Saturday 2 April 2011

What makes me not want to play my Xbox 360 all time

People have always constantly asked me since I was 10 were do I get inspiration from for my practice. My answer would commonly be cartoons and animated films because all my life they have played a role in my personal development.
But in reality I can explore a diverse range of media and creative concepts.

Recently in the last four years I have asked myself the same old question that I think all practitioners ask themselves sometime in their life. “What inspires me?” “What makes me tick?” “What makes me not want to jump off a building?”.

I aim in this post to prove too you just through photos and small annotations what things have influence my style work and subject matter in big ways.


This is my inspirational wall that I started it just near the end of last year and it was really just a Consciousness decision after I had printed out a favorite image of one of the shows I adored The updated Mr. Men show US version.
And it just grew over the next few months (went through a lot of printer ink as you could imagine).

Majority of stuff on this wall that I present is nostalgic loves and memoires or influences that effect my art or creative thinking in general. I do apologize if the photos quality is bad but I was using a Kodak family camera and its very sensitive to movement.  


First I must start with the limitless nostalgic love for animation I have I cannot do any to save my life before you ask. But I have always had a great fascination and love for the different universes and stories it is able to bring to life just from a bunch of words on a paper. Animation has the power to change the image of our world both positive and negative. I can say with out a doubt this happens to me with almost every single show, series, movie or short I have witnessed. 

The cult classic anime of Katsuhiro Otmos manga AKIRA was just one of those rare gems that you could find in a cave among other diamonds. So eye catching and powerful it just impacted my imagine on so many levels Matured my world and stories. And gave me a much better attitude for anime in general. The character of Tetsuo I could really relate to plus he was just a bad ass with his red cape and freakily mutation acts.

With out any hesitation or auguring I will admit that I am a sucker for young kids cartoons. Even if they have the most clichéd stereotypes and basic moral stories. shows like My Little pony Friendship is magic, make way for Noddy, The Mr. Men, show,Roile Poile Olie even Babar are to me just as awesome and decent as any well known iconic movie or live action TV series.

Lets not forget the great masters and illustrators of the past present and future. So many creative minds that challenge and amuse us. I have only selected my top favourites out of a whole library of passionate individual practitioners and artists to have a space on the wall.

I learned Never be arrogant of histories creativity because you will be amazed and stumped by what you discover and gain from analyzing masters and artists like Goya. 


I really did not do justice to Todd Schorr or his work with this photo or piece the mans an acyclic genius and his composition and use of propaganda and history plays a hug part in my illustration nowadays.

Its odd and ironic when you think about how 96% of the stuff I produce is character design based and yet the wall only showcases two or three out of a list of hundreds of unique recognisable animators and character designers. I am surprised with the amount of content and support character design receives on the Internet and in the media after looking in great depth at the subject. Because this is a key element in practically anything we create.  





Ben Balistreri, Katie Rice and  Miah Alcorn are among the well known professionals that have pride in the collage yet the two men who started my enthusiasm for characters Tom Bancroft and Stephen Silver are not part of the wall what the heck!   







In the last two months I have taken part or volunteered for different creative events and festivals from around Birmingham UK. In doing so I have exposed my self to design and graphic that somehow connects to my work or give me ideas even if the stuff I find is just promotional leaflets and products.







The foundation for this wall montage is set now it will begin to layer over and over again generating new substances to

Whatever I find whether its completely related to me my work or interests or its just eye candy it goes on this wall from now on I plan to have it covered by the end of year.
So we should have a collage of Jowy’s different and bizarre motivation and fandom essentially.  

 I hope people found this post insightful or just intriguing. I will try to keep my blogs to this level of detail and information from now on

See you later with my next blog post  ;)