More than ever people who have honed their skills with a pen, paintbrush, spraycan, a bit of paper or canvas are turning their static creations into moving works of art. If you can illustrate or draw odds are that you can also direct – the visual mediums or artwork and moving image are closer than they have ever been.
As brands increasingly associate with famed artists for a mixture of credibility, interesting content and style that they simply cannot conjure for themselves, the trend of artist / brand partnership appears to becoming a catalyst for illustrators and artists shifting up into moving image direction.
Well known illustrator and toymaker James Jarvis made just such a gearshift with the recent ‘onwards’ project for Nike. Jarvis’ interest in running and Nike’s interest in Jarvis catapulted the pen wielding Englishman into the world of animation.
Working with Shynola’s Richard Kenworthy, Jarvis aimed to maintain his graphic style and hand drawn aesthetic in the same fashion that Shynola had done for Scottish nutcase and artist turned director David Shrigley in the brilliant ‘Good Song’.
Another similar situation had been created in the Nike IAM1 project (featured a few months ago on The Reel blog) with graffiti artist INSA producing a short but brilliant animation for the sports giant.
Alex Pardee is yet another artist-turned-director who uses the interesting medium of the Unreal 3 video game engine (as used in Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3 and GOW2) to create the world his character ‘Chadam’ inhabits.
To give us a bit more of an understanding of the artist / director realm, we turned to the Picasso Picture’s wonderful Claire Tredgett. Picasso are the undisputed world heavyweights in illustrator / directors, and are home to the endless draw-scribble-film-animate talents of tokyoplastic, Finkbom, Pyjamax and Laundry! to name but a few.
Picasso is a brilliant example of a production company that actively seeks out artists / illustrators who are also directors. Was this always the way at Picasso?
As brands increasingly associate with famed artists for a mixture of credibility, interesting content and style that they simply cannot conjure for themselves, the trend of artist / brand partnership appears to becoming a catalyst for illustrators and artists shifting up into moving image direction.
Well known illustrator and toymaker James Jarvis made just such a gearshift with the recent ‘onwards’ project for Nike. Jarvis’ interest in running and Nike’s interest in Jarvis catapulted the pen wielding Englishman into the world of animation.
Working with Shynola’s Richard Kenworthy, Jarvis aimed to maintain his graphic style and hand drawn aesthetic in the same fashion that Shynola had done for Scottish nutcase and artist turned director David Shrigley in the brilliant ‘Good Song’.
Another similar situation had been created in the Nike IAM1 project (featured a few months ago on The Reel blog) with graffiti artist INSA producing a short but brilliant animation for the sports giant.
Alex Pardee is yet another artist-turned-director who uses the interesting medium of the Unreal 3 video game engine (as used in Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3 and GOW2) to create the world his character ‘Chadam’ inhabits.
To give us a bit more of an understanding of the artist / director realm, we turned to the Picasso Picture’s wonderful Claire Tredgett. Picasso are the undisputed world heavyweights in illustrator / directors, and are home to the endless draw-scribble-film-animate talents of tokyoplastic, Finkbom, Pyjamax and Laundry! to name but a few.
Picasso is a brilliant example of a production company that actively seeks out artists / illustrators who are also directors. Was this always the way at Picasso?
We are very lucky at Picasso to have always worked with director’s who are talented in both illustration and animation. From our pre-digital days we’ve been drawn to directors with a strong design sense – with directors such as Damian Gascoigne and Steve May, post digital tokyoplastic and Griff impressing us as much with their design portfolios as their films. Many of our more recent signings, such as Julia Pott, Lesley Barnes, Laundry and Motomichi Nakamura find that their enterprising and commercial attitude to their design work brings them as much attention as their animation.
Do you think the two go hand in hand? (art and direction)
Not necessarily, as any technically proficient director with a creative eye can direct and animate another illustrator’s style. However, there is definitely a tradition for an animation director to carve out a career as an illustrator first and subsequently become consumed by the desire to see their creations come to life. Animation tends to be a very personal craft, with a lot of the director’s sensibility reflected in characters and illustrations they create. I believe some of our director’s best work is created when they have a personal investment in the design.
Do clients ever approach you looking to turn an older piece of illustration or an illustration style into moving imagery?
This definitely crops up and, as I mentioned before, it’s something easily achieved. However, more often than not we’re given illustrations as a reference point with a view to creating a similar look which embraces our director’s own unique style and gives it a contemporary feel.
You can effectively animate with photoshop and the adobe suite, do you think the advancement of this technology is pushing artists and illustrators to think along moving image lines and experiment?
I think this is definitely happening more and more these days. Technology is becoming so much more accessible and experimenting with software is as easy to do as playing around with pencil and paper. I’m very excited about this, animation is ever evolving and artists coming into the business with a new perspective can only be a good thing.
For more illustration and direction goodness – jump over to http://www.picassopictures.com/ now!
Thanks to Claire for the super last minute interview!
