Bradford Animation Festival - Dave McKean

Dave McKean creates his work through the use of illustrative means which absorbs a very experimental graphic style seen through the photography manipulation.
I found McKean's talk very inspiring as I felt that his work connected with me through how intriguing and detailed his work contains.
In his talk, I found that one of his first publications was a comic called 'Hell Blazer', this comic is portrayed in a monotone/blue wash which makes the atmosphere dismal and bleak, but with the use of line for the characters, it brings a grunge and tense feel to the art.

Hell Blazer - one of the first comics

I recently brought the first volume of Sandman Overture comic and the composition of each page was thought out beautifully and in interesting portrayals which made me inspired to think more differently, "outside the box" when depicting my own work. For example, in the comic there is a double spread of a mouth showing its teeth, and the teeth were the comic panels. The art is gorgeous through out and I love the theme and atmosphere of the comic already.

Sandman Overture

McKean made an interesting point on the Punch and Judy plays that he and Neil Gaiman have created a graphic novel from. The story tells of a man who is asked to look after a young woman's baby while she goes out, the man cant get the baby to stop crying and murders the child. The woman comes back and sees what happened, calling the police and in turn he murders the policeman. He is then taken to be executed and manages to convince the executioner to hang himself. After which the devil appears and the man murders the devil, and this is when the story ends. I find this shocking that this story is still told to children with puppets.  

Mr Punch

McKean also held an exhibition of his work called "The Rut" at the Pump house Gallery in London. In the middle of this mass of work is a packing case, spewing out paper with elongated and stretched text which can only be read by looking through a mask with deer antlers. I adore this concept of the text only making sense through the view point of the mask,  you become the character.  

 

The Savage is a book written by David Almond, illustrated by McKean. McKean explained in Q&A that he creates work and gets inspiration by the text in the script, there is one phrase or word that sparks a visual image of how he can portray the character and book.

"If a character is portrayed like a block of stone, maybe it should be ... make it from clay" - Dave McKean

The illustration on the book cover holds distorted, angular and kinetic movement through the use of line, smudge and blur. With the use of the blue and green hues, it gives a surreal approach. 

The Savage

Another example of one of the illustrated books McKean has done -
The Wolves in the Walls

Extra notes

• McKean also creates his own films, such as Mirror Mask, N[eon] - uses super 8 footage, a gorgeous old fashioned grain to the film, and Luna.  
• McKean gains inspiration from people, transport, i.e. travelling on the train and drawing people, Music. There is something in everything.
• Inspiration from Artists - Francis bacon, Winsor McCay. 
• Stories which appeal to McKean are ones which are about real people, real situations that are surrounded in a swamp of a surrealistic edge of dreams and memories, "locus of reality"