With Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and Mirrormask coming out on DVD in the last few weeks and the first pictures of next year’s Dark Crystal sequel The Power of the Dark Crystal hitting the internet, puppets, muppets and stop-motion animation are in the air…or at least in the air in my head! In that same spirit today’s Friday Favorite features Red Nose Studio.
[Editor’s Note: just a reminder that Friday Favorites features a site from my Favorites file…in case you forgot, or cared, or wanted to know, or could care less…]
Chris Sickels is the creator behind Red Nose Studio. Chris is an illustrator, but a somewhat unconventional illustrator in that his illustrations are created three dimensionally. Among his clients are The New York Times, Village Voice, Spike TV, the L.A. Times, and H.O.W. Design. It was through the H.O.W. Design magazine that I discovered Chris Sickels’ work and a more thorough article about Chris Sickels can be found on their website. His work has won several awards and it is easy to see why as it is very unique and creative. Because his creations actually exist and are then photographed there is a depth, texture, and “realness” that just cannot be duplicated with traditional two dimensional media. I get excited by many and varied styles of art and creativity and the Red Studios work is really phenomenal.
(Editorial picture entitled Failure of US Intelligence)
Chris creates sets and puppets from a wide variety of materials including wire, fabric, cardboard, wood, minitatures and found objects. Chris Sickels’ puppets are slightly eerie, and oddly whimsical, creations that have an air of the familiar about them. Chris molds the puppet heads from sculpey, fires them in the oven, and then paints them to give them their unique and charming personality. The creatures of Red Nose Studio vary in size often depending on what materials Chris starts with. He may find some object that he wants in the set and will then build everything to scale around that object.
(Cover to The Borribles by Michael de Larrabeiti)
A visit to the Red Nose Studio site will not only reward you with several pictures of Chris’s memorable creations but will give you the opportunity to see his experimentation with stop-motion animation. The four shorts are raw, and weird, but show a great deal of potential. To me Chris Sickels’ work cries out for the stop-motion animation treatment and I am glad to see that he is traveling down that road.
I am very impressed with the work of Chris Sickels. His creations have the look and feel of old friends and I have no doubt if I visited his studio that I would want one of these little guys to follow me home. I will continue to keep regular tabs on the Red Nose Studio site in the hopes of seeing more fun films and more great creations by Chris Sickels.
(The lighting and sense of discovery in this one are fantastic!)
Visit his site, look at the pictures, watch the short films and join me in marveling at the unique talent of Chris Sickels.
Completely off-topic: what happened to the title of your blog…??
It is at the top in red letters, isn’t it? It will show up as … down on your task bar as (if you look closely in the lower left hand corner of the header) I put that in there so that you can still click on that area to refresh the screen. The old title location covers up too much of the picture.
And thus is should be obvious that I changed the header picture, like to do that once in awhile. This one features John Carter and Dejah Thoris from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian Tales series, this picture being from a Frank Frazetta cover. The right hand side is an image of Robby the Robot from the movie Forbidden Planet, holding what is supposed to be miss Anne Francis…an interesting side note, this shot never occurs in the film. And of course the familiar triple orange moon which has been with SSD from the beginning. I’m happy with it for now, thought it turned out alright. Wish the title thing wasn’t an issue.
LOVE the new header.
Very cool art. I will definitely check out his site in the near future but I have run out the door and down to Pittsburgh again today. 🙁
Say hello to The Bus for me Jeff…don’t get too worn out though, we have alot of book shopping to do tomorrow!
Thanks…I need to do a little touch up work on it but I’m happy with it for now.
And isn’t his work great?!?! I just love it. The movies are bizarre but entertaining and I like the personality in each of the characters in his short films.
Off the subject – went to 8 Below this weekend. Great movie!
Its gotten great reviews, glad to hear that you liked it.
Abby … My family really wants to see Eight Below, too. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Carl … I just checked out the Red Nose Studios site. Very Cool. I believe I like his single image art pictures better than the stop motion work but both are great don’t get me wrong. Capt. Agile and Ball were my favorite’s of the stop motion shorts. On the art pages my favorites were the one’s in which he brought in lighting as an element. Very talented people. I myself would have NO patience for stop motion but I’m so glad someone else does so we can enjoy it.
I agree Jeff. His stop motion stuff is really in the early stages now and he doesn’t have the same ability to light those, etc. that he does with his still images. The characters are so interesting though that I would love to see him develop his stop motion skills further for some future project.
very VERY cool.
Isn’t it…I just love this stuff!!!