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Saturday, April 26, 2014

Some Inspiration from Across the Atlantic

"How's your film going"?

"It's animation, right"?

"How's your video thing going, or is it a slide show"?

I get a lot of genuinely interested question about my project and I'm always surprised how few of my acquaintances have successfully wrapped their minds around what I've been doing for the better part of the last 4 years. It's amusing really, and probably my own fault for not explaining it better.
To be honest, I'm confused myself... at times.

One annoying but oddly helpful thing people tend to do (and I'm as guilty as anyone) is to immediately scrounge through their brains and try to come up with something they're familiar with that resembles what they think I may be doing... I actually take notes and look into the films/books/performances they mention and most of the time find little resemblance and no inspiration, but not so with one project that was mentioned to me several time: Woman's World by Graham Rawle.

This Crazy Brit apparently spent 5 years dissecting popular ladies' magazines of the 50's and 60's to find the words that were just right to tell the poignant and psychologically complex story of a young woman named Norma and her brother, Roy. And when I say just the right words, I mean he actually cut out and pasted them into a book and printed the collage of it all.

The book falls into the category of "graphic novel" as well as literature because of this highly visual approach. The tenderness and nostalgia with which the collage is put together infuses the story with the love and loss which are at the core of the drama. I highly recommend it. Here's more about it.




Anyway, I read the book twice and felt a kinship to it's creator and in fact took great inspiration and encouragement from it in all aspects of incorporating 60's magazine culture in my layouts.
There will be ads, illustrations, advice and game section and even a porn sections, all based on the graphics and artifacts in 60's magazines, but with my own post apocalyptic twist.

Below are a few samples from the work in progress: