Today I bring you another artist whose work I ran into at a local art store that sells prints from the art company Eyes On Walls. HR-FM has an bold art style that is a perplexing mix of clean and chaotic that I always find myself browsing. A Japanese native, HR-FM has digital artwork that ranges from surreal japanese cyberpunk to mountain landscapes. HR-FM's clean vector art takes beautiful images and colours them in vibrant and unpredictable ways. The crazy and random segmented line-work mixed with an equally turbulent colour palette results in his distinct and eye-catching style.
HR-FM has a number of great pieces that I love, but I tend to favour his surreal pieces. In a single image, HR-FM creates a strange world that sucks you in. A great example is the image below. I would have used it as the title image, but the scope and depth of the world would be lost if I cropped around his beautiful art. HR-FM has also been collaborating with other companies to create his own shoe and watch releases.
Today, I am going a different direction with my artist pick. Instead of an indie or offbeat pick, I will be writing about an incredible artist that's pretty well known in a lot of circles. With an impressive resume including Marvel, DC, Image, Capcom, Udon Entertainment, Toyota, Riot Games, and more, it's safe to say that Alvin Lee's unending talent is not going to waste.
Alvin Lee is a Canadian comic artist with an anime-inspired art style. I was introduced to him on his work reviving the Street Fighter comics by Udon Entertainment. These comics floored me with the quality of art, and a list of compliments can go on for a while. What I think stands out the most with his work, is the amount of perspective work that is so elusive to many professional artists. By having a strong grasp of perspective, Alvin Lee's characters have a powerful dynamic quality that lends itself perfectly for action scenes. In the comics, page after beautiful splash page show Ryu coming straight towards the reader with movement and impact that top tier comic artists spend lifetimes to achieve. What's even more impressive is looking at his work now, he's even better.
His success led to work with Capcom doing artwork for the official Street Fighter releases. As with so many top echelon creators, Alvin Lee has moved on to do pin-ups and cover art for a wide variety of companies. Recently, he has signed on with Riot Games (of League of Legends fame) to do artwork.
I have had the pleasure of meeting Alvin Lee at the New York Comic Con, and was taken aback by how friendly and humble he is. I missed my chance to get something signed, but have made it my goal to get a signed print from him in person.
Hurray!
It is officially the first anniversary of my blog! Today I will be tossing out a few of my favourite posts from the past year. I've split them into two categories: obscure picks and nostalgic picks. Although some posts don't fit into either category, I think most of what I write about generally goes into one of the two.
Choosing an artist for this category was really tough. I love all of the art that I've been posting up, so none really outshine the others. In the end, I decided on Podgy Panda for a few reasons. First off, he's an amazing artist, and I think more people should be aware of his work. More specifically, I think that his art best represents the type of art I am naturally drawn to. Podgy Panda (or Richard Kuoch) has finished products with that are cute with clean lines. He is a person that unapologetically puts out work that touches on his interests and nostalgia. His passion for the material shows through.
Black Science is a book that was released recently by Image comics, and quickly became one of my favourites. There are three reasons this book deserves a bigger following. The first is the most obvious, the book is gorgeous. Matteo Scalera is consistently incredible. Second, the book is full of pulpy craziness in a way that only comics can pull off. Last is that the book's story is actually pretty good despite the high action and incredible art. With such focus on creating weird worlds, it's hard to flesh out a deep narrative the ties everything together. Hickman shows his experience with pulp science fiction by sneaking in surprisingly rich character moments between beautiful splash pages.
Flume holds the title as the only interest that I've posted twice. Technically, one was an album, and the other was a single with another artist. With bizarre sounds, great sampling, and a touch of hip hop beats, Flume found a unique voice in a flooded market. Also, Flume will always be the inspiration for my comic, which was the real birth of all of this.
When I took a glance at my old posts, I was convinced that it would easily be my #1 pick. Turtles in Time is is fun. Really, really, fun. I have extremely fond memories playing this game with friends in the golden age of SNES and it will always hold a special place in my heart. I honestly think that the only reason this game ISN'T number one, is because I never technically owned it. I played it a lot when I rented it or when I was at the houses of friends/family that had it.
It's very tempting for me to say "they don't make cartoons like THIS anymore", but I realize that every generation has their own golden memories. What I can say is that Dexter's Laboratory was, and is, great. The weird and offbeat humor was so drastically different than anything else on TV, and the show's creativity was only surpassed by the quality of the show. It's no wonder that so many huge names in animation have come from this show.
I really didn't want to put two games on the top 3 list, but it would have been dishonest. When I was a kid, I did pretty much three things: play at the park, watch cartoons, and play video games. Ocarina of Time took the top spot for me because I was so fanatically excited for this game. Looking back now, the game holds up, but the mechanics and RPG elements have been honed over the years. Remembering back, I remember the sense of wonder and exploration as I went through the different zones and dungeons. I spent many hours on this game, and enjoyed them thoroughly.
And that's it! I hope my picks either get you find new cool things or drum up some happy memories. Really, that's what I aim to do with my blog for the most part. I have tons of really great post ideas floating around, and haven't hit some of my favourite interests by far, so keep checking back for more and better posts. I haven't missed a post yet, but it's bound to happen eventually. Let's hope I can keep another year-long streak.
I don't share as many artists as I would like on this blog. The big problem being that I get sucked into hours of poring over their work. Andrew Bell is exactly this type of artist. I became aware of Bell when I grabbed his O-No sushi red octopus figure from a vinyl toy shop. After displaying the delicious and amazing figure for a few months, I decided to look up the artist one night. What followed was hours of combing through illustrations on Bell's site 'Creatures in my head'. Andrew Bell started the site as an artistic exercise and the project has grown into one of the largest bodies of work I've ever seen from a single artist. At the time of this writing, the site features 134 pages of creatures, each individually interesting and dripping with personality. Prolific is an understatement as Creatures in my Head has spawned into a lot of different projects for Bell, including his work with the Android designer toy line.
An illustrator and graphic designer, Remko Heemskerk is a Dutch Native that lived in New York City for half a year. While there, he created vector-like illustrations of the city from different views. Remko's art style is modern and clean that seems to find a perfect balance between intricate detail with clean lines. I have yet to order one of his colourful prints, but that's mostly because I haven't decided which one I want more.
