Felix LaFlamme

So, Felix La Flamme...His art is incredibly dark, full of hell beasts, living dead and other lovely characters. I think that was exactly what attracted my attention to him, as from childhood I looked in to the subject of paranormal and I think in his art I can see the direct reflection of how I would imagine them. I must point out, that even though the subject matter seems grim; it is executed in playful, comic book fashion. This is not surprising as one of his main inspirations was his brother’s comic book collection as well as Punk Rock, Horror Movies, Tiki bars and other. You can find out more about this artist on http://www.felixlaflamme.com/about.html
LaFlamme uses a mixture of media, mainly consisting of markers, pens and Photoshop CS3 for effect enhancement. You can actually see him in action on YouTube, where he has his own channel on which selections of videos which show his creative process are displayed.
There are several important qualities, which I would like to adopt from his art and firstly comes his fantastic imagination. Even though his works are all within a single frame, the subject matter varies greatly presenting the viewer with a good selection of imagery. LaFlamme does devote a lot of time to the main character he is working on, the backgrounds on the other hand in the majority are minimal. As I noticed, on his websites gallery page a large number of images resemble logos, usually image is placed in front of black background. I would recommend you having a butchers on his webpage, u might find a lot of interesting things.
http://www.felixlaflamme.com/gallery.html

A bit about the Art of George Patsouras

I recently came across this artist in a magazine which I find exceptionally informative in terms of modern creative techniques and contemporary influential artists. (http://www.imaginefx.com/ ) Consequently I considered it essential to discuss this artist and the magazine within this post.
Reality is that usually I am attracted by colour vivacity in a work of art and “Project Barbara” by George Patsouras is a “living” example of it, in essence it is a portrait, but what a portrait it is. In this particular work a lot of important qualities came together: beginning with the emotional weight delivered by the facial expression of the girl in the painting. She seems like stepping out of a dream, in fact, her mind still seems to be so far away, and what also strengthens this viewpoint is the background which consists out of clouds, painted in soft tones with minor addition of blue. Next important merit is the colour of her hair, it is radiant red. The hair effect is strengthened by deep blue eyes and earlier mentioned background.
Personally I find portraits exceptionally hard at this stage, and I take my hat off in front of people who can achieve results of this incredible quality.
Here is the link to George Patsouras BlogSpot which I recommend to visit and lower down is the link which would get to you the online tutorial to do with “Project Barbara”- http://cgaddict.blogspot.com/
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/making_of_project_barbra/making_of_project_barbra01.asp
A little bit about the journal. (http://www.imaginefx.com/ ) I keep buying it for about a year now and there isn’t a month when I was disappointed. It is full of valuable information about the creative community and various advices on subject like life drawing, colour mechanics, compositional arrangements, useful software techniques and many-many other things which aspiring illustrator or concept artist simply can’t pass by.

Gustav Klimt

The end of the 19th century brought new ideas and discoveries in to the contemporary society, cities like Vienna played a major role in promoting innovations in culture and industry. Gustav Klimt was one of the central figures of the Viennnese high society, even though he was the one who shocked masses with his imaginative vision by rejecting the contemporary canons of morality. He was not completely accepted by his contemporaries, but his creative influence is still growing strong through the centuries.
Woman was Klimt’s most favourite subject; in his work he exploited feminine sensuality, tying it together with symbolic meanings. For his own reasons Klimt did not enjoy discussing his work in public, but at the same moment what can one say about Life and Death(This subject lingered through all of his creative career), these subjects are simultaneously so complex and easy, one has to draw own conclusions.
There is an opinion why Klimt was so highly criticized. In his work Klimt used contemporary models, which could have been easily identified. They stood too far away from the depictions of goddesses during the Renaissance, as they stood free of the boundaries of the contemporary society.
Gustav Klimt (Living Art Series)Prestel (23 Feb 2007)by Nina Kransel

Jorge Alderete

Jorge Alderete

Dr Alderete came in to my view a year ago, and in all honesty I was blown away by his creative capabilities. He was born in Patagonia (Argentina) and graduated in Visual Communication from the School of Fine Arts at the Universidad Nacionale de la Plata. Alderete has worked for a variety of well known companies across the world and among them are MTV and Nickelodeon.
What I enjoy about this artist is his amazing imagination and colour application. His subject matter is extremely varied, because the variety of commissions is vast, but the works that I am fortunate to have in front of me are generally to do with the surfing culture, Tiki gods and Hot-rods...which is not surprising as his major influences are wrestling, surf music and 50’s Science fiction movies.
His works are vibrant and exciting with well balanced compositions. Often the use of complementary colours could be seen, I imagine this was done to focus viewers attention on particular parts of the composition, though from my point of view sometimes it makes the work less aesthetically appealing due to strong contrasts. In other cases, a limited pallet is being used, with two or three colours being used in tonal variation. What also is extremely apparent, is the use of bold black lines to define the shapes, this doesn’t detract from the image quality but makes object appear static, essentially grounded in place.

http://www.pocko.com/pockopeople/artist/jorge-alderete/

http://www.koms.ru/

I discovered this website by a coincidence several years ago, but since then I often look at its content to better understand the meanings behind some of these works. On the website they talk about a new, intellectual style of animation, though for me, it wasn’t always apparent. I must admit, that this website is distinctly different from anything I have ever seen before, as the animations presented here are not commercially directed, and often are even anti-aesthetical. One has to contemplate about the meanings that the authors put within their works, but in some cases it seems that the intent was purely to shock. On the website works by Russian and English animators are displayed, and I think it is worth having a look as then one will have a better knowledge of world animation as well as new, unexplored ways of convening ideas. I must point out that there is an English version of the website available, but unfortunately no time was devoted to explaining the plot of the animations and some of the meaning and experience could be lost due to the fact that in some cases the soundtracks are in Russian. Enjoy! There are several animations that will most certainly blow your mind!!!

http://www.koms.ru/

Manipulation by Daniel Greaves.

I would like to mention is an Oscar winner for the Best Animated short in 1992 and it is called “Manipulation” by Daniel Greaves. This animation without a doubt possesses reflexive ideas within its plot, as one can see certain similarities with Chuck Jones’ “Duck Amuck” animation from 1953. The latter is a long accepted classic example of reflexive animation. The plot is constructed out of conflicts between the animator and his character where the animator constantly changes the environment and the character himself according to his will. The viewers are being constantly reminded that this work is manmade, essentially by it being constantly constructed in front of their eyes.
Through the course of “Duck Amuck” and “Manipulation”, the character tries to communicate with the animator and displays his discontent in many ways, while being placed in a series of gags which he does not find amusing. Both animations show the process and “tools” of the animator, the variety of creational issues and the resolving of them.

Smoke Kills!

“Smoke Kills” is an animation that raises a number of important political and social issues, but in a satiric fashion. It covers the problems of communication between USA and Russia and later even razes global concerns about the future of the civilization. Through the course of the animation a number of fictional movie characters were used and that is the criteria which renders this animation reflexive. Similar notion could be seen within the movie and comic series under the name of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” It features a number of heroes drawn from different sources, who combine their forces in a struggle against evil.
This Animation was done in Flash, by a Russian animation studio “Antimult”.

Multikov net!?

This website contains a selections of old russian fairy-tales, but slightly modernized and shortened. The animations presented on the website had a definite impact on me, this is because I grew up with with this stories around me and seeing them in an animated form somehow made me all warm inside. My grandmother told me some of them when I was very little.
There are several other things that I love about the animations presented on this website, and firstly comes the general appearance of them. The animator (Andrei Bahurin) has managed to draw upon the right sources of inspiration that made this animation appear distinctly Russian. He has simplified the style and the color pallet but somehow he managed to retain the essence of old Russian tale.
Obviously the sound plays big importance and in this case the style of narration seems to enhance the experience greatly.
http://www.multikov.net/skazki/

This particular animation is about a German being in charge of a Russian village and how he was making them work without the appreciation for the religious celebrations. This animation showed how the oppressor was "outwitted" and effectively punished. Of course he started respecting the customs and lived happily ever after.

Lip sync. test (2008)

Recently we have been introduced to the lip synchronisation technique. I found it extremely interesting and results rewarding. It was a group exercise and people were given separate bits of sound, for which they had to create characters and synchronise their lips. For this we used Dragon Software, which was generally easy to use but it had several disadvantages. For some reason only one headphone worked well (One has to listen to the soundtrack and break it down to separate letters) what you can see over here is the compilation of our efforts.