FABIO MOON

Fabio Moon is a Brazilian comic book artist who is known for many collaborative works with his brother and other artists with similar tastes in drawing style. Jess suggested this artist after our group critique session and I was very interested in learning more about his work.

Style-wise, this artist reminds me somewhat of Dave McKean in his use of commercial comic-book materials with a dark twist. Moon is very skilful in terms of layout and creates narrative pages with minimalistic amounts of dialogue, so his art work fills the page and isn't smothered in white text boxes like so many other published comics.

He uses traditional materials and works mostly in black and white, which serves well to showcase his great inking abilities; however I also admire his beautiful watercolour pieces. These are not as popular for commercial use due to the cost of printing, but are fascinating as stand-alone works.

To get a better understanding of his work as a narrative, I am planning on reading one of Moon and his brother's Horror comic books "Pixu" as I feel the themes of the story are relevant to my project. Hopefully I will be able to gain some inspiration from their use of panel layout to create my own illustration sequence with limited dialogue and allowing the images to tell the story.

DAVID FIRTH

After the group critique, Jess suggested that I research the cartoonist David Firth as she felt his bizarre and often disturbing animations would fit in well with my project. This was a very helpful suggestion as I found a lot of interesting features of his work that tie in well with my theme of dark narratives. Whilst discussing the artist with Mike and Emily, Mike suggested I watch his "Black and White Cartoon" series.

Although the piece is not obviously humorous, I found myself laughing uncomfortably during moments of these pieces. Firth always achieves a reaction from his audience, and I believe that may be the aim of his mostly disturbing pieces. This reminds me of my Heart Eater comic and some of the repulsed reactions I received from readers in my class as the ending and themes of the story weren't as "positive" as they had expected.

I remember watching this internet series of animations titled "Salad Fingers" by Firth whilst I was much younger. My friends and I would squeal and cringe at the actions and behaviour of this creepy character and the memory of it has stuck with me. Firth does well to induce a reaction in his audience and create an almost haunting memory with his characters and dark themes. I think this is much more effective than creating something "safe" or "family friendly" as it shows little exploration of the dark corners of the imagination that exist, and mostly results in something bland and very easily forgotten.

By exploring controversial themes of mental illness and generally not-very-"Disney" characters, this cartoonist creates animations that people will discuss, share and react to.

To help my work progress I think it may be necessary to not focus on things that are visually appealing or safe and to move onto more graphic and experimental imagery, such as is seen in David Firth's own work.

SKAIJO

Skaijo is one of my favourite animators for her hilarious short animations. She posts her work on sites such as YouTube, deviantART and Newgrounds. She works with the program Flash to create pieces with a very distinctive use of character design and animation style.

This is one of her less "comedic" works, however it still depicts elements of humour. Looking at Skaijo's work is very useful for my project as she has skills in producing narrative works even without dialogue. Viewers have commented that the characters are difficult to tell apart due to their similar colour schemes, to which she replied that she grew up in a place where most people have similar skin/hair and eye colour. In my opinion, she has used her fictional race of people well as she has managed to create character designs that show they belong to the same race and culture and has used her knowledge of design to bring each personality out in her drawings and use of clothing/hair style.

This next animation is part of Skaijo's ongoing series "Professor Layton and the Malignant Growth" which is very darkly funny and entertains it's internet audience using pop culture references and surreal characters. I enjoy watching these stories due to the hilarious mix of dark or taboo situations and comedy. In these short animations the characters appear very scruffily drawn which seems typical of an internet cartoon, but rather than being a disadvantage, Skaijo is still able to create expressive characters and convey comedy and narrative.

After looking at Skaijo's work I have begun to draw character designs for my Masque of the Red Death illustrations and will be posting my ideas soon.

Constructive Critique

Today our class was split into groups so that we could discuss each other's work. I was put into a group with Jess, Ben and Theo.

I had to explain my project so far, what my work was about and how certain artists I had researched had influenced my work. We discussed what work I could make for Berlin in relation to my narrative project and the group came up with some interesting ideas. One suggestion was that I find some way to creep people out and perhaps make a comic or series of illustrations depicting their reactions.

They then gave me some more artists to look at; Jess suggested David Firth and Fabio Moon who I have decided to research more into as their work appears to be very interesting as well as relevant to my project.

We repeated this process with each group member until we had all discussed each other's work and provided relevant artists to help us progress.

I found the group critique to be very useful as I enjoyed listening to the opinions of my peers as well as learning more about their work. They have given me some great ideas to help me further my project as well as extra artists for me to gain inspiration from.

MIKIKO PONCZECK

Mikiko Ponczeck is a published comic book artist. Like Alfredsen, she often draws in her own cute style.

Her "minicomics" are very funny and use situations from her everyday life. I like these drawings, but for my project I am more interested in her darker, more serious pieces.

Ponczeck has a very bold illustrative style but knows how to use it to depict more depressing themes.

This is my favourite comic page by this artist as she took an ordinary pencil sketch and coloured it digitally. It creates a more delicate effect than harsh black lines that are produced by computer programs and the sketch lines add a sense of structure and fluidity to the piece as a whole.

Her drawing processes are interesting and I find it enjoyable to see how a professional turns a pencil sketch into a finished product that is suitable for a paying client or for publication in an artbook or comic series.

Heart Eater Comic

In response to Tina Alfredsen's work and distinctively adorable style of drawing her many characters, I decided to make my own "cute" comic but with a dark theme to connect it with my project. On a large sheet of paper I worked on a simple concept I had in my head.

Using waterproof ink I outlined the panels I had sketched. I made a few mistakes early on, such as the ink dribbling down the page so I learnt quickly to only have a very small amount of ink on my brush.

As there were only a few characters, I didn't make any design sheets. I just kept them simple and drew them how I imagined them at first. I numbered the panels to make the story easier to follow. Using a thinner brush, I inked the sketch. I like how this makes the characters look bold and stand out, like the thick black lines used in Alfredsen's comic.

These are some close up shots of the panels. Because of the size of the paper, I found it difficult to get clear photos of the piece as a whole.

To make the characters stand out more, I diluted some of the ink and used it to add tone onto my work. I let the ink dry and then painted some more lines over the top to create shading. To make certain objects stand out, I used a pink watercolour. I didn't want to use too many colours as I didn't want it to look over the top or confusing to read.

I like how this came out and I found the combination of cute and creepy to be quite humorous, as it seemed to toy with the reader's perception of how the comic should end. Most people who saw it were shocked by the ending and were quite upset that it wasn't the cute story they were expecting.

I enjoyed working on this larger scale as I'm more used to A4 sized comics, so I have decided to make my Masque of the Red Death comic a similar size to this, if not bigger.



TINA ALFREDSEN

Tina Alfredsen is an artist who works for an animation/game studio and also draws on comission via the internet. She creates a huge variety including paintings, animations, comics and pixel art. Alfredsen has a very distinctive "cute" style of drawing".

She has a great understanding of colour theory, so her pieces are always attractive and pleasant to look at.

My favourite thing about Alfredsen's work is her use of facial expression which makes her characters look fun and cartoon-y.

Of the many small animations she makes, I chose to feature this longer animation as it is a great example of her knowledge of movement and use of character design with expressive faces and motion.
In response to Alfredsen's work I have decided to make a comic that emulates her cute style and use of facial expression, but I am going to keep within my theme of dark story telling. I think the juxtaposition of cute drawings with a creepy story line will be interesting to experiment with.