Having to write a blog post over a show that could teach you something valuable or educational, obviously my first choice was a documentary. However, I didn't have enough time in my schedule to watch a full blown 90-minute documentary film, so I went to "Docu-Series." However, most of the shows in the "Docu-Series" listing wouldn't work for my writing either because the topic would be hard to write much about or I had no interest in the subject matter.. White Rabbit Project was labeled as a "science investigation," which seemed to have a lot of educational value, but it was made by the people behind Mythbusters, and with no offense to Mythbusters crew or fans, Mythbusters to me is like the Transformers movies of science shows. But that's neither here or there. Regardless, I was left with one final choice that I hoped would work out for me. And it did.
Enter Abstract: The Art of Design.
This show is essentially a biographical series which covers the lives, works, and methods of the world's most important artistic designers, covering fields from architecture to graphic design to automotive design, and more. However, I only managed to watch the first episode due to time constraints. The first episode is about the illustrator Christoph Niemann, who made the cover art for a lot of issues of The New Yorker (as well as the Atlantic Monthly and New York Times). The episode follows Christoph around as he explains his work life in both the past and present (such as his classwork under the famous Heinz Edelmann, who is most well-known as the art director for the classic 1968 Beatles animated film, Yellow Submarine, and his ventures to New York to start work at the New Yorker, and back to Berlin to get away from the stress of the city) as well as showcasing the current project he's working on: A cover of The New Yorker which can be viewed in 3D via tablets and smartphones. If that peaked your interest, well then that's only the start.
One of the most interesting (and quite frankly awesome) aspects of this episode is that there are numerous illustrations of Christoph shown throughout, some done in the past and some even done specifically for the show. What makes them great is that a lot of the pictures have some sort of meaning behind them, and the illustrations allude to it in a clever and sometimes even literal way (I would like to give an example, but it's so hard to describe them without looking at them, so I would recommend searching for them online). Some pictures, though not really meaningful, are pretty great solely because he uses an everyday object (in 3D, NOT drawn) as a basis for a picture, and then draws things all around it (for example, he uses a pair of socks tucked into one another as a "head" for a dinosaur, and then draws the green body around it. That may seem simple and not all that interesting, but there's more. He even makes one with a coffee cup while using the coffee as paint). Given the fact that he even explicitly said his work life and personal life don't gel together and that he gets very stressed easily from his job, I have to commend the man for not only doing sparetime illustrations and the 3D VR cover for The New Yorker, but ALSO do illustrations for this one episode of this show. That's amazing.
The show does have its educational value within art, such as Christoph's demonstration of the 'Abstract Scale" with the famous heart shape, but the educational value lies within the merit. Throughout the episode, Christoph says that his free-spirited, relaxed self and his strict, workaholic self battle quite often, and even at the beginning he says that Edelmann was usually very down on his work. That attitude gave him the boost and belief that he currently uses today. He states that people usually belief to not stress yourself on work and take it easy. However, he says that is NOT how to do it, and stressing yourself to get your job done is a lot better in the long run with your job. Now that's something a lot people can learn, given a lot of people also have stressful, tiresome jobs.
Overall, I'll probably give this show further watches, although as said before, the show revolves around numerous artists and not just Christoph. The second episode in the series will focus on Tinker Hatfield, a shoe designer for Nike and even the creator of the famous Air Jordan line of shoes. Although, I have to wonder what will be done in that episode to liven up the presentation, like with the illustrations in this episode. But anyway, I'm going to check the rest of the series out later, and so should you.
No comments:
Post a Comment