Blue fire

A man becomes obsessed with the nail polish of a girl he meets on the subway.

This is the first book I have illustrated.

I wasn't in contact with the writer, or heard the music of the CD whilst illustrating.

SIMPLY READ gave me pretty much all the freedom in the world.

I approached this project as if I was creating a series of stills for a collection of short films. The moments I chose to illustrate where not the most dramatic, but the quite and reflective ones.

There's something nearly voyeuristic about some of them.

I imagined a different style of music, playing over each image, since music is the other common thread (besides subways) in these stories.

To find the image for each story, I would read it once, and then browse the net for a few hours and collect all kinds of images that would resonate with me.

This was a great way of finding out, what was going on in my subconscious after having read the text.

Afterwards I would collage some of the images, print them out and draw over them on a light table.

I see this as a very modern way of working. Its a kind of remix.

I wanted to have this straight link to reality - Linklater's "Waking Life" inspired me.

Then I colored them digitally - always trying to limit the pallet and to find just enough disharmony to give it a slight weirdness.

My aim was to end up with images that could come out of a dream - real and yet unreal.

The images will be printed on half-transparent paper - so that the text of the stories shines through a little.

That will hopefully even enhance the desired effect.

I did this Project, next to my day job as a animation-designer on evenings and weekends. As hard as that was - I gotta do it again real soon...

I hope you will enjoy these pictures.

As soon as the book is available, I will put up a link.

Simply Read Books

Blue fire

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