Mindscape In Cyberspace

Since 1996, a San Francisco-based cartoonist Chad Frick has been entertaining Internet users of all ages, with his strange but humorous fantasy world and his bizarrely cute but amazing characters, like Beettleboy, Doctor Fingo Ho, Prof. Nanweep, Lester, Cats, and those unforgettable Dancers who dance on your clicks. I remember, the first time I visited YukYuk.com, back in 1998 or 1999, I was simply amazed by his drawing skills and technical knowledge. After that, I have visited YukYuk.com, regularly and spent hours, interacting with his animations, all carrying a small note saying “More you click, more you see’. In ‘98, there were not too many on-line games available on Internet. So, Chad Frick’s YukYuk.com has successfully attracted me and other Internet users, till he stopped updating the site. But all his illustrations, interactive cartoons and animations are still available at YukYuk.com.

Later, after the initial spell was over, I started checking more details about Chad Frick and I was simply amazed when I saw his Botanical illustrations. The detailing in Chad’s scientific illustrations are simply great and this explains why Chad’s ‘unnatural’ characters, being so unreal, look so natural!! Chad’s strong sense of anatomical structures of ‘real’ life-forms of ‘natural’ world, definitely helped him to create his strange, bizarre, unnatural, unreal world of YukYuk.

I was flipping through the portfolio site of a Dutch illustrator and graphics designer, Lennard Schuurmans. As soon as I landed up on the homepage of v-i-a-v-i-a.nl, the first thing that caught my eye is the underplayed warm colors like yellow, red, pink, bright green surrounded thick black lines, confident and strong. I liked the way these lines are interacting smoothly with the tonal narratives of the images. I also appreciate the way he used black against these warmer colors, creating a chaotic harmony of multiple events, in his images.

The organic shapes and figures, juxtaposed with a techno-mystic, humorous, slightly bizarre world, sometimes can create an uncanny feeling and that IS the flavor of his works. I have noticed subtle influences of oriental forms like the perspective sense of early Chinese or Japanese paintings in his compositions or influence of new age Japanese comics in his character drawings. I guess he has used those elements very consciously to create the ambiance for his imageries - from busy composition like this one or this one to his sad faced monkey characters like this one or this one. However, these actually added nothing but more visual value on his works. Lennard also used the form of underground Wall Graffiti in a modified mood on his Paint works and Typographical works, along with flat undertones of warm colors and a range of various motifs taken from techno-comics to underground wall graffiti to morphed organic shapes.

One more thing I liked is the strong presence of an apparently complicated narrative in all his works which actually lures you to interact with his images, even the ones which look somehow repulsive, initially.

Lennard Schuurmans’ illustraions can be viewed here »
VIA VIA - v-i-a-v-i-a.nl »