The MCU fan base is already starting to look past The Avengers: Age of Ultron to the next epic battle Captain America: Civil War.MCU fan art is also taking a stand. In the Civil War between Captain American and Iron Man fan artists are positioning Steve Rogers to the left of the political dividing line and Tony Stark to the right of the line.
Don’t put that much truth in that. The positioning is probably more of an artistic choice than a political one. The blue of Captain America’s uniform is on the left side of the Color Wheel. Iron Man red is on the right side. The blue and red of the Spiderman uniform puts Peter Parker or whatever character iteration that plays Spidey squarely in the middle. (Now you know the origin for the real blue state and red state used in political geographic maps.)
The one poster that radically inverts this color divide is Orlando Arocena’s Civil War homage filled with his trademark vector art work. I especially like the semi-Ultron suggestion in the Iron Man body styling. Arocena is not afraid of being blunt about who he thinks the real villain of Civil War should be. Red is the oppressive color. The blue scream and agony of Captain America’s skull crushing is exceedingly visceral and brutal.
Captain America: Civil War is scheduled to be released everywhere on May 6, 2016.
Modern Art is not indebted to a photo realistic portrayal of the world. It can warp and slice what we see into visions of perceptions. That is why Picasso’s Nude Descending a Staircase or his other Cubist paintings attempt to portray a 360 degree reality step by step. It tries to represent the flow of reality in the geometry of the every-day.
Picasso’s one great attempt to present a visceral reality resulted in the preeminent masterpiece of the 20th Century- Guernica. Guernica explodes outward with a gut wrenching precision that displays the horrors of war through an internal death scream. Everything in Guernica is dying from the inside. The agony of the destruction is obvious. There is no need to show the bombs or body parts. Our imaginations fills in the horror.
The Viennese street muralist Nychos tries to fill in the missing visceral existence. Dissection becomes a form of Cubism in his hands. Dissection presents the layers in a way that is horrifying , beautiful (and unlike Guernica) also colorful.
Nychos takes his scalpel to both the animal and comic book world. He concentrates on giving the mythology of Mickey Mouse, The Little Mermaid, TNMT a visceral reality, an extra dimension that tries to make them mortal by showing the internal squishy reality.
Nychos dissections are not so much an attempt to destroy our childhood memories as they are an experiment to bring them in alignment with the real world.
In Nychos human dissections, particularly Apocalypse Weird (below) which can be described as Nycho’s Guernica tribute, you can see the cubists influence.
Layered over the Picasso homage is another homage to the Mexican tradition of Dias Des Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). The dissections become multilayer Death Masques exposing all of human substance from muscles, organs, tissue and skeletons. The comic style rendering keeps the whole anatomy lessons from collapsing into revulsion and morbidness.
The animal dissections explore the notion that life and death coexist in the same space and time. Everything is awaiting its death, and its eventual immortality as a future discovered fossil or the dust under our feet.
The death of Leonard Nimoy deserves a memoriam not full of celebrity tweets and quotes but full of love, life and Spock in his own words.
So this tribute art to the greatest Vulcan who ever lived is also filled with the wisest thing he ever said as both Spock and himself.
I’ll never really understand why I was chosen to play Mr. Spock. In a metaphysical sense, there seemed to be a sort of inevitability involved…. When I was called to meet Gene Roddenberry, I assumed I was to be auditioned. I didn’t quite know how to react when I discovered that I was being “sold” on the role.
–LEONARD NIMOY
Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them. –SPOCK, Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Ultimate Computer”
Spock is definitely one of my best friends. When I put on those ears, it`s not like just another day. When I become Spock, that day becomes something special. –LEONARD NIMOY
Without followers, evil cannot spread. –SPOCK, Star Trek: The Original Series, “And The Children Shall Lead”
You know, for a long time I have been of the opinion that artists don’t necessarily know what they’re doing. You don`t necessarily know what kind of universal concept you’re tapping into. –LEONARD NIMOY
Change is the essential process of all existence.
–SPOCK, Star Trek: The Original Series, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
Art, if it is successful, needs no explanation. Star Trek and Spock, if they are works of art, can be discussed. But finally the response comes in individual terms. Each viewer sees what is there for him, depending on his frame of reference. –LEONARD NIMOY
Insufficient facts always invite danger.
–SPOCK, Star Trek: The Original Series, “Space Seed”
When you let me take I’m grateful. When you let me give I’m blessed. –LEONARD NIMOY
I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question. –SPOCK, Star Trek: The Original Series, “This Side of Paradise”
The miracle is this: the more we share the more we have. –LEONARD NIMOY
I realize that command does have its fascination, even under circumstances such as these, but I neither enjoy the idea of command nor am I frightened of it. It simply exists, and I will do whatever logically needs to be done.
–SPOCK, Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Galileo Seven”
Whatever I have given, I have gained. –LEONARD NIMOY
Vulcans never bluff.
–SPOCK, Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Doomsday Machine”
Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end. –LEONARD NIMOY
It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.
–SPOCK, Star Trek: The Original Series, “Errand of Mercy”
I am not Spock. But given the choice, if I had to be someone else, I would be Spock. If someone said, “You can have the choice of being any other TV character every played,” I would choose Spock. I like him. I admire him. I respect him. –LEONARD NIMOY
Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
–SPOCK, Star Trek (2009)
Live Long and Prosper.
–LEONARD NIMOY
Live Long and Prosper.
–Spock, Star Trek
I think it’s my adventure, my trip, my journey, and I guess my attitude is, let the chips fall where they may.
Leonard Nimoy
“Fascinating.”
-Spock, Star Trek
My folks came to U.S. as immigrants, aliens, and became citizens. I was born in Boston, a citizen, went to Hollywood and became an alien. Leonard Nimoy
“Captain, you almost make me believe in luck.”
Spock, Star Trek
I think about myself as like an ocean liner that’s been going full speed for a long distance, and the captain pulls the throttle back all the way to ‘stop,’ but the ship doesn’t stop immediately, does it? It has its own momentum and it keeps on going, and I’m very flattered that people are still finding me useful.
Leonard Nimoy
“If I seem insensitive to what you’re going through, Captain, understand – it’s the way I am.”
Spock, Star Trek
That is the exploration that awaits you! Not mapping stars and studying nebula, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.
Leonard Nimoy
“May I say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed serving with Humans? I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.”
Spock, Star Trek
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP
Leonard Nimoy (His last tweet)
“Your logic was impeccable, Captain. We are in grave danger.”
Spock, Star Trek
Via We Geek Girls, Poster Spy, Brainy Quotes and Spock Quotes.
The standard Hollywood release poster has a lot of restrictions imposed upon it that makes it tough to raise anything produced by a studio advertising department to the level of art. Placement of stars, directors and sometimes screenwriting credits are always negotiated by agents into the signed contract. Often a star would require that his face be centrally located and top billed, almost always at the uppermost left or right hand corner. Sure, some of these kinds of posters can be artful. Still, being artful doesn’t make it art. It is hard for an ad person to be creative when they are dealing with these restrictions. Add time restraints and it’s no wonder most Hollywood release posters are hack jobs, showing the same thing in the same way over and over again. Most of the art work is contracted out to whoever can do it faster and in the most obvious way.
Back in the 60’s and 70’s when movies began to be seen more as both art and entertainment, movie posters started reflecting the switch. Bob Peake (posters for My Fair Lady, Camelot and Apocalypse Now) and Drew Struzan (Star Wars) were the fathers of a movie poster renaissance that went hand and hand with the rise of Hollywood’s New Wave of directors (Arthur Penn, Sam Peckinpah, Bob Rafelson, Francis Ford Coppola) and actors (Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Peter and Jane Fonda, Dennis Hopper) that took their cues and style from European Auteur Cinema (Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivtette, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer). These were adult films for a mature audience that appreciated the depth of plots, the actors and themes, the whole artistry involved. Even the big event films like Lawrence of Arabia, My Fair Lady, Camelot, West Side Story were roadshow attractions that first played at Radio City Music or the local opera or concert venue for a limited reserve engagement before they were released at the local movie palace. These were shows were mom and dad got dressed up for and hired a babysitter for the night.
What then killed the Hollywood art poster? In a word, Jaws. The Steven Spielberg film launched the summer blockbuster. Universal smartly released the film with a PG rating and scheduled it right in the middle of semester breaks for High School and College. That 13-25 demographic not only loved Jaws, it devoured it over and over again, making the film the highest grossing movie ever at the time.
The blockbuster became the sole reason for making films for most major studios. Smaller films which catered to an adult audience fell by the wayside into unfavorable release dates and less theaters. If a film couldn’t make a profit in its first two weeks of release the studio would not release it. Never mind letting a small serious film find its audience via word of mouth and critics reviews and gaining a medium size profit after a one or two month run. It was all or nothing. The bigger the ad campaign the better. All that mattered was getting the right kind of Fannies in the seats in the least amount of time then letting repeat viewers generate extra box office chum.
The imitators that followed Jaws became a dull form of a much copied copy and the posters that promoted them started losing their edge and depth, started losing their art. Even the better action and adventure flicks like Star Wars and the Raiders of the Lost Ark series recycled bits and pieces of older movie serials. The directors and writers smashed them together into a mythology that made them appear new and shiny to the younger kids. Much of it was fun, a little bit of it was actually great and some of it was art. Drew Struzan was a master of making these posters for these newly old movies. His craft was deep enough to be art to the younger demographic that was now the majority ticket buyers.
The alternate art movie poster at its core is fan art. It is created by the artist fan with the talent and the vision to create and sell his/her vision of the film. Like most art it comes from a profound disgust for the current status quo.
The alternate movie poster artists are mostly an undisciplined lot by Hollywood standards, which is why most never made it as professional comic book artists or Hollywood animators. They just can’t draw the same thing over and over again. They just don’t have the patience for it.
They draw what they love—the horror and sci-fi flicks they grew up on and saw over and over again. It is different and sometimes it is deep and unique to be art rather than an expression of craft. That uniqueness takes their posters to the first step of becoming art. Their work is different and energetic enough to stand out. There are a lot of artist who are on the edge of being very good in this collection of alternate movie posters for this year’s Academy Best Picture nominees. Orlando Arocena, Tomer Hanuka, and Malika Favre are my favorites. Favre in particular is developing a style that straddles the dividing line between pop art and high art. Her BAFTA posters for The Theory of Everything, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Games and Boyhood are balanced between maturity, light and shade and illuminated in a way that hints at the layers just underneath.
Only experience, seeing more movies, both eye candy and brain candy, or ideally ones that merge the two, is keeping them from true greatness. If they want to be a truly great artist they must make the leap away from fan art and the need to draw what they love to drawing what they see and feel, know and understand completely in a physical, intellectual and emotional sense. Here is an interesting statistic that illustrates my point. Of the twenty-seven pieces in this collection only about five or six were drawn well before the Academy nominations were announced. The visual splendor of The Grand Budapest Hotel enchanted the most artists. Selma inspired the least. If you go the artist’s website you’ll find that for every serious foreign or independent movie drawn there are at least twenty more for horror, fantasy, action and sci-fi.
When Chappie, the latest film from Neil Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) coming out March 6th, starts to get a community art project from the Poster Posse, you know its a sign that the first event film of the year has arrived.
There is something about this robot built from mismatched contiguous pieces of clinking clanking junk that resonates with this artist coalition.
Perhaps it is the way this scrap bucket bucket of a movie built from recycled A.I. movie plots and themes resonates with the various artistic styles that make up the Poster Posse?
Maybe it is because Chappie was raised by a local gang? Like them, a gang of no goods and outcasts who find the chance in this little naive box of bolts (or brushes and pixels in the Poster Posse case) to be the good father they never had and do the good works that their talents can let them achieve.
Hey, art is to a certain extent about seeing and presenting old things in new ways.
No one complained but everyone cried, when Steven Spielberg essentially did the same thing with E.T.
The Poster Posse released this project in two phases. All of the art is combined in the collection below.
What do you do if you are a Disney Romantic without a single shred of artistic talent and you have a girlfriend that is a Disney Princess in your eyes? You hire a good artist to turn her and you into the perfect Disney couple. That is exactly what Brian Flynn did when he went searching for an artist capable and willing to create himself and his gf Manini Gupta into the perfect version of well-known Disney animated couples: Ariel and Eric, Aladdin and Jasmine, Belle and the Beast, Rapunzel and Flynn Rider, Mulan and Captain Li Shang.
Flynn (no relation, except imaginary, to the other Flynn in Rapunzel) found the perfect visionary in Dylan Bonner, a recently graduated Illustration major and Visual Development minor of the Ringling College of Art and Design. Bonner’s portfolio and blog posts are crammed with Disney Princess fan art, fairy tale heroines drawn in cutesy ways, and a special love for Audrey Hepburn films. The perfect combination of talent in Flynn’s eyes.
Flynn explained in an interview posted on Bored Panda:
“I want our relationship to be as epic and timeless as the animations we grew up on, so I decided to have us painted into some famous Disney scenes and surprise her for Valentines Day,” Flynn beamed on Imgur. “It’s been a secret for 3 months, and I can’t wait to show her!“
Bonner was excited about the secret project as well; “I feel very lucky to have done these, especially after reading her say that girls like her didn’t always get to identify with a Disney princess and I seriously love that I got to change that!“
The results, which can be seen below are pretty marvelous.
Gender Swapping animated and comic book characters has been the new trend in fan art for a cycle now. The Disney Princesses were the last to get gender bent. Now there is even a new rule for it. Rule 63 states that for any female character, there exists art of a male version of the character, and vice versa.
Ming Doyle, a freelance illustrator, comic book artist, and self-imagined replicant, decided to take Rule 63 one step further. Doyle gender swapped famous DC comic book superheroes and villains with well known celebrities. Among the mix Geena Davis as Bruce Wayne and the Joker, Winona Ryder as Dick Grayson, and Gillian Anderson as Lex Luthor.
Doyle even got other fellow artists– Lauren Moran, Joe Quinones, Jordan Gibson and Erica Henderson (many of them professional comic book illustrators) to join in the fun. The collection can be found under the Tumblr hashtag #DCBend.
Everyone who loves the movies is essentially a photo lover at heart. Whether it’s 24 frames per second or 1 frame forever the clearly lit and well shot single image captures a solitary place in the light echoes of our hearts and minds.
Nothing will make you think more about the world we live in then a fabulous photo.
We don’t often get to see the face that took them, just the image that earned that fame and some measure of immortality for their taker. Tell me what Matthew Brady looked like or Ansel Adams or Alfred Stieglitz? Not easy to do? Yet everyone knows a Brady Civil War photo, an Adams Mountain Black and White, a Stieglitz Street Scene and City scape when they see it.
Tim Mantoani aims to correct that. Mantoani lugged around a Polaroid Professional Instant Camera and took self-portraits of photographers holding their most famous image. He captured over 150 portraits.
That is quite a Herculean feat in itself. Add to that the fact the camera Mantoani used weighs over 235 pounds and is rolled around on its own custom wheeled tripod and it becomes even more mythic and impressive. The 20 X 24 Polaroid produces plates of 20 inches by 24 (appr. 50cm x 60cm).
You can buy the collection at Amazon at the link below:
Harry Benson: Brian Epstein – Beatles Manager – had just told them they were number one in America – and I was coming with them to New York. 1964
Lyle Owerko – 9/11
Lyle Owerko: No one knew such beautiful warm day would serve as the backdrop to one of the most painful and confusing events to the heart of mankind. This picture is one small part of such a huge event that ties the threads of thousands of stories and millions of people together. Written words will never convey the whole scope of the event, nor summarize the sounds, the smells or even voices that are frozen in my memory bank from that day. I did the best job I could in photographing the 9/11 so that future generations would have the idea of the scope of what happened, to have the evidence how innocence can so easily be snatched away in a razor’s edged moment in time. My hope is that in time the wounds and pain will heal and that wisdom and peace will prevail among the darkness of this event, so that humanity could move forward into a time of grace and understanding.
Marry Ellen Mark – Ringmaster With Elephant
Marry Ellen Mark: I am holding my photograph of Ram Prakash Singh and his beloved elephant Shyama – taken in 1990. Ram Prakash Singh was the ringmaster of “The Great Golden Circus” – this photograph was done in Ahmedabad, India – This was part of my Indian Circus Project. I love India and I love the circus, so photographing eighteen circuses all around India was an incredible experience. Unfortunately Shyama died a few months after this photograph was taken – supposedly, he succumbed to poisoned chapatti – Ram Prakash Singh was heartbroken – me also.
Thomas Mangelsen – Brown bear
Thomas Mangelsen: Brown bear, Brooks Falls Katmai National Park, Alaska. July 1988. I pre-visualized this possibility (of an image like this) from watching documentary films about the bears at Katmai and seeing a photograph in Alaska Air Magazine of a group of bears here at the falls. At the time, I was on a flight to Anchorage working on a documentary film about Sandhill Cranes and had a week between shoots. I phoned the park headquarters from the airport in Achorage and asked about getting a campsite. They said they were all full – except for one site, that was near the bear trail and nobody wanted it. I told them I would take it. I spent a week on a small platform above the falls trying to captures this image. I would go most days before sunrise and stay until dark. During that time I shot 35 rolls of film of pretty much just head + shoulders of bears + sockeye salmon leaping the falls. Six weeks later I opened the yellow box to see this image. It was a nice surprise. I hadn’t known that I got it.
David Doubilet – Circle Of Barracuda
David Doubilet: Circle of Barracuda, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. The school of chevron barracudas circled the diver three times and pow they were gone into a dark afternoon sea. The oceans of the world have no straight lines; geometry like a perfect circle is a rare thing, but these barracudas will do this as a defense. 70% of our planet is an ocean. It is a place of infinite hidden beauty. It is a place where light behaves in a very different manner. Global warming/ climate change is about water. Coral reefs where I have spent most of my life are very threatened now—not just from rising temperatures but from the change in ocean chemistry = This is a world where my partner Jennifer Hayes and I go into. It is most of our planet. A world without corners that may be gone by the end of the century.
May Pang – John Lennon
May Pang: Summer 1974 Long Island Sound NY. A relaxing time with his son Julian. I called this photo “Family Portrait”
Meil Leifer – Ali vs. Liston
Neil Leifer: Ali vs. Liston – May 25, 1965, Lewiston, Maine
Vincent Laforet – Me And My Human
Vincent Laforet: I’ve been fortunate enough to witness some pretty amazing things in my relatively young career that began twenty years ago. Many were beautiful, others were horrifying; most were important moments in history every event big or small is important. One of the interesting things that I’ve learned through aerial photography is that taking a step backwards (or in this case 1,500 feet up) ironically often forces the view to become much more intimate with the image as they study it in much greater detail, and are forced to let their imagination take over. “Me and my human” Central Park, NYC
Bob Gruen – John Lennon
Bob Gruen: John Lennon asked me to come to his pentouse apt. on the east side of New York to take pictures for the cover of his ‘Walls + Bridges’ album. After we took a series of portraits for the record cover we took some informal shots to use for publicity. I asked him if he still had the New York City t-shirt I had given him a year earlier and he went a put it on and we made this photo.
Elliott Erwitt – Two Dogs With Owner
Elliott Erwitt: The picture I am holding was snapped in 1974 just across the street from my apartment in New York’s Central Park. It has been 38 years since that event and sadly I have lost track of the participants.
Lori Grinker – Mike Tyson
Lori Grinker: Mike Tyson – 1980, age 14. I began a project on young boxers when I was a student. The legendary Cus D’Amato told me Mike would be the next great heavy weight champion, he was right – and I continued on with him for nearly a decade. He was a trouble but sweet kid who veered off the good path he was led to with all that comes with being a celebrity in that world.
Nick Ut – Napalm Attack In Vietnam
Nick Ut: June 8, 1972 Trang Bang Village Kim Phuc 9 year-old girl South Vietnam drop napalm in her village.
Herman Leonard – Jazz Musicians
Herman Leonard: It was early 1948 at the Royal Roost in New York. An afternoon rehearsal gave me a unique opportunity to photograph many giants of jazz with my trusty 4×5 Speed Graphic. What a great career! To do what you love and be entertained at the same time!
Douglas Kirkland – Marilyn Monroe
Douglas Kirkland: This is from my Evening with Marilyn
There is a special yearning in the artist known as 100% Soft (AKA Truck Torrence) to make everything small, soft, cute and squishy. Maybe he is doing a sly nod to the child-like nature of his often comic source? His genre is definitely sci-fi, fantasy and action adventure: Big Trouble in Little China, Ghostbusters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lost, Avengers, Kill Bill and others like it. Hard dramas, deep foreign films and torrid romances don’t make it to his art. If it is not wildly pop it is not in his art.
Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles will be hosting a 100% Soft solo show titled “Mass Hysteria” that will run from today until the end of the month.
The artist statement for the show explains why he draws the stuff he does:
Well the simple answer is, I just like drawing cute stuff and these are the movies I love.
I’ve always loved genre and cult film. I basically grew up watching Big Trouble in Little China and Repo Man on repeat. It’s really fun to translate some of those characters into something that is the polar opposite of their foundation but still maintains their characteristics. I think there’s something fun about being able to look at some of these drawings and maybe not understand what you’re seeing at first, but then realize you’re looking at O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill with her scalp sliced off. I hope this doesn’t mean I’m a sociopath.
What would be Valentine’s Day be without saying what you like about the one you love. Another day watching porn by yourself for some. Solo efforts for others. A Triple feature of Romantic comedies for everyone else.
So let’s all be grateful that what he have someone to go to the movies and share your treats with.
And if the one you love is a true movie Geek, you say I love you with a movie themed Valentine’s Day card.
Digital artist, greeting card designer and writer PJ McQuade has come up with 11 Valentine’s that say I love at 24 frames per second or 48 fps if you are a High Definition cineaste and lover.
All are cool and make great snuggle films with a bowl of popcorn and some 50 Shades of Gray going-ons afterwards.