Artists who have inspired me

Fawn Gehweiler 

Fawn Gehweiler is an American artist who is best known for her cute character designs for fashion and entertainment industries. It is thanks to her style that inspired me to sketch big-eyed lanky yet cute similar characters, such as dinosaurs and a small boy.  

When it comes to producing her work Gehweiler mainly offers her designs for art based advertisements and consumer goods, but has also produced illustrations for magazines, website homepages and posters. For example there's “Lullie Vintage” featuring a group of colorful girls surrounding a sign post to attract customers for shopping, “Moshi Moshi Japan” featuring two girls on the telephone that advertises American art goods and a mini exhibition in Australia called “Little Lost and Innocent” that represents a cute young girl and baby deer which Gehweiler describes as “celebrating dolly birds, bubblegum and girlish fantasies.  

Christopher hart/ Hancock museum trip

When I took a trip to the Hancock museum I came across a few exhibits that became the main conception for my storyboard project especially this colourful patchwork elephant named Phillip the flip-flop elephant. Along with that I also included a zebra, an ostrich, a T.rex, an Iguanadon, an Egyptian mummy, an archaeopteryx, a velcociraptor, a hunter and a witch doctor as all part of my separate scripts. I eventually settled on my elephant idea and decided to use Christopher Harts anime themed style to make my animal characters appear young and cute so that the audience can tell that they are children.
I came across this style while looking up Hart in his book the Draw manga now! Super cute animals and pets, where he has detailed about how to sketch a baby animal in the form of manga step by step.

The Silhouettes/ kiko and the hand

When it was time for me to animate my storyboard I was given a list of videos to choose from that could help influence my work. After looking through so many ideas I eventually settled with the silhouettes, which has alien characters shaped in a circular ball shaped style. This is what gave me the push to change my characters appearance so that it would be easier to animate them along with a suggestion from my tutor to make them look goofier. As for kiko and the hand my original idea for that was to use the hands moving rainbow patterns to make the patterns on my elephant character manoeuvre but didn’t have enough time to complete it.

Big bird and wilt

Ever since I was young I have always had the wild imagination to produce hundreds of characters one in particular is Flobby the stork who I originally conceived from two television characters from separate children shows I use to watch when I was little such as Big Bird from Sesame Street and Wilt from fosters home for imaginary friends. 

 

Edward Muybridge 

Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer who was best known for his work in the development of photography studies in motion and the earliest motion picture in projection. It was during that time that he became well known for his pioneering work in animal/human figure locomotion, where he used multiple cameras to capture the movements of the animal/human in stop motion photographs.

Another success that Muybridge is famous for is his photos of the wilderness of Yosemite especially Vernal Falls, the surroundings of San Francisco and the collection of separate photo frames of Sallie Gardner at a Gallop, which became one of the first ever motion pictures to be animated. He achieved this by planting a series of glass-plated cameras around the horse race track, which were then set off by attached thread that the passing horse ran over, capturing every separate image. Just like the previous scopes Muybridge copied the original images onto his very own Zoopraxiscope in the form of black silhouettes.

Jeff soto 

Jeff soto is an American contemporary artist who is best known for his Pop and street art projects. I find his designs very bizarre and yet attractive through the combination of bright and dark tones of the colour, while merging creatures together with nature such as his giant monster, floating island skull with antlers and his small blue fur ball creature handling art equipment.

With his designs I saw it as way to help influence my African animals to be merged with an element that could be related to them. For example there was either the ostrich being made out of electricity or air since it can run very fast, the elephant could of been made out of rock since it has a very tough hide and that its skin tone resembles a boulder and the zebra could of been made out of tall grass since its stripes could help blend in with its surroundings.  

By looking at his work it looks like he has used a collection of water colours to reveal the areas that are light and dark making them look attractive.

Amy sol 

Amy sol is an American artist who is best known for her pop surreal paintings. She uses a technique that involves painting on a treated wooden panel and inserting grain of the wood into the art piece. Many people say that her style combines both “figurative and narrative styles into something magical.”

Amy says that the wood is the real source behind her work, helping her to keep her hand in motion while allowing her hand to go with the flow. “When at the wood grain at times, it feels like you can sense it is alive, staring right back at you. Even though it was alive once, the imprint of it still exists influencing the colours to keep art natural.”

In most of her works, Amy has created a young girl with in a dream like nature world, surrounded by large or miniature fantasy themed animals. In many ways the theme is a bit similar to Alice in wonderland from the changing sizes to certain areas of the world. By looking at how the girl interacts with the animals, suggests that they are spiritually connected or know each other either as pet and mistress, friends or as a next incarnation. However nobody really knows and are left to guess, since Amy hasn’t really given a statement of the interaction. 

Once again I could of possibly used her style to make my animal characters look cuter and more dream-like; I could of even made the surrounding environment look more fantasy themed.  

Jeremy fish

Jeremy fish is an illustrator who is best known for his bizarre looking combinations of animals, building structures, vehicles and weapons. I particularly like his animal and weapons hybrids, either having an animal to represent what weapon it is related to or how the animals shape is much similar to the structure such as the sloth gun.

Once again I could of possibly used this style for my own African animal characters, for example Phillip the elephant could of been a cannon or tank since his trunk and huge body closely resemble them, Oz the ostrich could of been a crane thanks to his head and stripes the zebra could of been a grenade since many army weapons have camouflage patterns and a zebra’s stripes help it blend in with its surroundings.

Charles burns

Charles burns is an American cartoonist illustrator who is best known for his black and white gross comic book series Black Hole. His main influence for his artwork came from the front cover of a music album known as Fever Ray that was produced by Martin Anders. Along with this style Burns used the disgusting appearance of gonorrhoea to make his characters look more hideous. 

Apart from his own series Burns has also worked for other companies such as Sub Pop that produces multiple album covers for various music bands and RAW Magazine which during the 1980s was part of the alternative comics movement that became main focus of other plots other the super hero comics and also allowed new genres, artwork, styles and subjects to be introduced. 

I particularly like this style because of its dark tones combined with its disfigured features, which has worked perfectly with my chosen ghost story, giving my shadowy ghost figure a slightly ugly face, along with using the line work for my girl characters hairstyle.