Artist Look: The Quay Brothers

Stephan and Timothy Quay (born 1947) are twin artists who are most famous for being influential stop-motion animators.

The brothers began animating in 1979 and are still present, having taken influences from several important polish artist, including animators Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica.

They had had a huge influence on other artists too, such as Terry Gilliam, and the more contemporary internet artsit and animator David Firth.

The brothers have created several creepy and gothicly-toned animations inspired by dark polish short stories. Their most famous film is titled Street of Crocodiles.

Self Portrait: Octavio the Clown

Octavio the Clown was a very minor background character in the 1983 gangster movie, Scarface. Octavio was a performer in the Babylon Club, a nightclub the main protagonist visits frequently, but is accidentally shot down during a crossfire. He presumably dies. He only appears for a few brief minutes in the movie; roughly two minutes at least.

In response, I had created an adapted version of this character that is much more fleshed-out in character than the original film version. I suppose because this one character stood out to me because of his very obscure appearance, I suppose I felt that I wanted to do him some justice to match his very strange physical appearance. I redesigned his character appearance slightly to show that he is a spirit, due to his demise in the movie, but his personality shines through his frightening appearance as a gentle, flamboyant, playful ghost who loves to dance, mingle, drink and make others laugh. However, his presence makes others wary of him and usually shun him as a malevolent creature.

Octavio was initially going to be part of an idea for the self portrait project, involving a series of different characters played by myself in different locations. However, Octavio and Mr Welldone were the only two characters developed enough before the idea was scrapped and the focus was entirely on Mr Welldone.

Maybe someday Octavio will appear in another project...

MV Inspiration: BATTLES-Ice Cream Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CXtJA34QGQ  -(For the Music Video)

Mainly throughout 1:20 to 2:12 in the timeline of the music video, this was some of my inspiration on how to edit and overlay scenes in my music video "Cherry Moon".
In the BATTLES video, random scenes quickly pop in and out of sequences as the song places, and though they seem quite separate in terms on context in how they relate, the editing in a way almost forces them to relate as the two scenes are 'spliced' and overlayed together to create movements among the images that are quite interesting to look at, and are quite humorous, which would not be seen with just a singular opaque scene playing one after another.
I thought this idea was a good way of representing my interpretation of relationships and connectivity; how there are two opposing factors but always that third party that's a lot more ambiguous but overall has control over both sides to create the relationship.

Self Portrait: Development of "Attack of Wires"

For these final ideas for the image once the photographs were taken, I drew several mindmaps and drafted some ideas.

These are some very rough sketches that show some ideas for Mr Welldone's final image. 

I wanted to play around with the idea that Mr Welldone lives in a dark world, but much to his liking and personal interest. He scoffs at the idea of people being afraid of what is difficult to understand and either choose to be completely ignorant or to blindly follow along as per the "norm", both concepts of humankind in which Mr Welldone despises.

However, Mr Welldone does have genuine fears himself; this is not a fear or phobia of humanity in which he would lead others to believe, but more of the way humanity has built it self as an arrogant, self-indulgent and self-pitying race. 

One of his many revelations to this is the progression of technology.

This is from my own phobias that I have used to further flesh out Mr Welldone's character. At first Mr Welldone (and myself) were intruiged with the idea of technology furthering the attributes of a social and constructive race; it's the similar kind of intrigue when watching how ants build and work together to create their own eco-system. However, humans have become much more ambiguous and greedy than ants (as if that were even possible!) and to make matters worse, they are much BIGGER than ants. This poses a problem that Mr Welldone predicted would be a destructive and consuming force...and he was correct.

These mind maps show rough ideas on how Mr Welldone envisions this idea of technology on a subconscious level from Mr Welldone's own mind. For this I choose the image in which Mr Welldone was asleep under a willow tree, his safe haven. In the ideas for the image I wanted Mr Welldone to show even though he wished to be safe, he is constantly aware of human technology looming over him. So the obvious choice to show this was to imply the use of 'digital surveillance'. Mr Welldone sees a diminishing gap between actual physical contact and the constant overuse of technology, causing humankind to be more 'connective' but also more separated for other humans in a physical sense and separating them further from reality. Because of this, humans have become more and more like aliens of the time he's been alive for. With this idea, I now had a concept for a 'nightmare creature' to stalk Mr Welldone's mind: The Observer (or " Techno-Hydra").

Self Portrait: Images of Mr Welldone

Here are the images chosen for the possible final image. 6 in total were deemed the best images due to their composition and appropriate lighting. I also received some helpful feedback from peers and tutors.

1.) This was chosen as an initial 'head-shot' of my character, set against an almost fantastical backing of this enormous willow tree found on the grounds of Farnham Castle. The tree's bark had a very interesting pattern; it looked as through it was part of a set piece for some fantasy movie. I personally like how this image is on it's own, so if I had a way of making the final piece as a series of pictures, I would have included this as well.
 

2.) This image moved away from the last shot which was a close up of Mr Welldone, and is now a mid-shot showing more of his body in a pose, showing off more of his character in a physical sense. The composition with more of the foliage in the background is to show more of Mr Welldone's 'habitat' and his preferred connectivity with nature, almost like he is the guardian of his natural world, or a bizarre personification of a bridge between nature and 'humankind'.

Like the first shot above, I didn't want to edit in anything with photoshop, but wanted to keep the image how it was (but if any possible editing WAS necessary, perhaps some colour enhancement would do it a little justice.).

3.+4.) These two are very similar shots with a similar context as well as concept, though the composition has obvious physical differences. No.3 has Mr Welldone more in lower-center frame, with the tree behind him. No.4 shows more of the tree exposed from the right-hand side with Mr Welldone in left of the frame. Originally No.4 image was considered because of the branch forming an archway in which the space underneath could be filled with the photoshopped 'techno-creatures', but was scrapped for No.3, since Mr Welldone still had to be center of the image/concept and NOT the effects added later; those are just to emphasise the character's subconscious but are not the main focus themselves.

5.+6.) These next locations for the shoots are in a small rural street just outside Farnham Castle. These houses, paved road, and even the brick wall from the last two pictures all represent the increase of mankind's influence on the natural world. In the 5th image, above, There seems to be a sort of conflict occurring between the two factors; man's influence and natural progression of the world around them, each battling the other for superiority (represented by the foliage growth protruding from the houses [almost reminiscent of an explosion] and the flattened, cut and shaped grass and hedges from the other side) all this whilst Mr Welldone is caught in the middle with the acknowledgement that their is no way to help or stop either side, thus remains merely as the observer, much to his regret and frustration.

Artist Look: Charles Latham

Charles Latham is a very ambiguous artist. Not much is really known about him besides his photographic series, "Cyrus", so I gathered what I could with this website, whose link is here:

http://mattsparling.com/2011/04/24/charles-latham-whatever-happened-to/#more-285

Latham, from what is known about him, was a depressed man, who had then broke up from a relationship which had driven him to the point of self harm. But after many concerns from his friends, he decided to take it upon himself to recreate his anxiety and other negative thoughts and personal traits into a more creative setting to stimulate his well being as a person.

Thus, he created "CYRUS", a being constructed from Latham's negative feelings and named after his own middle name (which he despises, apparently, despite no other visual or written indication as to why that is)

Below is a description in Charles Latham's own words as to what (and who) Cyrus is:

"Cyrus is a special needs case. He's extremely impulsive, has a tendency to make wrong decision and is prone to depression. He is extremely self-destructive. Typically he is someone in need of a lot of supervision and instruction. It's the equivalent of having of having a new puppy...Cyrus makes an excellent minion because he's sort of a workhorse. There isn't much that he wouldn't do for his owner, provided he is met with positive reinforcement, otherwise the system breaks down and he will no doubt start acting out. Things sometimes get broken. Things sometimes get bloody."

Reading this extract from the website, I felt like this was a great representation of how depression truly effects someone. Usually people associate Depression as a state of self-pity, when from my experience it steers more towards self-loathing. Pretty much everything Latham has written I feel is very relatible to me on a somewhat personal level, and in some scenes that why I also love to create characters, to represent different aspects of myself; to split myself into different beings, some bad sides of me, but others more positive sides of me.

Self Portrait: Photographs of Mr Welldone

Here are the photographs taken for Mr Welldone's self-portrait project. A big personal 'thank you' to Yasmin Cullen for helping out with the camera work. I mostly directed the shots and posed/modelled for the character, but thanks to Yasmin for not only the camera operation, but also pitching in posture and concept ideas as well as helping me look for locations for the shoot.

The photography was not too difficult to direct, but there was still the obvious problem that I didn't know how the shot will come out like. I did, however, find suitable areas and constructed the "stages" for my character's composition. This way achieved simply through taking some test shots around these wooded areas to test light, shade, colour and background composition. However, at the time I had deleted the test shots and thus cannot be able to show them here (I think I now know what NOT to do next time and KEEP them!).