10 Jun 2010

Inspiration



 After wandering around the National Gallery, finally I've decided to choose  the painting "Saint Christopher carrying the Infant Christ" about  1525-50, NG716, Style of the Master of the Female Half-Lengths. 

A big man carrying a tinny heavy figure across the turbulent watter is such a powerful image, not only for the graphic but because of the symbolic meanings. I get touched by this scene and the apparent simplicity of the story. I also thought that the treatment of the colors and the dreamy naive atmosphere from the landscape details, links with my own illustration style.

There are several legends about Saint Christopher. In the most famous, he was crossing a river when a child asked to be carried across. When  Christopher put the child on his shoulders he found the child was  unbelievably heavy. The child, according to the legend, was Christ  carrying the weight of the whole world. This was what made Christopher  patron saint of travelers and is invoked against storms, plagues,  etc..His iconography has remained essentially the same over  the centuries although its artistic representations have undergone  changes according to the aesthetic. I think the scene is extremelly  potential for animation. 

What I would like to Do is my own contemporary interpretation of  the legend. I would like to start with the same image from the  picture, a big man carrying a tinny heavy figure across the turbulent  watter. It won't be in a realistic style, I'm planning something more  expressionist or more Terry Gilliam's collage. After it, a zoom in  inside the brain of the child which will turn into a globo sphere and a  psicodelic sequence of images connected in a fast rythm. This should be a  good example to understand what I wanna Do, of course considering my  limitations of time and skill: Run Wrake "Juke  box". In my case industrial scenes of poluted cities, cars, money,  sex...the humanity carrying his own destruction, instead Crhistopher  carrying the human sins.

In the third scene we come back into the first image but the giant  will drowned into the river. Fishes will eat him and the child will  dissapear as a phantom. This is a visionary trip, a kind of apocalyptic version, or maybe just a premonition.

No comments: