Blog Assignment 4

The big idea I’m trying to illustrate in my work is time. I used death, destruction and the end as themes and keywords while I was working on pieces on the midterm, but I wanted to ease out of death, but still use it. Another theme I want to add is “impermanence”, which is a theme used often in Japanese art, one of my lifelong inspirations. I also want to use “the end” in different ways, such as the end of a particular phase of life and the loss of innocence. I would like to achieve this by mixing my previous ideas with the new ones abstractly. I never really design these compositions with any media in particular in mind, but if anything they would be used for a band’s posters and flyers, or a magazine illustration.

This music video has inspired me, with the melancholy tone of the song and the visuals -- the video shows destruction, death, and represents the end of innocence -- growing up, an aspect of time. In general, the macabre-ish style of Gorillaz inspires me. Two of their most recent videos show a dark cloaked figure that solidifies my image of the grim reaper (not to mention their use of scythes throughout the early years, the eerie studio they lived in and the graveyard outside of their gates)

http://www.timburton.com/
Another inspiration is Tim Burton. I've been in love with his whimsical asymmetrical style for nearly a decade, as an artist and a director. It's difficult to show one picture or video to show his work, but it's mainly been Corpse Bride, Beetlejuice, Sleepy Hollow and a little bit of Edward Scissorhands, for his interpretation of death and the afterlife, not to mention the dark imagery of dark figures and skulls.

Macross Flashback 2012 OVA

I still want to use my "end of time, end of world" scenario, so I would say that a big influence in general is Japanese animation from 1970s-1980s, particularly Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, Space Battleship Yamato, Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 and Aim for the Top! Gunbuster. Each one deals with the prospect of death and the possibility of  total annihilation of the human race. It was a popular genre in Japanese animation that was a commentary on World War II and the use of the atomic bomb without explicitly talking about a taboo subject.

Blog Assignment 3

Javier Miranda/burlesk101

This artist appeals to me because of the use of macabre imagery, and uses some of the same visuals I use in my Big Idea. I believe that the artist's big idea is time also, but also death. I find the use of clockwork (especially in the second one) in both these pieces to be very inspiring, but I wonder about the use of the particular imagery, in the second one especially. I would want to take a cue from the second picture's composition for the final project. It's simplistic, but everything in the image blends so well together - which I want to work on more, instead of simply playing with opacity. The texture on the first one would be something I would want to use too.

http://burlesk101.deviantart.com/ 

LuckyWolf/Brittney Hamilton

This artist has a different big idea, but it still fits with my theme of death and the end. The (deliberate) macabre in these images appeal to me for my themes, but also because the styles (especially the second one) remind me of music videos of one of my favorite British bands, so it would be interesting to incorporate the style into my final project. The first image appealed to me because of the use of the Grim Reaper, which I had been using as a recurring image I never thought of actually using photographs or words in my works, so I may try incorporating them into the project.

http://luckywolf-13.deviantart.com/