This Friday, January 25th, is the opening of our new gallery show, "In Progress." This exhibit will feature the original artwork, concepts and line art for many of our posters. We're crazy excited for this show and hope all of you appreciate it as much as we do. The amount of talent on display as we're preparing for the opening is breathtaking. We thought it'd be cool to provide a few sneak peeks leading up to Friday, so every day this week, we will be displaying one piece from the show along with a small write-up from the respective artist here on our blog. First up, we have "THE IRON GIANT" by Laurent Durieux. You can see the art, as well as a blurb from Laurent about the piece, below...
Here's what Laurent had to say:
Iron Giant is a great movie, so moving and funny at the same time. The friendship between Hogarth and the Iron Giant is epic and reminds me in many ways of one of my favourite movies, E.T. I am especially sensitive to how Brad Bird has used CGI in such a subtle way. The mix between the conventional “hand drawn” animation and the CGI is very coherent and smooth. That’s what I always try to achieve my posters, you know, finding the right mix between technology and art. Re-interpreting another graphic style, like a cartoon for example, is very tricky, as I think there is always a risk of distorting the original intentions and aesthetics of the authors. In my opinion, very few artists succeed in doing so, that’s the reason why, in this case, I’ve tried to keep actual elements and characters of the film to a minimum. I dig the colour scheme of the film, the indian summer feel to it, the vibrancy of autumn leaves, etc… That’s what I’ve tried to depict in my poster. I love how the colours interact with each other and the overall naturalistic feel with the flock of birds flying by, the sea on the horizon, the sun setting, the light house, etc. I’m also very pleased with the typography as well. My brother Jack nailed it in my opinion! I think “Iron Giant” is a true family classic and I hope my poster did it justice. I will always be proud of this poster and it remains, to this day, one of my favourites. But the best of it all is that fans out there seem to love it as much as I do, which is, at the end of the day, my true reward!
IN PROGRESS opens this Friday, January 25th, at 7PM at the Mondo Gallery in Austin, TX and will be on display through February 23rd.
