Tyler van der Stappen
Illustration
“What is good Illustration”
A.1
Clarkson
1.4.12
-The message of the illustration is of: a digital age young man engulfed in chaos who is about to eat a pizza, chaotic energy, frenzy, food, hunger, need, desire, rock n roll, comically exploding elements, grit and angst.
-The context in which the illustration appeared is in Juxtapose magazine, an international collection of graphic arts on the web but mostly in print.
-The sender of the message is more of a metaphor for chaotic digital age lifestyle filled with stressful demands and needs. The young man's world seems to have come to a stand still in order to get pizza as it is exploding and everything in his world is coming undone as well.
-The intended audience of the message is a younger, loud, edgy, internet or magazine based audience who can relate to this subject matter and feelings expressed within.
-The purpose of the illustration is entertainment and a social statement about 21st century digital lifes.
-The communication objective of the illustration is to make you laugh and feel the chaos that the young man feels as he is about to dive into his pizza. It is also to make a satire of the times in which we live, the ipod is represented as an angel... The ipod has become a symbol for freedom and self expression as well as savior. Music is religion to most nuclear family “lost” children of this digital age. The Rock N' Roll Satanic devil references from the evil and ghostly peperoni flying outward add yet another element of character. Everything in the entire illustration is character based from the head phones, to the watch falling off as time is about to stop, to the angel ipod the devil salute fork.
-The illustration was done for various illustrations for British Techie Magazine, Contagious. It was done by Am I Collective, a creative studio based in Cape Town, South Africa, founded in 2006 and offering multi-faceted, collaborative services to advertising agencies around the world. Their specialities include animation, illustration, and typography, all of which embrace a raw and earthy style that is explorative in its execution. The illustration strangely lists no one as the illustrator which is probably due in part to the title of the company Am I Collective and probably because the original artist had to sign over the creative rights by working for the company while receiving no credit.
-The medium is not listed for what it was created in, I am guessing pencil and digital most likely.
-I chose this as one of my examples because it feels like the kind of grotesque, toilet humor, satirical, childish, dark and comical illustrated style of Ren & Stimpy by Bill Wray from my youth. It had a feeling very similar to this illustration done by Am I Collective.