Cape Town-based artist and illustrator (interviewed in 2016, here) Kobie Niewoudt aka Kobie, catches up with VISI about what she’s been up to since then and how her love of GIFs hasn’t changed.

Tell us a bit about yourself?

I studied graphic design at CPUT, then went on to complete an honours degree in illustration at Stellenbosch. While working on my honours, I started my brand Koba illustrations. It’s also during my time at Stellenbosch where I developed a fascination with scientific illustration, in particular botanical illustration. I also made my very first frame-by-frame animation during this time. I have buried that animation very deep in the archives!

The last time we spoke to you was in 2016. The world has changed a lot since then, has your work evolved?

Things have certainly changed. In 2017 I was allowed to work full-time as a motion designer. As of today, I have been working as a motion designer for almost 4 years.

Working as an animator has influenced my illustrative work and creative process. In previous years my ideas came from a negative place of insecurity and self-deprecation, while that occasionally happens today,
I think my work has evolved to be lighter and looks more to the future than the past.

Are you still big into GIFS?

Absolutely! Don’t think I’ll ever be over GIFs.

A GIF will start with me hearing a song, then visualising a certain dance or scene to go with it. Once the idea is there I can’t let it go.

What are your favourite things about illustration?

Illustration is a versatile art form. Illustration can be serious, it can be absurd, it can be used in a sequence or standing alone, there’s no right or wrong medium, it can convey stories, it can also be brought to life through animation.

What does a day in the studio look like for you?

I’m an early riser. There’s something about working while other people are sleeping that gives me more energy! I try to get admin out of the way first, check my inbox, water my plants, then it’s full steam ahead with motion design till 17:00. I will usually go for a run around this time. I continue with commissions and personal projects around 19:00 and go to bed at 11 most days.

What’s your drawing style?

I would describe it as playful, handcrafted, nostalgic, cheeky and humorous.

How do you keep things fresh?

When I find myself in a repetitive, creative cycle I tend to explore other creative fields. I have a profound love for fashion, textiles and pattern design, so I’ll either watch DIY embroidery videos or watch behind the scenes footage at runway shows eg. how a Dior haute couture collection comes to life. Furthermore, I try not to linger on Instagram for too long.
While scrolling through other artists’ feeds might bring inspiration to some, I’ve come to find it just leaves me feeling jaded.

Do you have a preferred method of creating?

I prefer a mix of both. I will usually plan out artworks digitally and then commence with more traditional mediums.

How do commissions work and do you find them tougher than your creative pieces?

Sometimes commissions are tougher. They usually challenge me on a technical level, where I will find myself working with software, I’m unfamiliar with or having to paint an exotic flower that has so much detail that I don’t even know where to start. Clients usually contact me via email or Instagram. The challenge is also making sure what the client is envisioning, aligns with what I’m understanding from their brief often in a short time frame.

See more of Koba’s work through her website and follow her on Instagram, here.

Looking for more on art or design? Take a look at the work of French street artist Julien de Casabianca.

The post Cool Illustrator: Kobie Nieuwoudt appeared first on Visi.

Sydney-based illustrator and artist Nancy Liang combines digital art and drawings to create mesmerising GIFS in night-time settings.

Nancy’s moody, yet whimsical animations combine hand-drawn pieces with digital illustrations, creating a juxtaposition between the two disciplines.

“I make paper-crafted collages traditionally and digitally, and create dreamlike images and animations of urban landscapes and sleepy scenes of Australian suburbia,” she explains on Jacky Winter.

Below are 10 of our favourites:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B2Gm7-WBBJq/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B88fgKIh7W0/

See more of her work on Instagram.

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Commissioned by HomeAdvisor, creatives at NeoMam Studios took six rooms from historical paintings and transformed them into CG (character-generated) animated renders, giving us an idea of what the rooms may have looked like in real life.

The paintings include Vincent Van Gogh’s The Bedroom, Grant Wood’s The Sun Shine on the Corner, Wassily Kandinsky’s Interior (My Dining Room), Konstantin Korovin’s Interior (Kitchen), Roy Lichtenstein’s Interior With Restful Paintings and Eduard Petrovich Hau’s Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s Sitting Room, Cottage Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Specific styles were taken into account during the transformation, from choices in furniture and lamps to paintings and flooring.

Carefully considered was the fact that each painting highlights a particular mood or mental state of the artist at the time the painting was created.

Vincent Van Gogh’s The Bedroom

Grant Wood’s The Sun Shine on the Corner

Wassily Kandinsky’s Interior (My Dining Room)

Konstantin Korovin’s Interior (Kitchen)

Eduard Petrovich Hau’s Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s Sitting Room, Cottage Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia

Roy Lichtenstein’s Interior With Restful Paintings

For more, visit homeadvisor.com.

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Cape Town-based illustrator Tyla Mason’s whimsical drawings are created to make people feel happy. Here, we chat to her about “snackable” GIFs, her cheerful use of colour and what’s next.

From labels for wine bottles and film posters to chocolate bar wrappers and tote bags, your illustrations feature across the board. What do you most enjoy about creating?

There is so much that I enjoy about creating, but I think, above all, I love drawing because it has always been a language that I feel most comfortable communicating myself through. It feels more natural and more succinct than expressing myself with words.

At the moment I am particularly enjoying having my illustrations featured on products that people can interact with directly, rather than work that is being experienced through a screen. It’s nice to see my drawings grow legs and venture out off the page and into the real world.

Your work often makes bold use of colour. What role does colour play in your work?

The work that I make exists purely to make people feel happy, and the choice of bright, cheerful colours is an important ingredient when creating light-hearted content.  

You also animate your illustrations. In what way do you feel animation brings your illustrations to life?

Animation brings illustration to life by adding a little bit more context or narrative beyond the static image, and can give your illustrated subjects more of a personality. I really enjoy adding rudimentary movement like GIF animation, because it’s simple and effective, and more “snackable” than a long-form video.

In future, I would really like to explore animation more and develop that muscle. I did a few motion graphics projects in my first and second year at college and found that it requires a lot more patience, but the end results were always especially rewarding.

Sound of Silence

Any local illustrators you think should be on everyone’s radar?

There are so many! Ian Jepson’s work is crazy good and he has been a really great mentor to me. Emma Philip, Tammy Joubert and Ello X-Ray Eyez are three of my favourites. I’m also really excited about Shayna Arvan and Fran Labuschagne’s work. 

What’s next for you?

From what I was expecting, in the best way, these past two years of working in the real world have shown me, so far, that it’s difficult to predict where this thing is heading. I love being able to work with print and products as well as digital and online editorial work, and hope to build more facets on to my client work in the future. 

I am also super eager to work on a project that is long-term and holds a bit more personal significance. I haven’t figured out what shape this might take, whether it be a book or a zine or a body of work, but I would love to submerge myself in something a bit bigger, that integrates an element of myself within the work. 

If that never works out, that’s okay too. As long as I’m still drawing and making things I’ll be the happiest person.

Follow Tyla on Instagram to keep up to date with her work and see more at tylamason.com.

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Originally from Seoul, Chicago-based art director and designer Tracy J Lee loves to draw and animate in her spare time. We chatted to her to find out more about her work, processes and what’s next.

What inspires your work?

My work is inherently inspired by my own feelings and thoughts. I’m an introvert by nature, so art makes it easier for me to express all the bottled-up emotions in my mind. I’m also driven by the things that I experience around me, whether they are films, books or songs that have greatly touched me in some ways.

What mediums do you use?

I mainly use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects to create my digital illustrations and animations.

What process do you follow when creating your pieces?

I start by simply jotting down new ideas and then taking some time to make rough sketches. When I’m in a good place with my composition, I bring in the sketch to either Illustrator or Photoshop to start drawing in shapes and colours. People often ask how I choose my colour palette, but I don’t have a specific process that I follow, except that I simply envision the mood I’m trying to portray (is it dark? Light? Mysterious?) and choose the colours as I go by instinct. I can always adjust colour and lighting through photo filters and blending layers at the end, so I have less pressure to make everything look perfect on the first try. For animation, once I have a basic storyboard drawn out, I work straight on Photoshop to draw each frame on a separate layer. The process can be arduous and full of unexpected turns, but that’s also what makes it exciting.

Are there any illustrators on your radar at the moment?

Thanks to social media, I’m inspired by artists from all around the world. At the moment, I’m a huge admirer of Malika Favre’s illustrations and her ability to create powerful mood and compositions through bold colours and shapes. I also love Joey Chou’s work and his use of geometric shapes, bright colours and brush-like textures. Looking at his work fills me with warmth and happiness!

What feeling are you trying to evoke through your pieces?

Sometimes, my art expresses happiness and joy. Other times it evokes melancholy and loneliness. But what I find consistent in my work is that there is a sense of wonder and questions left hanging that allow people to make their own interpretations. I’m very drawn to philosophical thoughts and concepts that make us question our lives, which are often represented through the characters in my animations. What I love about creating these never-ending loops of fleeting stories is that it is like a reflection of who we are as humans – always searching for meaning even though at times we might feel trapped in a routine or a path that we want to escape from.

Any exciting plans for the future?

I want to keep developing my animation skills because I love the feeling of doing something different and challenging in my life. My goal is to write and animate a short film someday!

See more of Tracy’s work on Instagram and Behance.

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Born to British and South African parents, illustrator T.S Abe has a flair for creating hyper-realistic portraits. This compelling artist, who has done work for brands like Nike, Gucci, Netflix and The New York Times, chats to VISI about growing up in Brixton in the UK, her love of GIFs and the moment she realised that drawing for a living was achievable.

How did growing up in Brixton affect how you approach your work?

Growing up in the heart of Black Britain, attending the top high school in the borough (that was also girls only and 98% black), not to mention having a mother who ensured we were well versed in British and South African political history (my brothers, for example, are named Samora and Bereng after Samora Machel and Prince Seeiso) incubated me from the overt racism and cultural isolation that I know a lot of my black and mixed peers living in the suburbs suffered. I do think my work was freer and more expansive as a result.

Where did you study?

I did a foundation course in Art & Design at Central Saint Martins with a view to pursuing my degree in Fine Art there, but I really didn’t feel I was learning enough to justify the expense of a degree, so I didn’t!

What motivated you to create the self-portrait GIF series? How would you describe your mindset while working on these illustrations?

I’ve been making self-portraits for about 12 years. For me, animating my portraits injects a sense of fun and wonder back into the process. Once I’d mastered a way of producing my own realistic drawings, they just felt a bit “paint by numbers”. Animating the drawings, like adding surreal elements in earlier works, is another way of subverting the photorealistic practice and revealing the human hand again. Film is a major influence – I’m obsessed with Tarantino and Studio Ghibli GIFs, the moodiness of Wong Kar-wai masterpieces and, of course, sci-fi treasures like The Fifth Element and The Matrix.

How long does it take to create each one?

Ideas sit in the back of my head for years and when I can’t avoid them any longer I make an attempt to get them on paper. The process will then run over a few weeks, from shooting footage to browsing my research folders filled with images from The British Museum & Sotheby’s, for objects or motifs to mould the work. Then it’s on to hand-drawing the frames and finally stitching them together again, digitally.

Which was the first big brand job you completed that impacted your artworks on a personal level?

I covered a London bus for TFL (Transport for London) in my self-portraits at 16. It featured me pointing to the Hobo Sign – these were signs the hobo community used to evade police detection. Alongside a somewhat cliched oil-drenched peace symbol and a giant roving eye, that translated as “Look out! The authorities are on the watch”. It was a public commentary on Britain’s early 2000s surveillance atmosphere and foreign policy, vis-à-vis the Iraq war and the Iran nuclear deal. Seeing my work outside of my bedroom on a large scale for the first time was unforgettable. I got an inkling that drawing for a living wasn’t as preposterous as I had thought.

Do you have new projects that you’re currently working on?

I’m in the early stages of developing book volumes of both my self-portraits and travel sketches.

To see more of T.S’s work, visit tsabe.co.uk or follow her on Instagram.

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Carlín Díaz is a Venezuelan animation director, graphic artist and illustrator based in Paris.

He uses colour in sublime, hypnotic forms along with organic geometry to alter the viewer’s perception and play around with what they are seeing. The intensity of the work is magnified by the vivid graphics he uses.

The GIFs featured below, form part of Carlín’s Sun, Sol, Soleil, collection. “Sun, Sol, Soleil is about going away from all we know as reality to explore our inner self and find the sun, the light,” he says.

The Bedroom, Mixed media collage, 2018

The Hand, Mixed media collage, 2018

The Inner Door, Mixed media collage, 2018

The vase For #slowdownartcomp , @slowdownstudio

A post shared by Carlín Díaz (@carlindiaz) on Jul 30, 2017 at 5:00am PDT

Color test for an illustration I made for @risottostudio about my last year in Venezuela More to come with the talented Venezuelan hommies @nando_nandez @ykermoreno @topofoto

A post shared by Carlín Díaz (@carlindiaz) on Sep 20, 2017 at 8:30am PDT

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A post shared by Carlín Díaz (@carlindiaz) on Apr 25, 2017 at 8:31am PDT

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A post shared by Carlín Díaz (@carlindiaz) on Oct 15, 2014 at 12:03pm PDT

Carlín also sells limited-edition colour screen prints of his work, which you can browse here.

To view more of his work, visit carlindiaz.com.

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The clever creatives at NeoMam Studios are back with a series of architectural GIFs, inspired by an appreciation for ancient buildings and structures.

“Inspired by the history and beauty of ruins around the world, we wanted to make them come alive for readers by reconstructing them to show what they looked like back in their day,” shares NeoMam’s Luke Doyle.

The biggest challenge for the team in creating the GIFs was to agree on how they would rebuild the ruins. They chose to work with an architect and did extensive research to ensure that they ended up with an accurate representation of each site.

“We wanted to select sites from a variety of different regions that people would be familiar with,” says Luke. “We chose these seven sites to represent a diverse range of cultures, periods and architectural styles.”

Take a look at two more featured projects created by NeoMam Studios, namely 7 Home Office Designs Inspired by Fonts and what your bedroom would look like if designed by a selection of famous film directors.

(h/t) viewfinder.expedia.com

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We chat to illustrator Kobie ‘Koba’ Nieuwoudt, one of this year’s Design Indaba Emerging Creatives, about what drives her, creating GIFS and being “weird”.

How did you get into art, illustration and design?

From a young age I got praise for my illustrative creations. The positive reactions I got from parents, teachers and friends motivated me to pursue art and made me think, “Hey, I might be good at this”. I enjoy drawing because it allows me to be creative in my own private space, in my own time.

Having studied graphic design at the Cape Peninsula University, I gained experience and exposure to the commercial side of the design industry and some of the opportunities available to young designers in South Africa. In my final year of studying graphic design, I had yet to develop my own “voice.” At this stage, illustration was not my primary focus, although it was a strong personal outlet for me to break away from the formal requirements of commercial design briefs. In 2015, I completed an honours course in illustration at the University of Stellenbosch, graduating Cum Laude. The illustration course offered me much-needed room for experimentation and personal development as an artist. Looking back, I still enjoy illustration for the same reasons I did when I was a child, namely the solace and focus it provides.

What inspires you?

Humour and spontaneity. Personally, I enjoy making people laugh, so humour is an essential part of my life and I try to incorporate it in my work. Society thrives on negative sensational stories and from personal experience, certain things cannot be unseen, so I often find it hard to be positive. I’ve always been interested in human nature and how people communicate, whether it is through eye contact, gestures, body language or speech. The latter has a profound influence on the subject matter of my work. Illustrating is a positive creative outlet for me and I hope it will also lighten the mood of those around me.

How would you describe your style?

Being honest, expressive and relatable in my work is important to me. My worst fear would be to come across as pretentious or “trendy”. My friends always told me. “You’re weird, but in a good way” and I think that’s also a way to describe my style.

Why GIFs?

A GIF is such an amazing medium to convey narratives. I start by scamping characters and then take them into Photoshop where I start drawing the animation frame by frame. It always excites me to see the final sequence in motion.

I can’t say it better than GIF artist, Elle Muliarchyk:

“It’s a more organic and intuitive medium to relate an experience—more so than a photo or a video. Think of how we recollect memories: close your eyes and think of something from your past. You don’t see a frozen still image – you see GIFs! Even when we dream at night we see fragments of events that collectively create some kind of narrative, which we assemble into a story when we wake up. Even when we daydream we don’t watch a full-feature uninterrupted film in our heads – we think in fragments, often non-linear. ”

Who are some of your favourite local artists?

Lorraine Loots. I have been following her work since 2013 and her journey to being a successful, independent artist encourages me to keep going. Also, Mervyn Gers, the story of how and why he got into ceramics and how he made a successful business out of it (eventually being able to give other people jobs) is also really inspiring. I also enjoy the work of artist Michael Taylor. I met so many great creatives from various fields at Design Indaba’s Emerging Creatives expo, so it’s hard to only single out a few.

Do you have a favourite piece of your own?

All of my creations hold their own splendour and I try not to be too precious about it. The illustration that was a turning point for me was this abstract painting I made one evening late in 2014, naturally while I was supposed to be doing something else. I got carried away, did not care anymore and just painted without premeditation. This painting gave me a real epiphany. I have the habit of overthinking everything – including my work – and this illustration happened by chance. The illustrations I’m most fond of always happen by chance. My favourite GIF is one I recently made for Superbalist, namely, “bridesmaid-mating” (see above).

What are your plans for 2016?

Right now, I’m focused on selling my Koba illustration & Design merchandise, which includes limited-edition pillows, mugs and greeting cards. I’m in the process of creating plenty more GIFs this year, as that has become my favourite medium of expression! Maybe that does not sound too exciting, but after studying for five years, it’s quite exhilarating for me and I’m embracing the unknown future.

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Japanese artist Segawa Thirty-Seven has reinvented the traditional art of ukiyo-e woodblock prints by converting them into fun and whimsical animated GIFs.

The original images were produced between the 17^th  and 19^th centuries. Segawa Thirty-Seven incorporates complementary or contrasting imagery into the scenery, which works with the existing image in a humorous way.

(h/t) designboom.com

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