Achtung! Skull Jelly
I think I’ll start making more quick gifs for animation/movement practice in the future.
Sometimes I make stuff. I'll post that here. And other stuff I like.
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an idea
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He’s survived three years!
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hamsy cracks me up. I’ve been seeing post after post about this illustration and its implied (or not) sexual objectification of the ladies versus the guys. (If you don’t know, this image is by character designer/illustrator Natasha Allegri who designs for a cartoon called “Adventure Time”.)
I am both amused and annoyed by “arty bollocks”, so I asked hamsy (who isn’t an avid Adventure Time fan) to give me his critical analysis of this illustration from the perspective of an art historian.
Perceived Gender Roles in Neo-Whimsy and Post-Apocalyptic Rhombonian Art
(or)
Art Can Be Whatever You Imagineer It! :
The following is critical analysis of Natasha Allegri’s art piece (pictured above), in response to a misguided critique by leosboots and brought to my attention by juliemakesthings. This piece is particularly interesting because what appears be a collection of purely playful and whimsical character sketches is, in fact, a single art-piece comprised of subtly delineated character dossiers. Using a brilliant color palette, the work depicts two sets of four distinct personalities arranged in a manner that mimics the traditional polyptych. The artist employs strict mathematical techniques to create an elegant octaptych - two rows of four whereby the two rows mirror each other. The mirror projects the sex of the four archetypes, thereby blurring the lines between gender-associated character traits. The artist maintains physiological integrity of the characters’ sexes in order to fully convey that gender is at play, not sex. The top row of the octaptych is one set of male characters that is mirrored by the bottom row of female characters.
The first panel, for example, depicts a blonde-headed young gentleman donning blue Victorian attire. The sword he wields as well as his accompanying trusty animal companion (their bound connection literally shown whereby the animal’s right arm is wrapped around the youth’s leg) pins him as the adventure-seeking hero. In the panel just below, a female version of this archetype mirrors the former in style and representation – blue Victorian attire, sword, and animal companion. The artist preserves elements of socially-constructed masculinity and femininity through attire and props as well as posing. These gender-defining elements, however, are playfully blended in the second panel of the first row (where a male character dons pink, is bent in a traditionally passive pose, and offers crafted deserts in a hospitable fashion) and the third panel of the second row (where a female character with a dark and rugged countenance firmly plants her foot on a skull in a pose that is typically indicative of boldness, dominance, and leadership).
Despite the segmentation of the polyptych, the piece is unified by subtle gestures that connect one panel to another. Whether an actual action connects two panels (e.g. a character in the second panel of the first row offers dessert to a character in the panel to his right) or simply a glance (e.g. a character in the fourth panel of the second row appears to be peering at creatures in the preceding panel), the artist successfully joins all eight panels into one unifying piece. This artistic element makes the work more aesthetically intriguing while preserving the classicism of the traditional polyptych.
Natasha Allegri’s clean lines and vibrant colors are excellently balanced and lend well to her subject of heroic archetypes. Yet apart from being visually engaging, Allegri’s work is laden with subversive quality – most notably questioning society’s gender-driven archetypes. By depicting each of four archetypes with both a male and female representation, the artist’s statement rings loud and clear – that the quintessential adventure-seeking hero is not necessarily a man, that archetypes are not and should not be bound to gender, and that concepts of the feminine and the masculine are fluid models that can be applied and blended in any paradigm to any individual.
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some creatures I saw at the Shedd Aquarium
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This is *not* Spider-Man.
Looks like Spider-Man to me.
^^
Yup that’s Spider-Man.
Lessee … teenager with spidery abilities swinging over the streets of New York in a universe created by Marvel Comics? Yep, that’s definitely Spider-Man.
Oh, definitely Spider-Man. Yep.
This is Spider-Man, no question. Oh yeah.
oh hey cool look it’s Spider-Man
I like how in this drawing Spider-Man has his mask off so you can see that Spider-Man’s secret identity is Miles Morales.
Remember there was talk of possibly casting Donald Glover in the new Spiderman movie? It didn’t happen, but it would have been cool.
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Check out the prints at Gallery1988.com of art by Mike Mitchell. The series is called “Just Like Us”
“Magnets”
The entire show is online at Gallery1988.com, where you can purchase prints & originals.
If you are interested in buying the print above, you can find it here.
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