrations at the beginning of each chapter, drawn in pen and ink by Pullman himself. They are simple, and black and white. Pullman has written about how he did them, and also features them on his site, though the ones for the last book are not up there yet:
View Northern Light illustrations
View The Subtle Knife illustrations
I love the way they pinpoint in a nutshell, the essense of each chapter. My impression is that this doesn’t happen so much in books anymore. We are used to icons and symbols in software, or maps, for example, but those are more to do with function. Trademarks and logos are different again, more about branding and identifying; perhaps, as Michael suggested, a modern version of heraldic design.
The Tale of How
The Tale of How is a beautiful and intreguing animation, a labour of love by three friends calling themselves the Blackheart Gang, who hail from Cape Town, South Africa. It’s the second part of a larger story they envisage, A Dodo Trilogy. Their ‘making of’ video introduces the makers and explains how they went about it.
(via She Dreams in Digital)
Update: Siouxfire has a cool Concise Overview of “The Household”, a series of interviews, production
images, and information on the two follow-ups completing the Dodo
trilogy as well as the following trilogy (the Bear Histories) at Siouxwire. Thanks, Siouxfire!
Till it looked O.K.
Actually, my favourite Sendak picture book is In the Night Kitchen. I love the illustration, the cityscape made from kitchen packets and utensils, the dreamlike whimsy of it, and Mickey’s confidence. Above all, I like the part where he models the dough into a plane:
What better way to describe how you go about the creative process? I was delighted to find this lovely video animation of the book, adapted and directed by Gene Dietch, complete with jaunty music:
Where the Wild Things Are: link dump
(Photo credit: wellingtonany)
Mentioning the Spike Jonze film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are a few days ago reminded me that I had a bunch of WWTA/Sendak links that I collected when I was trying to scrounge information about the film. (As it happens they are keeping things very well under wraps, which is understandable.)
Take a Swim on the Wild Side: article about the filming taking place in Nov 2006 on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. There are two pictures of one of the monsters on the beach,and wading out in the water, but don’t get too excited – they are so tiny you can’t really make anything out! It describes the puppets (made by Henson) as follows:
The seven creatures stand up to 275 centimetres tall. Although made of foam, they are heavy and hot for the actors and stunt doubles operating them. Word is they wear them with the head on for no more than 30 minutes at a time, with 10 and 15-minute breaks in front of an air-conditioner… Heavy boots inside the suit and massive clawed hands make it difficult to move.
Loungelistener’s photoset of the performance of Where the Wild Things Are at Detroit Opera House, performed by the Grand Rapids Ballet. Some very cool picture of huge puppets on stage and behind the scenes.
Hand puppets and soft toys, and here
Action figures 1,2,3,4,5,6
Graffiti/stencil in Melbourne
Stencil art
Jack-o-lantern
Leg tattoo
Max tattoo
Mural in LA
Mural at the Philadelphia Flower Show, 2006
Costumes at DragonCon
Float in Mardi Gras, New Orleans, 2006
Pavement chalk art
6 part home videos of WWTA Interactive Metreon theme park – glimpses of one of the big puppets.
The Rosenbach Museum has Sendak Gallery (holding original drawings), shop, and is hosting a Spring Festival this coming week
Mommy a video about Sendak’s new pop-up book.
WWTA animation, I think the 1988 one.
There now, I can delete my Wild Things bookmark folder!
Happy New Year
Happy New Year, blog friends. A new year and my 300th post!
Last night I dreamed vividly (and I mean vivid physically!) of giving birth – one of those oops-I-need-to-push, and-I’m-in-the-supermarket-and, oh-my-goodness-here-it-is! births, and then a tiny crumpled gorgeous creature cupped in my hands! (maybe because I had seen the tiny animals on fingers photos?)! You will have to take my word for it that it was a good dream, though, and surely its auspicious to dream of giving birth on a new year’s day, don’t you think?
These are the draft drawings I did for the poster for The Moth Tree. I’m particularly fond of the one with the little girl in it.
I used some chalky pastels to do this, and I always forget what lovely effects they give and how much pleasure I get from using them. I should really draw more often, just for pleasure.
A while ago I discovered a lovely sculpture in the ANU, Winged Harvest by Fiona Foley, which has silver bogong moths. I didn’t give them a thought when I was doing the poster, but I really think there must have been some subconscious connection going on here.
(photo credit: Tim Raupach: Cutflat)
