These illustrations are from the artist Stuart McMillen. He is responsible for the online comic strip, recombinant records. All of his comic strips promotes awareness of economic, and environmental issues around the world. He is from Brisbane, Australia, and the blog seems like it is a personal endeavor. Pretty much all of his postings are meant to summarize and inform the reader on various issues from global overpopulation, to the proposition of the green tax shift. It is very much your standard eco-comic. The two images of the scuba diver and the humpback whale are a part of six altogether that interchange as the banner display at the top of his page. All of his comics are in black and white, with grey tones. He exercises displaying somewhat simplified shapes with an appropriate attention to detail. Here you can see certain qualities like thickened outlines, absence of a background; there is no attention to shadow detail. Yet he makes sure to show off the small hairs and bumps of the humpback; in order to accurately identify it as a humpback and not some other whale. I think overall, he cares more about the message, than the aesthetic quality of his drawings. For instance, I think there is an intentional message behind the diver and whale images. I think by fitting the two together, the person being very small in comparison to the whale, he is making the statement that humans are very small in relation to many other living and non-living things on the planet; in regards to our size, and importance.
http://www.recombinantrecords.net/
This is very interesting to look at. I enjoy the very simple background which then keep the viewers attention on what the characters are doing.
ReplyDeleteI am really a fan of this illustration. It does its job, it gets me to recognize right away the relationship with man and animal. Also, not to mentiion the striking gray, black and white. I just love the simplisty of the illustration. It makes me laugh to see the tiny scuba diver, compared to the detail whale, but then the whale (who is alot bigger and scarier) leaves inside of the guy. Really cool.
ReplyDeleteI love the hand drawn quality of the figures in these pieces against the completely flat, cold gray background. I think simple illustrations like this can really be used to great effect alongside cause driven writing.
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