Research: Julian Opie

The artist ‘Julian Opie’s’ work creates surreal cartoonist artwork. The image below shows a series of faces created by Opie. What I believe is effective about his style of work is the idea that the characters have a certain set structure to their facial expressions.

The image above shows the characters faces are drawn in a minimalistic fashion, and I want to apply a similar technique towards my animations as like Opie I want to allow the audience to be able to relate to characters within the story. It is clear from looking at the image above Opie manipulates the simplicity of the black and white style to allow the viewer to focus on the characters feelings and it is clear that the characterization is achieved by using very few elements.

The image above is a selection of Opie artwork showing a series of faces presented in his famous style. What is truly effective about his artwork is the fact we can see the true elements of what makes a human but the characteristics that makes someone an individual are stripped away and I believe helps allow the audience to relate to his artwork because they can see themselves within his work because of the minimalistic styling.

I have chosen to approach my animation with a simplistic angle whilst also incorporating my research into my chosen style of animation. Opie has particularly inspired my style of character animations, as I believe using a similar technique to Julian Opie would allow my audience to relate to the characters.