Saturday, February 14, 2009

S'mo BS


Just fished a piece out of my files that I've been looking for for some time now. Mouth City as I so creatively named it won me first place in a state art show in (I don't know what
category) and some prize money I have long since spent on lottery tickets and extended warranty on my automatic egg-boiler. The piece itself is humongous for me, it covered a 2 foot piece of bristol and was drawn with a combination of quills, gel pens, sharpies, and my own blood and dung (naturally). It was done in class, worked 40-ish minutes on it everyday for a week. I wish I was that productive the rest of the time.

I mounted it on some black display board and customized it with the fancy lettering at the bottom before submitting it.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Coraline WASN'T directed by Tim Burton, you assholes!



Impending belly achin'...

Cutting through the fat; to those of you who think so - NO - Coraline (the bitchinest new stop-motion film to hit the big screen) was not directed by Tim Burton.

The confusion started with the commercials advertising the film as being the product of "The director of The Nightmare Before Christmas", but just happened to omit the name of said director. Henry Selick is one of the few directors that I still respect. In an age of Tinsel Town where the animation genre has come to mean recycled CG tripe, and traditional animation has all but gone the way of the dodo; Henry Selick comes to the rescue with fresh ideas in a stimulating medium.

Those of you who are familiar with Burton's mode of storytelling and visual style should be able to differentiate something like Coraline from his usual Caligarian fare. Now, I don't hate Burton. In fact he's one of my personal heroes. It's just that he's become a bit of a hack.

Henry Selick knows not to spread himself too thin. He puts so much effort and care into his work that he's only been able to churn out a handful of movies in the last two decades. He's also very loyal to his medium, opting for traditional FX wherever possible, giving his films an organic and beautiful imperfection to them.
In the last five years, Dreamworks and Disney have squatted on their haunches and pinched out at least a dozen CG turds respectively. I call them "babysitter films", banal and generic eye candy with cookie-cutter plots and cardboard characters that you put on the TV to keep the brats of the house quiet for a couple hours. While these films are garbage (and make no mistake, that's exactly what they are), they help to put artful movies like Coraline on a pedestal to shine, and remind audiences - if only briefly - what a good animated movie is all about.

Bottom-line; Coraline is amazing. Go see it in 3D and send Mr. Selick some good vibes. 

Monday, January 26, 2009

BS



W'skup!

Some more artwork. This is older stuff and those of you who already know what I'm about won't be surprised to see it. BUT - I'm not going to neglect the oldies but goodies.

You know that was the name of a terrifying porn video I saw once, it's sequel was "Oldy but Fatty". Mm-mmm! I just went right ahead and skipped lunch that day, and uh... the rest of the week.

The pieces I upload today are of two little creatures inspired by Burton/Gorey. Very organic with all the large round shapes and various little limbs/fins but with a few mechanical parts thrown in. I pictured them being very squishy/balloon-like and full of some kind of thick black ichor. As far as how they get around, well I imagine it would be impossible given the ratio of body mass to the skimpiness of their limbs. I did another one of these - a very long piece with several of them in a row playing band instruments. I never bothered getting it scanned for some reason, even though its probably the best of all three. I'll get around to it one o' these days.

Medium: Pencil, Ink, and Acrylics

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Obligatory Introductions


Name's Chris.

Chances are the only people that see this blog are people I already know, so I guess saying my name is merely a formality.

I draw shit, and I'm going to make this place an online home for my "art".

I unnastan' that blogs are a place to post your thoughts and feelings. I am not under the delusion that people give two shits about what I say. Regardless, I will be posting my opinions on stuff. Humor abound, I promise you they will not be boring reads, but they will be opinionated.

Its late and I'm sad, and I have nothing else to say. Fuck you. I'm going to bed.

Before I go, here's a little piece I'm working on. A bit of fan art that fans of the Oddworld series will appreciate. Still in pencil, plan to paint it once I adjust the proportions a bit, made her body a wee bit small. Yes, that's a "her".