Movie Inspiration - Stanley Donen's "Funny Face" - 1957
Sunday, October 14, 2012

from time to time a movie is so visually inspiring that i take screen shots and post them on my illustration blog.  this time since i live in paris now i am posting this on my travel blog as well since the bulk of the movie is shot in France.  screen shots from "Funny Face"  from 1957 directed by Stanley Donen, with choreography by Fred Astaire.  Starring Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn, and Kay Thompson.  Based on Richard Avedon who actually set up most of the photography in the film according to IMDB.  copyright paramount pictures.  I'm living in Paris on an artists visa and there is an exhibit at the hotel de ville about Hollywood in Paris so i set out to watch a few of the films featured in the exhibit like Funny Face and An american in paris.  Disappointing that there was only one solo fred astaire dance number because the rest of the cast are not dancers.  Very cool art direction landing this in my movie inspiration folder.

Fred Astaire plays a photographer and his character is based on Richard Avedon, famous fashion photographer.  Avedon actually did all these title cards.

i love mid century style

the first 15 minutes are a visual treat in pink

she's an actually famous model at the time.  i like how there is a like string quartet playing at this little photoshoot.

old school new york, check out those taxis!

really makes you want to shoot on film and miss film

Richard Avedon is responsible for this famous photo, this is a screen cap but a cropped photo exists that we've all seen.

awesome special effects back then

this is hollywood's styling of mont martre in 1957

and an avant guarde bar

Audrey Hepburn's famous quirky dance scene that was remixed into a Gap commercial a few years ago

through out this whole movie i was saying that they need to bring this back and start shooting films like this, with this look

Fred Astaire's only solo dance scene.  he's the man

she cleans up nice

photo shoot scenes all presumably done by Richard Avedon, or "overseen" by him

top is an example of what it looks like on cinema film, bottom is what they showed as what it looked like as a final printed photo.  

top is an example of what it looks like on cinema film, bottom is what they showed as what it looked like as a final printed photo.  

what a stylish movie.  if you love 1950's stylings or Paris, check this film out.  if you love Fred Astair you will be a little disappointed   if you love Audrey Hepburn you will be slightly disappointed.  but other than that this is a solid film especially for artists, designers, fashion peeps, and nostalgics.  If you want dancing check out an american in paris with gene kelley.  most say Astaire is the better dancer but there's not much of that going on in funny face.

Posted byJason Raish at 11:58 AM 1 comments    

Labels: Movie Inspiration

Internet Jet-Age
Sunday, September 23, 2012

My attempt at a vintage 50's airline ad for backbone magazine in canada about the Canadian internet keeping up with the rest of the world's internet speeds.  The article says Canada needs to join the internet "Jet-Age".  Jet-age is a term that started to be used in the 50's with the introduction of rocket propelled passenger planes.  I thought of the vintage airline ads when i read Jet-age.



trying to degrade the quality of my work is a new thing for me, as is adding these printing process dots.

Posted byJason Raish at 5:01 PM 0 comments    

Summer Work
Wednesday, September 12, 2012

spot for Emory Alumni magazine about recognizing your own inner beauty



spot for the Washington Post father's day edition about wether Dad's should teach their kids to fight. ran in black and white in the paper and in color online.





spot for Rides magazine about Drama Beats crashing a go kart.



spot for the Wall St. Journal sunday edition about a woman who's love for cooking almost ruins her family.


spot for golf magazine about a guy's ball getting eaten by an alligator



spot for MotorTrend Classic magazine about a few cars that the writer missed out on driving. the title was "The Ones that Got Away". one of the cars was a French blue 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic Coupe

spot for Radio Times (UK) about two British chefs who go to Paris to cook British food for the French who are infamous for being picky eaters. the title of the piece was "To Paris with Parsnips".



sketch of my buddy and artist marco pardo in barcelona last summer. he loves picos and miga de pan (breadcrumbs) are everywhere in spain

Posted byJason Raish at 8:56 AM 0 comments    

Lots of Work
Thursday, June 07, 2012

spot for the Washington Post about snow shoveling related injuries



spot for MotorTrend Classic about the author's visit to the 1989 LA Auto show when he came face to face with two dream cars.



spot for MotorTrend Classic about how taking a 12 cyliner engine out of a Lamborghini and replacing it with an 8 cylinder is like removing its soul.



spot for the NY Times about how the NY Giants aren't that good, they win by some kind of magical fairy dust or something





Wedding board for my old roommate Naoki in Tokyo.  In Japan they put up a "wedding board" at the entrance of the wedding reception and its usually a big head little body caricature of the couple so they were happy to get this instead.



Wedding board for another one of my old roommates in Tokyo.  they wanted pink because the wedding was in april when it's cherry blossom season.  after Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss"





spot for golf magazine about golf rules.  this one is about a ball coming to rest on a frog.



spot for golf magazine about golf rules.  this one is about an eagle grabbing a ball mid-air.



spot for the final issue of UTNE about how Neanderthals mated with humans way back in the day.  the title of the story is "Stone Age Sex".  AD'd by the wonderful Stephanie Glaros.

Posted byJason Raish at 9:10 AM 0 comments    

It's been a while
Thursday, April 26, 2012

Sorry life has been crazy and it looks like it's been over 3 months since i've updated my blogs.  Here is the first round of some of the work i've done in the last 3 months.



cover for march 2012 discover magazine.  my first nationally circulated magazine cover.  Albert Einstein's rules of space, time, and gravity my be overturned.







private commission.  Maifun, a Spanish Harlem born Shar Pei.



utne magazine about using old diapers to grow food like mushrooms.  kind of gross right?



Emory alumni magazine about embracing the great unknown.



spot for gold magazine's rules guy column about removing debris from the ball.



motortrend classic magazine about pebble beach judges choosing this one car as the winner.  can't remember what it was but the hood ornament was an art deco eagle.



motortrend classic magazine about the current ferrari head and the old original Ferrari head.  whose name of course is something Ferrari.



full page for westchester magazine about Westchester being diverse.  this was my attempt at a black and white leave it to beaver style multi-ethnic family.  it's supposed to be an african american mom, indian son, asian dad, and hispanic son.  

Posted byJason Raish at 10:44 PM 0 comments    

Year of the Dragon 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012

Happy 2012! Here is my take on a Japanese new year's card (nengajo, 年賀状). Traditionally they feature the Asian zodiac animal of that year, 2012 is the year of the Dragon. Basically the bottom says Happy New Year and the top says 2011 and the final box below that is the character for dragon.





have i learned nothing? i am a fool and spent 4 hours working on that first color sketch and didn't explore the other compositions i had thumbnailed out. after thinking maybe i hadn't explored enough i fleshed out this 2nd color sketch. I spent like 7 hrs total on these 2 sketches. I forgot to mention that the dragon is probably the one card i was least excited to illustrate because it is so cliche and has been done by so many people and is kind of a symbol of bad taste and bros that love awesome dragons and yin yangs and nunchucks and have posters of scarface on their wall. We've all seen millions of images and tatoos of asian dragons twisting and looking awesome so i wanted to do a crop of a river dragon zooming along his river in a straight line instead of in the sky all twisty and turny. I wanted the feeling of if someone were to look out the window of the boat they would catch a split second of a huge dragon eye ball and scales zoom past the window basically at water level height. In japan dragons usually live in bodies of water like the ocean or rivers. i thought this was cool and interesting. Like that Miyazaki movie spirited away, that dragon was the spirit of some river in Japan. A huge dragon zooms by a japanese party boat, the kind i frequently saw on the sumida river in Tokyo. He is looking ahead (maybe to the new year?) and doesn't look like he is going to harm the boat at all. In fact they are the guardians of rivers and stuff. Dragons are also associated with spring in japan. What i wanted to achieve was to make it look like he is flying fast-ish, really close to the surface of the water. The shadow had to be created perfectly and the water movement had to be perfect too. I hate doing water movement and suck at it so badly, i can never get it right. The problem is that there was no proper reference for this kind of water movement. I know i've seen it before in some anime or movie where a missle is cruising 2 inces above the water or something. I even watched the scenes in a few Harry Potter movies where they fly close to the water but the special effects team always copped out and didn't show the water being effected by these wizards flying super close to the water. I even enlisted in the help of my fellow illustration collective to find reference but couldn't find any.



the shadow was super hard to get right and i never got it right. i even used google sketch up and taped together paper and a lamp.





had to cut this paper cuz I couldn't find the same weird size i found in china to match the other previous paintings.



gesso borrowed from Angel. you'll get it back some day.



background



i'll spare you the tedium of painting all the cherry blossom petals and transferring the drawing to the painting, so here it is after all that and inked in.

Posted byJason Raish at 6:11 PM 0 comments