The Amazing Everything of Scott C.

Amazing Everything: The Art of Scott C is the name of a collected edition of Scott Campbell's work. It is also a proper descriptor of said work. The guy is just plain awesome, even Jack Black says so in the intro to the book:

"I loves me some Scott C. His paintings are like precious little gems. So cleverly and skillfully executed. Touching and hilarious."

Well put, Jack. Scott C's work is undeniably charming and more than a little whimsical - the happy-go-lucky attitude of his work is infectious. I mean, just look at these guys on the right, they're adorable, right? Wrong! They're killing machines, just look at those unicorns blobs rip into those rainbows with unbridled abandon! It's Scott C's kind eye which paints these terrifying creatures in such a pleasant light, it is his gift - to see nothing but the best in people. Or perhaps he has a magic pen that does that. Regardless, Scott C is a gift to the world with his pop-culture iconography and cheerful scenarios that we should all meditate upon to become happier people, a goal which Scott says in his book that he has always been conscious of:

"I was not a tormented soul that must paint to stay sane. I had a Leave it to Beaver upbringing with a pleasant family. I just liked to make jokes and be happy... I like making people laugh and point and nudge one another."

Ghostbusters print made for the 30th anniversary of the franchise. Click to enlarge.

It's refreshing to have an artist who is not only talented and untormented but also deeply rooted in the nerd zeitgeist. He worked for years in the video game industry, developing the world and characters for Double Fine's Psychonauts and Brütal Legend before branching out and becoming a juggernaut of charming art in his own right. He paints primarily in watercolours, a process, he explains in his book, is as relaxing as the art itself:

"Why do I use watercolor? Because it enables me to have a muted and noncommittal palette with an airiness that relaxes me. My colors start out quite faint, but as I gain more confidence, the colors become more vibrant and contrasting. I start out by doodling on sheets of scratch paper and scanning them into the computer to compose in Photoshop. I have grown accustomed to the Undo button. I print the compositions out and trace them onto my watercolor paper like magic."

Adventure Time, come on grab your friends!

The airiness he speaks of permeates his entire body of work. The lines he paints are defined yet wavy, and his use of watercolour adds levity in the way his colours bleed and waver in density through his backgrounds and characters. It's a very distinctive style that blends the nuances of high art with the wackiness of cartoons. The overall theme of his work is generally one of cheer and general childlike imagination. When he's not painting a smiling Ghostbusters' Stay Puft or any of his movie/tv-land brethren, he's creating worlds in which have comically overcomplicated umbrellas, baby carriage cannons, cross-sections of amusement park-like homes for mummies and soldiers, actual amusement parks for skeletons and zombies, a floating bar for sea monsters, and of course, lumberjacks. His work has all the feel of a child dreaming up the coolest thing he can think of with the artistic sensibilities of a slightly larger child (which of course I mean in the most complimentary way possible). As adults we so often lose our sense of childhood play, and it is precisely that feeling of nostalgia which Scott C is able to tap, allowing us to remember what it felt like to lie on our stomachs in the kitchen sketching dinosaurs battling tanks.

With three published comic collections, two children's books, and a slew of commercial clients including Criterion, Laika, Macmillan, New Line Cinema, Nickelodeon, and Vice Magazine under his belt, it's a wonder Scott gets any personal painting done! Yet amazingly he still has time for his own projects. One subject Scott C loves to work with are characters from movies and television portrayed in true Scott C happy-style. One of his larger ongoing endeavours, Great Showdowns, is a series of amazing pop-culture paintings on the topic of conflict in movies and television showcased online, that have since been published in two separate volumes and is still going strong. In an interview with comicbookmovie.com, Scott C explained where the idea came from:

"The Great Showdowns began at the very first annual Crazy4Cult group exhibition at Gallery 1988 in 2008 or so. All the the artists created work inspired by cult films. I just started drawing my favorite films... Usually just people standing there with each other from films that I dug. I liked how they looked just standing there enjoying each other and I liked the idea of all these little moments of tension being seen as a group like a party... I created 10 of these showdowns for that show and super enjoyed it, so I made 10 more for the show the following year.. And eventually, I started the website as a way to motivate myself to make them on a more regular basis and have them easily accessible to people. And that's how it all went! An epic tale." ¹

Epic indeed. Scott C is able to take what we all love about pop-culture and truly make it his own. It's inspiring to see enemies transformed into best buds, and seeing a new showdown pop up on my feed always brings a smile to my face. While deceptively simple in its scope, this series is great because it reminds us that there is always a chance for peace and reconciliation even in the most destructive of conflicts. Who knew you could learn something AND have fun?

I really love the work of Scott C because he's not afraid to show off his inner cute and create art that reflects a happier side of life. If we were more like the characters in his paintings, the world would be a much radder place. He is a cool dude that everybody should check out because he is amazing and he'll make your life exponentially better just because you know OF him.

You can follow Scott C on his primary website Pyramid Car, his separate site for Great Showdowns, or on Twitter.

^{1. [Comicbookmovie.com: EXCLUSIVE: Interview With THE GREAT SHOWDOWNS Creator And Artist Scott Campbell]↩}

The Psychedelic Pixel Art of Paul Robertson

Paul Robertson, an Australian artist who works exclusively in the medium of pixel art, creates startlingly gorgeous images that are loving and esoteric homages to anime, video games, and popular culture. He has created sprites for several popular video games, most recently Mercenary Kings and Adventure Time: Hey Ice King, Why'd you Steal Our Garbage?, and also memorably did some pixel work for an episode of Gravity Falls entitled "Fight Fighters" (see a clip below). However, it's his shiny non-commercial work that intrigues me the most. Awash in animated rainbow colours, he creates scenes that seem as if they were dreamed up by a sick god, or perhaps the internet. Using all manner of images, from anime inspired cute animals and women, monsters and insects, he creates animated images that represent the journey towards a higher understanding that cartoon and gamer aesthetes might achieve through rigorous meditation - on acid.

Robertson's combination of pixel art and psychedelia is a fitting reminder of the power of games on our subconscious as he uses the style to explore the deeper truths. Not merely a shallow reflection of video games, Robertson's work is an exploration of the infinite, religion, and the act of genesis. In "Evolution" above, Robertson manages to seamlessly blend recognizable symbols such as ouroboros at the bottom, representing the infinite cycle of life, with cute kittens and building blocks featuring Homer Simpson, Shrek, and Garfield at the top. The result is that the reverent and irreverent become one and the same, that games and cartoons have the power to lead to a higher truth. His work often features profound journeys, such as "Expedition" on the right, which features a exploratory march through our DNA, or "Keep Going" below, featuring a road-trip towards a personal god. His works are looped, suggesting perhaps that the journeys towards answers to the tough questions are never ending. Anime-inspired Women feature predominately in his work, usually at the pinnacle of his mad creations, often appearing as an angelic figure overseeing the journey or evolution below. The effect is striking, as if he is demonstrating reverence for the creative and life-giving power of women.

His independent video work also features similar esoteric themes blending religion, retro video games, pop culture, and powerful women (be warned, your brain might be folded in upon itself by watching it). His Youtube video from 2008 entitled Kings of Power 4 Billion% has heroes team up against a never-ending army of boys from outer space who shape shift Akira style into grotesque monsters and adorable chibi-maidens, both equally terrifying and powerful. In one memorable bit the spaceboys ride on top of Buddha like a tank and attack with a giant palm, and when an even greater threat than the spaceboys arrive, a giant cross is summoned for the creation of "The New Ultimate Jesus" which draws all manner of pop-culture icons to it splayed as if to be crucified. The final boss of this video is an innocent looking girl, the avatar of life and death, who spews all manner of effluvium over the heroes and obliterates them. It has to be seen to be believed.

Paul Robertson's work represents a merger of the old and the new, humankind's constant search for answers to life's hard questions, with the modern idols worshipped by nerdy boys and girls around the world. His new religion is a personal one, where answers are sought not through the church, but through the lens of our own nerdy culture.

You can follow Paul Robertson's work on Tumblr.

"Jellyfish Eyes" and The Art of Takashi Murakami

A pokemon/godzilla-esque movie set in the aftermath of Fukushima, anyone? Takashi Murakami, best known for his 'Superflat' style of painting and commercial art, is the creative mind behind what may be one of the most unique films ever made. "When I went to work on Jellyfish Eyes after the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear disaster of Fukushima, I noticed that Japan as a society always looks away from the real issues and tries to go on as if nothing had happened. I feel like that's actually the issue for contemporary Japan as a whole. I wondered, how do children respond to this kind of phenomenon?"¹ The story centres around a boy who, upon moving to a new town in the wake of the disaster, befriends a pink creature whom he names Kurage-bo, and soon discovers all the children in the town have similar creatures for friends. Meanwhile, a group of shady individuals is manipulating the children into generating negativity by getting them to engage their creatures in battle. The idea to create a Japanese creature movie set in the wake of a radiation leak seems poignant, as famous Japanese creatures such as Godzilla also found their origin in the collective Japanese unease over radioactivity in the wake of Hiroshima and the proliferation of nuclear power in the nation. Rather than taking a man vs. nature stance like in Godzilla, Murakami seems to be looking inward, at the forces that drive people to ignore that which is hard to look at.

Murakami's creatures of "Jellyfish Eyes" are undoubtedly the stars of the film, and he is no stranger to creature design. Murakami is well known for his 'Superflat' work, a term which he himself coined, "combining the flatness of commercial graphic design and the hyper-sexualised cartoon characters of Japanese comics with the aesthetic concerns of fine art."² His work is very interesting for the lack of depth in what are otherwise fully realized characters. Animation and illustration typically offer the illusion of depth and perspective, but Murakami's work forces the mind to create depth where there is none. "Combining a Pop aesthetic with the kitsch of Japanese kawaii (cute) culture, Superflat overtly references the flatness and two-dimensionality of Japanese anime (animation) and manga (comics). But the term also conceals a double meaning: according to Drohojowska-Philp, Superflat also stood for 'the shallow emptiness of [...] consumer culture.'"² If that's the case, perhaps the suggestion is that the depth we perceive in consumer products is really an illusion? Maybe this is also Murakami's suggestion that we need to take a deeper look at things we don't necessarily want to see. Though no stranger to CGI (Murakami has, among other endeavors, directed animated music videos), seeing his creature creations come to life alongside human actors gets me very excited. I will see this film the first chance I get.

<sup>1. [TAKASHI MURAKAMI'S POST-FUKUSHIMA FANTASY TAKES FLIGHT IN "JELLYFISH EYES"]↩
2. [What is Superflat Art? Art Radar Explains]↩</sup>

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