Friday, November 24, 2006

Tim Burton



I really love Tim Burtons style of drawing his use of simple lines and colour, and the texture given to the images by the use of line gives you a real feel of movement.

Burton is another favourite artist, illustrator, movie maker and animator of mine, in particular I love Burtons affection for stop motion model animation and the narratives he creates for his characters within the weired and wonderful worlds he creates for them. Burton gets inside the minds of his characters and creates their past, present, and futures, as well as the worlds which they will be placed within.





Stephen Frankfurt

I must say that Frankfurts title sequence for the movie To Kill A Mockingbird is one of, if not my favourite title sequence. I love the use of objects within the title all of which are linked to the movie and its characters. The titles link perfectly to the movie and are intrigeing to watch, the objects, movement, sound and typography are all key to making the piece work they way it does. They allow your mind to be overrun with ideas and images of what lies ahead. They are so simple and yet so powerful that they to me could almost be the most memorable if not interesting part of the movie.

Cindy Sherman

Sherman was established on the basis of her untitled film stills, a series of black and white photographs, in which the artist depicts herself dressed in the gulses of cliched b movie heroines. Sherman has a quality which allows her to be present in her work, and yet never really be there. Her appropriation of the space on both sides of the lens destabilized the traditionally gendered opposition between artist and model, object or subject.

During the 80's Sherman began to use colour film, to exhibit very large prints, and concentrate more on lighting and facial expression. prosthetic appendages and liberal amounts of make-up moved ner work into the grotesque and the sinister.

Sherman is another photographer who portrays a narrative through a lense, however I find her work to be some what strange and I do not quite understand what it is she is trying to convey.



Chris Ware

Ware demonstrates that the language and pictographs in cheap comical chapbooklets can evolve into fine art, if the author maintains enough courage to eliminate everything unnecessary. Crosshatching is replaced with solid blocks of colour designed to elicit a specific emotional response. Perspective can be abandoned in favour of flattened, foreshortened orthographic angles of view. Jimmy Corrigan, curious Quimby the Mouse and associates are rendered simply by hand with precision. His comics and illustrations depict anger, isolation, guilt and more.

He regards Charles Schulz and Frank King as majour influences upon his work.

Ware is an illustrator who completly re-designed the form and function of a comic, he uses complex structures, colours and symbols to create a comic in an innovative way using the same principals but lays the narratives out within a technical yet understandable structure. Within his work wether it be a colour or an image something links the pieces together and I have found his work to be very influential upon my own and for future reference.





Art Spiegelman

Spiegelmans narrative MAUS portrays jews as mice and nazis as cats, his work is not just meant to be plainly understood but present you with images once unimaginable. His work is best known for its shifting graphic style and formal complexity, and controversial content. Spiegelman believes the medium of comics should not be ignored and in our post-literature culture the importance of comics is on the rise, for"comics echo the way the brain works."