Joel Trussell

Joel Trussell was introduced to me in class while watching the video for Jason Forrest's War Photographer. The video features a flash animation of vikings dueling to the death with heavy metal guitar solos and crazy trumpet breaks that shoot out rainbow colors. The simple and authoritarian line of Trussel's figures immediately caught my eye and left me hungry for more.
The Tennessee native majored in drawing before moving to Seattle where he took classes from Jim Coffin and landed a job as an animation director at SmashingIdeas to work in the corporate sector for a few years before moving back home with his family. The artwork of Joel Trussell has a fabricated retro feel to it. There is a certain mocking tone in his illustrative voice that lends itself to conjuring the advertising of the early fifties and then parodying the cold war culture that branched from it. He has done work for numerous outfits such as The History Channel and the famous children's show Yo Gabba Gabba. At its very essence the work of Joel Trussell brings the artistic potential of programs like Adobe's Flash to the forefront of our minds. It makes secondary the idea that these programs are simple web development tools with business applications. The cast of characters used in his portfolio have humor at their heart. Whether it is a fearsome but bumbling viking or something more like the strutting centaur in the picture posted above. It is interesting to note that Trussell lists Looney Tunes as one of his earliest influences ( interview) and also sites the shows ability to make someone else ( his father) laugh as a major influence as well. The brilliant solutions to the mundane are the driving force behind his offbeat and brilliant artwork.

kamikaze Girls

Kamikaze girls is a Japanese book written by Novala Takemoto in 2002.The book which was also turned into a film and Manga centers around a young girls named Momoko Ryugasaki Who is obsessed with the French art movement of Rococo ( sampled in the picture of Fragonard's The Swing) the story highlights the contrast between the modern day culture of Japan and that of mid-18'th century France. Young Momoko Ryugasaki enters into the story obsessed with baby doll (Lolita style) clothing and the idea of living with ideology of pleasure being the ultimate goal of life. She sells her yakuza father's fake Versace clothing and thus meets the irreverent Ichigo "Ichiko" Shirayuri who is a female gangster with her own scooter gang and the two form an unlikely union. The insane fashion styles and wildly eccentric characters of the tome make the film version a virtual smorgasbord for the eyes. Stylistically this film comes off as a sort of asian version of the 2001 french film Amelie ( by Jean-Pierre Jeunet). Especially when you compare the two motion picture's scenes that illustrate the tales of the main character's childhoods. Although Kamikaze Girls is distinct in it's use of animation to tell the tale of the origin of the girl scooter gang (slightly reminiscent of Kill Bill meets Power Puff Girls) and it's visually arresting use of slow motion in the opening scenes. The quirkiness is an enjoyable reprieve from the blandness of most current films and the frilly approach to the hedonistic tale is not unlike the movement of Rococo itself.

Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi is french comic book artist and writer who was raised in Iran after being born there in 1969.
She started her body of work after moving to France in 1994. While there she began work on her best known pieces which became the graphic novels of Persepolis (parts 1 and 2 in the U.S. versions). It is said that her visual style is culled in part from the artwork of her husband Pierre-François Beauchard (a.k.a.'David B.) It is also theorized that that her style is not completely unlike that of Art Speigelman ( author of the famous graphic novel Maus). Satrapi is unique in aspect thought and that is she produced the first comic book from the strictly Iranian perspective. Growing up in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini and the extreme oppression that came along with it has forged a very unparalleled view of the world. Her characters (which are largely auto-biographical) have a strange familiarity to them which stems from (in my opinion) the subtly rounded and generic quality of the lines with which she executes her drawing. Satrapi has encountered a fair degree of success including having Persepolis made into a feature length animated film in 2007. Currently another film is in the works as she is taking part in the production of Chicken with Plums ( another one of her graphic novels)due to be released in 2011.
For the the time being Satrapi still lives in France with her husband and works on children s books for the most part.