Influences

Hey there everyone, Thao here. Today in representation of Meridian Gallery I'll talk about influences in my art. When I was younger I watched a lot of cartoons, ranging from Batman the Animated Series to Sailor Moon to Pokemon. I think the main reason I started art was because I wanted to draw like the animated series I watched. Even to this day, my favorite thing to watch are cartoons, I find them fun to watch no matter who they're made for. I'll watch kids cartoons and adult cartoons both with joy because I appreciate all the work and effort into making the animation.

When I was younger I loved Japanese animation, I thought it was the greatest form of animation.

NOTE: These are artworks that are from my childhood, when I though anime was holy and it controlled every aspect of my art...

As I grew older though, I realized that a lot of the recent Anime is really lazy. The average frame rate of an animation is usually 30 frames per second, for Anime, it's 15 frames. While I understand because a lot of Anime has very detailed character illustrations, which is like an actual piece of art, but the animation itself can be sluggish. Anime tends to lean towards story and character driven plots, which gets cliche a lot. My favorite japanese animations would be ones directed by Satoshi Kon and Hayao Miyazaki. Satoshi Kon has a more realistic style, while Miyazaki has a more surreal one.


American animation varies. Recently there has been a lot of 3D animation to cut down production time and cost, but I think 2D animation is superior. That is why I like Disney's old movies so much. While simple, they are beautiful and have very fluid animation. This is because Disney himself hired professional artists to animate his first movies, providing top notch work. My favorite Disney film is Tarzan and Mulan.


Russian animation is something I have been getting into recently. Their animations are the most fluid I've seen so far. The Russian animation I've seen so far does what animation should do; it makes art come to life. It's the most fluid and natural I've seen so far. Disney looks like they have rigamortis compared to Russian animation. I can't say much for the story line though, since I can't understand a word they're saying.

Russian Winnie the Pooh, doesn't Pooh Bear look tough?

Animation was my greatest influence to persue art. Now, one of my greatest aspirations is to be an animator.







images courtesy of~
http://www.opensenses.com/discussion/batman-arkham-asylum
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/cybersix.htm
http://yonihon.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/tokyo-godfathers/
http://ketaro.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/trilha-sonora-de-michiko-e-hatchim/
http://www.theotagal.com/2008_11_01_archive.html
http://www.adam-diggins.co.uk/oceana/gen_news_main.htm
http://www.linasia.com/bkup/mulan/mfan.html
http://www.tripletsandus.com/disney/art.htm
http://www.piano-spelen.nl/video/index.php?key=Film&page=4