This Thesis Will Drive me to Madness

The work on my thesis continues, with more interaction sketches and another finished digital narrative.  Some of my classes are going to have to fall by the wayside if I'm going to get this all done.

 

It Takes an Obsession to Make a Thesis

One of my greatest strengths and weaknesses is that I'm an obsessive type worker.

And I have to process things by talking and by writing.

In other news, the small-scale drawings of the backwards princesses continue with a rare serious take on one of my more psychosis-laden characters.

I've also created a more polished looking version of the Rapunzel story digitally, which I designed to look somewhat like stills from an animated movie or show (these digital versions are what the notes above are for).  However, it's a fairly huge image so I'll work on getting a smaller version to post with some others at a later date.

Standard Update

New Studio space:

With more crappy random furniture than a thrift shop.
 

A current resting place for the backwards fairy tale originals.  Trying to decide which ones need to be revisited for my gallery show and which ones are fine as they are.

 A digital piece I finished last week in preparation for the pre-thesis review.  My digital work appears to be a point of contention for some viewers, which is, to me, fairly perplexing.  I go through every effort to make my work accessible and easy to read.  I'll have to pay attention to what may be causing these difficulties, moving forward.  Unfortunately, most of the feedback from my review was a lot of artists listening to themselves talk (fine artists absolutely love doing that).  However, I did get some genuinely helpful suggestions, such as the idea that adding text to my digital work would help add my own touch and my own voice to it, while tying it more closely to my pen-on-paper pieces.  I plan to put this to the test in the coming weeks.

 And a bonus "interaction" drawing.

Character Design

Worked on nailing down some semi-definitive designs for the backwards fairy-tale characters.

And while we're at it, worked a bit on how I draw my cartoon-style characters when it's all done on PhotoShop.  Just some practice, I suppose.

And We're Back, Folks

New semester, new work.  Lately I've been focusing on developing the stars of my backwards fairy-tales as characters.  To this end, I've been drawing them in a series of interactions.  

Rapunzel, in her backwards story, escapes from a clingy boyfriend.  I tend to draw her as oldest, most "idealized," and generally pretty sassy.
Alice's backwards story basically shows her succumbing to substance abuse.  As such, she ended up a druggie.  She's a little chubbier than the others (munchies will do that to you).
Ariel (or the Little Mermaid) backwards ended up being dumped by her husband, but then being turned into a mermaid and living in the sea, where she learns the value of friends and family.  She ended up very chipper and bubbly, given how she enjoys her new life.
Cinderella's backwards story shows her being left by her husband as well, but she is cursed by an evil fairy godmother to work in servitude for the rest of her life.  I tend to portray her as a bit of a nervous wreck, most likely with OCD.
Finaly, Belle (or Beauty) is essentially an abuse victim, as in her backwards tale, her boyfriend turns into a beast and attacks her, so she has to flee to a nearby village.

Apologies for some of the poor photo quality on a few of these. 

Literal Studio Update

I've moved in and then some.

Whoever has to paint over that ink on the walls at the end of the year is going to hate me.
 

Artist Statement "Final Draft"

My goal in my work is to connect to people through stories. I use my characters and narratives to turn people inward towards their own lives; my drawings may remind them of a person, a place, an event, or an experience or emotion.  I use ink and Photoshop, which are clear, easy to read, and familiar.  This is one way in which my art evokes the feel of comics, cartoons, video games, and other geek-culture influences from my childhood and today.  I gravitate most noticeably toward the aesthetic of Japanese manga, applying various elements of this aesthetic to nearly all of my work.

As I've experimented with new ways of utilizing my interest in cartooning, I began creating backwards fairy tales.  These are several well-known stories, many made popular by the ubiquitous animated Disney films from the 1930's to the present, which I have retold simply by inverting.  Extracting the major plot elements, I reverse the order, and thus create an entirely new tale. The results are comic-like drawings which utilize immediately familiar visuals to first draw the viewer in, and then subvert expectations as the viewer notices that the known story is somehow off.  My new fairy tales offer something that is at once accessible and off-beat.  In these pieces, I play with the gray area between the comfortable and familiar, and the strange and unexpected.