20three » drawing

Winshluss: Pinocchio

Owen — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:12:19 +0000

Winshluss (Vincent Paronnaud) has taken the Pinocchio stories of Carlo Collodi and dragged it through the hundred or so years of popular culture that has passed since it was first written and given it a surreal dark twist. The results are quite an amazing comic book: Pinocchio by Winshluss (Amazon UK), an award winner, picking up book of the year at the French Angouleme festival.

Winshluss: Pinocchio

The book is published in French but mostly without text, the story told in descriptive panels in that classic Bandes Dessinées style intermixed with with full page and half page panels that also form part of the narrative. The only parts of the book with words are a few sections in black and white drawn in a loose sketchy style that nicely juxtaposes with the colour artwork that makes up the main body of the book. These black and white passages involve Jimmy the Cricket who has taken up home in Pinocchio’s head, and with my bad french I managed to just about understand what was going on, although you could easily understand the story with little or no french (like me).

The majority of the book is colour and wordless. Winshluss draws and paints in several mediums and there are several full page panels that I was amazed by. The coloring has that desaturated nostalgic feel that perfectly matches his drawing style.

Winshluss: Pinocchio

The lame fox and blind cat from the original Carlo Collodi Pinocchio adventures become a smack-head and blind beggar, Monstro the great whale becomes a polluted toxic mutant fish destroying a Titanic style liner complete with white bearded captain and string ensemble who not only carry on playing when the ship goes down, but as they are being dissolved by the acidic bile in the stomach of the toxic fish.

Winshluss also makes several nods to Disney; Snow White and the seven dwarfs make an appearance, the dwarfs are a gruesome set of perverts and their involvement in Geppetto’s comeuppance is particularly twisted. There is even a film noir element, a hard boiled cop with a head like an Easter island statue who tracks down Geppetto and the seven perverted dwarfs. The book is certainly dark, but full of humor.

Pinocchio himself is a mute robot-boy, created by Geppetto to be a war machine who he initially tries to sell to the military. Pinocchio goes wandering after short circuiting while Jimmy the Cricket enters his robot brain. Pinocchio tumbles through this story, staying resolutely mute while the tale unfolds around him.

Winshluss: Pinocchio

Vincent Paronnaud is also credited as co-writer and co-director with Marjane Satrapi on the film adaptation of her comic series Persépolis. What a talented chap.

You can see more artwork at a larger size here at http://www.bdgest.com.

20three prototype t-shirts

Owen — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:17:11 +0000

When 20three had it’s first incarnation around 2000 we produced a short run of t-shirts that we mainly gave away to friends and clients. Now that this site lives on in blog format I thought it would be a good idea to resurrect some of our old design work and produce a couple of prototype t-shirts. I didn’t want to create ‘new’ designs – rather I wanted to give some of our old design & illustration work another lease of life. A bit like this website. Rinse the past.

These shirts were printed at a Brighton copy shop using heat transfers – not the greatest quality but good enough to get an idea of how the shirts could look.

This design I originally produced for the cover of a 12″ record sleeve for Hermetech Records around 2002. As the 12″ cover was intended to be screen printed by hand the design was a simple two colour job – perfect for a t-shirt. The two images I ripped off appropriated for the design came from this book: Animals 1,419 Copyright Free Illustrations of Mammals, Birds, Fish, Insects, etc (Great title).

T shirt design based on Hermetech 12" sleeves.

The Original design:

Hermetech 12" covers, 2002

This second design was created from collages made from the ‘positives’ we used for our first hand-screenprinted t-shirt run – so I am effectively mashing up the original t shirt designs to produce this one.

T shirt design based on collages

Original design/collage:

Sketchbook collage, 2002

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen-printing

Dan Drakeford: Writer, illustrator & cartoonist

Owen — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:41:14 +0000

Dan Drakeford is a talented chap. Writer, illustrator, cartoonist. His work is quite varied, but one set of cartoon strips really stands out for me. I love his Claude, the sad pigeon series. Over three panels Dan manages to make these strips melancholic, nostalgic and like the title, a little sad…

Be sure to check his flickr page to see more strips & illustration work (be sure to check out his strip Barry, the life and times of… )

December sketchbook pages

Owen — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:22:56 +0000

More sketchbook pages from my Moleskine sketchbooks. See more on my Flickr account.

Sketchbook page

Sketchbook pages

Owen — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:02:23 +0000

Here is a link to my flickr set of sketchbook pages, all produced over the last four years.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/owen23/sets/72157603658584233/

Conceptual work for Levi Strauss

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