NATASHA ALLEGRI

"Natasha Allegri is leading a movement. A quiet, earnest, doe-eyed movement to be sure, but one that is unstoppable and unquestioningly vital." 

- Comics Alliance

Bee and Puppycat Issue #1

"There is nothing in her reserved demeanor that hints at the teeming anarchic visions roaring through her head." - Maria Bustillos from California Sunday Magazine

"...but it got to the point where, I tried to do my own design at that point I had no confidence in my drawing ability. I'd push out a design and I'd be like 'waaah'." - Natasha Allegri (2014)

(I had to put that quote in here since I relate to this every time I make roughs or draw ideas. There would always be moments when I am truly not satisfied with my work.) 

Thoughts on her work

• I often associate her work with a quiet sense of humour, with genuine and heartfelt themes. I particularly notice that her characters to have a slightly sarcastic intake on life. However, I generally enjoy the recurring theme of 'slice-of-life'. Though what initially attracted me to her works were the understated, cute and bubbly art style. 

• Perhaps her works might not be life changing nor does it convey social commentaries. However, she is one of those artists who create work that could simply make the audience feel something. People could relate to her work. 

"Quick doodles from yesterday" - Natasha Allegri

Her working process

• When it comes to bigger productions (Bee and Puppycat): she works with a team 
• Becky Driestadt & Hans Tseng - helped with the design work for the animation
• Other artists - taking over the Bee and Puppycat comics 

• As someone who writes her own stories, it's interesting to see how she would direct and interact with her team. The whole idea of collaborating and pitching in designs caught my attention when I looked into Natasha Allegri's works. 

"I don’t know if it was helpful or not, but I would pick up photos of things that I thought had a really nice color scheme, or I would find photos of places that had a nice feeling that I wanted to replicate, and they are really good at translating what I want into the show. But there are small things like, if I get a color, I say oh change that color to this, and then they tend to make work in the scheme." - Interview with Frederator Studios 

Adventure Time with Fionna & Cake 
written and Illustrated by Natasha Allegri

Her Influences

Scott Dikkers "Jim's Journal"

Bill Watterson "Calvin and Hobbes"

Sailor Moon 
Garfield & her cat Pancake

sitcoms & american cartoons (Family Guy/Simpsons)

• Her tone of voice is greatly influenced by the American cartoons and comics she read when she was young. 

• She works around the idea of simplicity, which reminds me of American indie comics that looks aesthetically pleasing (e.g. Saga by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples, Pretty Deadly by Kelly DeConnick, Emma Rios and Jordie Bellaire). Their comics similarly focuses on character-driven plots, line quality, creativity, feelings, aesthetics and colours.

• I could also see a correlation between her artworks and clients. For instance with Adventure Time (series creator: Pendleton Ward), which is targeted for children and young adults. Perhaps her designs look a certain way due to keeping the consistency of the style of the cartoon and the ideas pitched in needed to fit into Cartoon Network's demands.   

"Yeah, that's my favorite aesthetic. I put bows on everything- I love 'em. I think it's really pretty. I put guys in bows." 

"It was always girls, I always drew girls. I always wanted to master drawing women and girls." - her thoughts on drawing styles

"It's really intimidating because when people don't like it, it's hard to not take it like 'Oh, I f*cked up -what did I do?' You feel really bad about it." - Natasha's intake on first releasing her own work for the public. (I can relate)

Known works 

• Adventure Time (first and second, a little bit of third season designer) - Cartoon Network 
• Bee and Puppycat comics/series - BOOM! Studios

Youtube video of Bee and Puppycat short 

on Cartoon Hangover

"I don't want to work on something that I'm uncomfortable with. I don't think I could ever tell an amazing plot driven story, but I like small character moments, I like watching people talk and I try to copy that and character interaction is really important to me."

- Natasha Allegri interview with Comics Alliance

Thoughts 

• What I like about her works, particularly Bee and Puppycat is that anyone, be it adults or kids, could take a little message or moral of some kind from it. Somehow I find a personal connection. 

• I particularly like that statement she said in an interview with Comics Alliance. Her works conveys her interests and capabilities, however, I think that it might be difficult when you work for clients. 

•  She simply inspires me. From reading through interviews and seeing her artworks, she's very earnest, sincere and can't seem any more human than she already is. I quite like how everything is a learning process to her. 

• I'd like to create work that would perhaps at least evoke emotion from the audience or could make people feel something. 

LINKS

Interviews

Frederator Studios - http://times.frederator.com/post/101804267445/bee-and-puppycat-creator-natasha-allegri-is-very

Comic Alliance - http://comicsalliance.com/natasha-allegri-interview-bee-puppycat/

California Sunday magazine - https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-01-04/bee-and-puppycat-natasha-allegri/

Her sites 

http://natazilla.tumblr.com/

https://twitter.com/natazilla

https://www.youtube.com/user/CartoonHangover

http://beeandpuppycat.cartoonhangover.com/

BIG HEADS - A TALK WITH STANLEY CHOW 

It was the first Big Heads and I was genuinely excited to hear from a practitioner. I looked through his Tumblr account and here are a few of my favourites: 

'Wearer of Many Hats' - Pharrell Williams

Hotline Bling - Drake 

Thoughts

• His works reminds me of minimalistic posters and american cartoons. It's amazing to hear him say that he drew these illustrations mainly from reference and immediately drew them digitally, without prior sketches. 

•  Another reason why I find his works interesting is simplicity in colour and shapes. It makes me wonder how he could easily capture similar accurate portrayals of (famous) people. Then again he illustrates iconic figures, in which simply capturing their unique traits and features, people could recognise them. For instance, Drake and his Hotline Bling music video.

• It's also interesting to hear what I presume the truth about working as an illustrator is that you work for clients and following their demands. However, I personally think that putting in your own ideas and thoughts into your work is still essential, be it only 10% and the rest is are the client's requirements. 

Tumblr: http://stanleychowillustration.tumblr.com/

STRESSING OUT RIGHT NOW

It's past 12 in the morning and it just occurred to me that I have a lot of things to do (academic wise and day to day matters). This is simply a rant post, since I thought that I need to get these overwhelmed feelings and thoughts out of my system or else I would burn out (which I think I am close to). I guess I'm not stressed out to an extent that my brain is fried and would shut down completely. I suppose it's just the sudden physical and emotional workload thats pressuring me. 

Perhaps I just need to take a step back from it all and take a breather. I'll try my best to do things in bite-sized chunks (which I keep telling myself to do. Hopefully it works).

ILLUSTRATORS AT WORK - INTERVIEW WITH JOHN HOLCROFT

'About managers failing to see the potential in their staff'
Editorial work by John Holcroft

I actually have not heard of John Holcroft until I was browsing through Behance and came across his portfolio. I looked him up and found a very interesting interview by Kirill Grouchnikov. There were a few statements and advice by John Holcroft that I found interesting. 

"Nothing stays still in this constant changing industry...As an illustrator you learn this the hard way which is why any artist worth their salt will adapt and evolve their style to suit the market...They say an illustrator is only as good as their last job. In my case jobs were so far and few between, no one would remember me. So in answer to your question it did encourage me to explore new avenues with different mediums."

"Go away and do something else then come back later. I do try to research any topic I'm working on and sometimes just watching TV can trigger ideas."

• I find it interesting to actually get a glimpse of the thoughts of a practitioner. It's interesting how he still explores various things in terms of producing work to feed his clients' demands. From what I noticed after reading this interview, is that there would always be a client or audience and someone you'd produce artworks for. 

• I also quite like how John Holcroft creates social commentaries through his illustrations and each image somehow holds meaningful content that makes me ponder or nod in agreement.

'For Big Issue about lazy teenagers with no ambitions'

'Tiredness at school can cause lack of concentration' 

Full interview: http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2013/10/21/illustrators-at-work-interview-with-john-holcroft.html

Portfolio: https://www.behance.net/johnholcroft

SKETCHBOOKS!! Love them!

Today, we had a discussion on sketchbooks. I quite like how we discussed that sketchbooks are our 'visual diary'. I suppose it contains more personal work, possible (future) ideas for projects and experimentation. It's also interesting how sketchbooks involves an iterative process, where I would simply draw a subject over and over until I am satisfied or perhaps I wont ever be satisfied with my outcome and never stop drawing. 

Roman Muradov

Roman Muradov's sketches: https://www.instagram.com/roman_m/

• I quite like seeing practitioners and professional illustrators' sketchbooks as I could see their thought process and raw drawings.

•  Roman Muradov's sketches piqued my interest due to his tone of voice. He has a specific way of working with experimental mark making and simple shapes. I noticed that he often use fine liners or pens to create simplistic lines, forming rough shapes of a person.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY 'PRACTICE'?

Notes on discussion

Today's discussion revolved around the idea of 'practice'. This word is often used regarding and amongst practitioners. I think that it's an interesting discussion as I, myself rarely use the word 'practice' until recently in this course. 

What I learned?

I think that the word 'practice' is one of those broad terms, which could be defined and looked at various ways. However, how I understand it is that 'practice' could be used to define a personal 'style' of someone creating work/art and involves the process of externalising (could be commercial or promoting one's work)

Definitions discussed in today's session:

• Ideas/method/application/influences 
• Improvise - speculative/experimentation
• Projects (prints/books/editorial)
• Locality
• Knowledge of practice
• Period/time
• Tools/media
• Cultural/social background 
• Counter-culture and sub-culture
• Ethical/political views (ideology)

We also touched upon the term 'style' and came up with several interpretations: 

• Happens naturally 
• Individual interpretation/how one translates a subject
• Client/purpose/business 
• Experimentation
• Motifs/consistency
• Personal expression
• Visual language
• Tone of voice 

What caught my interest was when we touched upon the term 'style'. My personal take on this word is something that identifies with the artist or designer. However, as a student learning to become a practitioner, I think that having a 'style' can be restrictive. I think that I should be open to experimentation and gathering various techniques, then develop my style from there. 

COLOUR! - Inspiration of the day

I was tinkering around with my new Pinterest account and made a board dedicated to colours. I think that colours play a great role in visually communicating ideas, in terms of expressing tone and mood, as well as evoking different reactions from the audiences. Thus, I thought that it might be useful someday. 

Looking through various artworks, I thought of our first project (Typology Poster). Since we had to create a monochromatic themed poster, I immediately caught on an artist named Jen Mann. In this particular painting series called 'Strange Beauties', she had used monochromatic colours. What I like about this work is the simplicity and the use of one colour, yet she managed to capture the depth and realism of the portraits with just tone and light. 

'Deep Blue Sea'
Oil on Canvas
2013

'Cotton Candy'
Oil on Canvas
2013

'Introspection'
Oil on Canvas
2013

OPENING A PINTEREST ACCOUNT!!

I recently opened up a Pinterest account as I thought that it might be essential for my studies here. I'm still getting used to the whole system of the website. It's a simple way to gather and collect information and inspirations related to any art discipline. Though, I think that the website contains a variety of insightful contents or 'pins'.