Evangeline Than

When I travelled to Japan in February 2006, one thing immediately struck me about the women in Tokyo (the non-Harajuku ones). Boy, did they know how to dress.

They reminded me of Parisian women, immaculate but not cold, feminine but not overtly sexy, a little old-fashioned but not definitely not old. I would have come back with a wardrobe full of clothes, if only the damn things had fit over my wide shoulders and ample bosom.

I didn’t have a camera with me at the time, but I can still remember looking wide-eyed at the women on the street and the department store mannequins, wondering, why, oh why didn’t we have anything like this in Australia?

Now I can show you what I mean. Have a look at the work of Seiko Ohmori (Ohmori is her surname), and her three-dimensional illustrations of women with angel faces and clothes you wish were yours. She makes them from polymer clay, then photographs and digitally manipulates them.

Sources: Seiko Ohmori’s website at http://se.batic2.com/. I first read about Ohmori in Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog at http://drawn.ca/2007/12/30/seiko-ohmori/ (posted December 30th, 2007).

Julia made My First Crush as as her final film project at Kingston University in 2007 (do correct me if I’m wrong). I’m very fond of anthropomorphic animals, and the voices (voice acting? Well, they’re real accounts, so I suppose they’re not acting. Hum.) are superb. Scenes flow so nicely into each other (I know this sounds so mumsy and boring, but they do) and the light music in the background creates the perfect atmosphere.

Poignant, funny, tender, and full of simple and heartfelt appeal, this is one of my favourite animated shorts. It makes me smile whenever I watch it.

Sources: embedded video from Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY4Epc2XSGc. I first read about it in Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog at http://drawn.ca/2007/12/26/my-first-crush/ (posted December 26th, 2007).

Cedric Hohnstadt examines classic Popeye cartoons and shows how a lot can be said about a character’s personality through their poses.

According to Hohnstadt, good poses will possess the following traits:

Clarity: “A clear pose will pass the “silhouette test”: If you colored in the entire pose solid black you could still tell just from the silhouette exactly what the character is doing and/or thinking.”

Physicality: “Notice how every movement Popeye makes involves his entire body … Every pose is pushed for maximum visual interest.”

Line of Action: “In almost every pose you can draw one smooth imaginary curve from Popeye’s head down through his torso and into his leg. Cartoonists call this the “line of action”. In a good pose the line is one simple and clean swoop (mimicking a “C” or an “S” shape). In a bad pose the line is twisted and kinked. Every Popeye pose has a simple and clear line of action.”

Source: “Give Your Poses Clarity and Interest”, posted by Cedric Hohnstadt on December 11, 2008 to his blog, at http://cedrichohnstadt.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/give-your-poses-clarity-and-interest/

Shaun Tan is a local (i.e., Perth) boy who’s made a name for himself internationally, both as an illustrator and a designer. His art can be simple, complex, layered, direct, subtle; it draws you in so powerfully and then you start feeling a little light-headed and you realise you’ve been holding your breath while taking it all in. Tan can draw and paint in many different styles and his work appeals to both children and grown-ups.

One of my favourite Shaun Tan books is The Red Tree. The colours are glorious.

You can watch the interview at the inframe.tv website by clicking on the link below:

http://www.inframe.tv/videoproject.aspx?id=10

If you visit the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre, which is located in the old prison hospital of Fremantle Prison, you can actually buy limited edition prints, and in some cases, original work by Shaun Tan.

Sources: I originally saw this on Draw! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog at http://drawn.ca/2008/12/08/shaun-tan-and-inspiration/, and followed it to the original material at http://www.inframe.tv/videoproject.aspx?id=10.

I subscribe to Scott Campbell’s RSS feed and I really like this Portugese ad campaign series he’s done for Show Off!, an independent film group.

A famous or recognisable person/animal/object appears on the left, with the caption “idea” underneath, and on the right you see its nemesis, with captions like “focus groups”, or “new director of marketing”. Hee.

I first saw Scott’s work at the Galleries One Nine Eight Eight website, and I was an instant fan of his drawing style. It reminds me of Sergio Aragones’s or Quentin Blake’s work; utilising an innocent, playful naughtiness.

To see more of the pictures from the ad campaign, click on the picture above or go to http://scott-c.blogspot.com/2008/12/portugal.html.

Birds of a Feather from Dan Sheppard on Vimeo.

I really like the fabric collage he’s used for the birds. See how the frayed edges look like soft down? Sweet, soft and subtle.

P.S. This is the first time I’ve embedded a Vimeo video here so I’m going to be all gushy about it. I love the high quality of Vimeo files. I love that the community here is (for the most part positive, supportive, discerning, gracious and non-sheep-like. It’s a classy act that others could learn a lot from.

Sources: embedded video from Vimeo at http://vimeo.com/2262440. I first read about this on Ticklebooth at http://ticklebooth.com/2008/12/birds-of-a-feather/ (posted 3rd December 2008).

There will be a flood of posts in the next few months as I clear out my “Inspiration” bookmarks folder in Firefox.

I subscribe to a whole bunch (I know it’s not a very correct or high brow collective term, but I do like it) of RSS feeds like Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, Ticklebooth, Susan Lamuto’s Daily Art Muse, Coilhouse Magazine, Frankie Magazine, CraftStylish … and the list will probably keep growing. Whenever I encountered things in these feeds that took my fancy; inspirational images or animations, tutorials, encouragement, advice — I added them to my “Inspiration” folder.

Now I have an enormous number of these bookmarks, and it’s getting hard to search through them, let alone remember what they were about. So I thought I’d add them as posts, with a picture and a link, and sometimes a little commentary (searches thesaurus for new words to use besides “love” and “inspiring” and “awesome”).

That way you’ll get to enjoy them too, and I’ll have a filing system, of sorts, that I can turn to for a little boost when I’m visited by those dark thoughts that go, “My mind is blaaaaaank! Halp!” or “I can’t …”.

Beautifully fluid collage-like animation, straight from someone’s imagination into yours with no apparent effort or middleman. Any of the stills from this would translate into a breathtaking illustration. (That’s a sure sign of the good stuff.)

And I’ve discovered a new breed of dog! The xoloscuinle. What an awesome name.

Austin TV / Shiva from Alberto Cerriteño on Vimeo.

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Animators! Go to http://www.vimeo.com/1564876 to see the animatic for this, where they use pencil roughs to work out the timing and lay out sequences. I really like it when they post this stuff; it’s great seeing other people’s processes.

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The blurb from where Ticklebooth first linked to for this video (http://dekku.blogspot.com/2008/10/austin-tv-shiva.html) reads:

“An old man, named Mario Lupo González Fábila, and his xoloscuincle dog, Kerdoc, accidentally fall in a hidden magic forest which turns out to be the devil’s cave.

Austin TV is a mexican indie instrumental band comprised of Chiosan, Oiram, Rata and Xnayer.

Shiva is the second single from their latest album, entitled Fontana Bella and released for Prodisc in January 2008.

The booklet of the album comes with a bunch of pages with sketches and stories written by this fictional character named Mario Lupo, and the video tells just one of these surreal stories.

The music video is a collaboration between director and illustrator Alberto Cerriteño with animator and designer Diego Huacuja.”

Sources: video from Vimeo at http://www.vimeo.com/1556032. I first read about this on Ticklebooth at http://ticklebooth.com/2008/10/shiva/ (posted 27th October 2008).

Something I knocked up quickly for Illustration Friday.

When I saw this week’s theme, “detach”, all I could think of were cells dividing. This is a little homage to Gary Larson, but the scientific basis behind his cartoons is probably more sound.

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