Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared from This Is It on Vimeo.

‘Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared’

A THIS IS IT film

Directed by
Becky Sloan & Joseph Pelling

I love Weirdo Toys. Justin uncovers weird toys, and blogs about his researched findings on their origins, related products, bootlegs, variations, and so on. This post is a prime example, and incredibly creepy. Click the spoiler-free image above to head over to Weirdo Toys. You may end up reading through the blogs’ backlog of posts to the beginning, as I did.

Some of my past favourites:

Flipping through an old 3×3 annual I spotted a couple of frames from one of the animation winners in the annual – the illustrative style in the stills caught my eye. The Illustrator in question is Brazillian based Samuel Casal. Samuel does a lot of great super detailed and often woodcut style vector work, but what really appealed to me were his real woodcut prints, and the other experimental techniques Samuel uses.

The above clip is a bit of a montage of the woodcut + printing process for Casal’s show “Cordel from Hell”

Equally as pleasing to the eye is this technique Samuel has down, that I’m guessing must be spraypaint + masking to give this insane layered effect. Totally smashes all the varied styles.

http://www.samuelcasal.com/

-Brendan

Wishing safe and happy holidays to all, whatever you’re celebrating or even if you’re not. About to head on the family pilgrimage so won’t be able to update before the new year no doubt. So just wanting to send out a massive thanks for all that have supported the blog this year! Next year I have plans for a few things I’m pretty excited about. More interviews, more regular features, competitions, and something different.

GET YOUR FESTIVE FACE ON

Krampus via PHIL McANDREW

In a comment on the first ever Accordion Face post, from cartoonist/writer/comix publisher Jay Lynch, Jay raised the point of “who influenced Basil Wolverton? … Wolverton’s style, it seems, came full-blown out of nowhere”. I was thinking most likely Boris Artzybasheff, who I had also neglected to blog about to date. Anyway, from my quick bit of research and calculations, Boris Artzybasheff appears to have been doing the grotesque anthropomorphous characters a few years ahead (~1940) of Wolverton’s more exaggerated/distorted characters (using Lena the Hyena as a reference point 1946). Though the two styles seem to converge more over time. So maybe it’s even just coincidence, and great minds being affected by the times. Would love to hear any thoughts on this!

Subject for another Basil Wolverton post later down the track no doubt. For now, here’s a selection of the mindblowing catalog of work by Boris Artzybasheff. My absolute favourite of which being the “Machinalia” series via ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive:

More from Artybasheffs’ book “As I See” via ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive’s posts and google:

Goosebumps books were the shit. I couldn’t get enough of them as a kid, being a member of the Goosebumps club, and collecting them up until.. about the point the artwork started changing. I don’t know if I would have been half as into it if it wasn’t for the first 60-70+ covers, all of which TIM JACOBUS was responsible for. I discovered that they’ve re-released the old books with revamped covers, which are also great, but I’m still partial to the originals as well as the first GOOSEBUMPS type treatment and greatly garish colour schemes.

You can see the process of this one on Tim’s website here.

I wish Scholastic had released an art book of all his covers. I’m also surprised at the lack of quality scans of the covers online.

Tim’s out-of-print book “IT CAME FROM NEW JERSEY” has been placed right at the top of my book wish list!

What were your favourite covers?

Links:
Tim Jacobus
Scholastic’s Goosebumps page

Victor Soma is a Polish Illustrator and artist. I imagine Poland must be a pretty cool place to work, in terms of Illustration, Design and Advertising. And very much Accordion Face friendly? I love Polish poster design, especially 70′s/80′s Polish film posters.  I admit however, I don’t know a lot about other Polish creative output.

Victor’s work reminded me of the surreal, and kinda violent aesthetic of these posters. Really cool crazy stuff!

You can check out more of Victor’s work at his Flickr.

See more of Victor Soma’s work here.

I’ll let the work speak for itself, but if you’d like to read more about Charlies work and what inspires him, there’s a great interview with the man over on
Creep Machine.

Charlie Immer’s website

While I’ve already broken my run of focusing on Illustrators, this was too good not to share! I stumbled on this kiddy-car by Elmer Presslee on his Flickr. I can only hope that the day I have kids they’ll be into monsters et al  so I can make weird stuff for them!

And to finish off, a picture Of Elmer and his son in costume! Check out his Flickr for loads more anatomical oddities.

UPDATE: I just discovered Bill’s (aka Elmer) website here.