Adaptation and Personality Trough Art

Andrs Maldonado Arango

11A

Introduction:
We are leaving in a world whos asking for more, we are living in a hipster world.
Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that
value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of
art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter. We are in a world that
wants a change or at least wants to believe on one, the world needs hope and it
can find it on art. Things as we see them can be changed in many different ways,
we can reimagine, recreate, rescue etc. Since 2000 many artists as Fabian Ciraolo
or Andrew Tarusov have been recreating the image of certain pop idols in many
ways, creating a new and maybe a better way to see our heroes and icons. There
are artists for all kinds of tastes, they have edited Disney characters, Hollywood
actors, pop idols, cartoon characters, all kinds of stuff, including tattoos in their
skin, fancy clothes, sexy looks and many other ways that make us wonder if they
really would be like that if they were alive right now, or they are just crying some on
their graves and others in their imaginary world about what has happen to their
image. Society is looking forward for a change and thats something notorious in
this times we are living, so what is necessary to create an appropriate edition of a
superhero in order to make them look like they were from the 20s? But why the
20s? We are talking about people making popular idols look modern, but what if
we actually make them look antique, as my project and proposition what I want is
to turn the tables and make the now trend of edition blackguards and represent my
heroes in another time. The question implies the fact we are not changing the
superheroes in order to be like what we are used to see in our time, neither their
original context, but a few decades ago, were class seemed to remain enough to
keep your underwear under your pants.
My hypothesis defines the fact that what I need it to create an appropriate edition
of a superhero in order to make them look like they were from the 20s is about a
good research in 20s culture and a good imagination and creativity, also we are
talking about the intention of the character we are using, so we actually need to
understand both, the character we are using and the context we are applying to
that specific character.

There are many artists who perform this kind of art that could be called geek art
or at least that the way it is defined, we have in one hand Fabian Ciraolo who
makes an appropriation of the collective images and redesign it, rethink it and
remakes it in order to bring us a great mix between the painting, illustration and
design in his works. He is looking to transmit nothing between his vibrant colors
and strong editions he is not looking to send a message more than to reimagine
things, to make them better for you or for others, further than that, he said he is not
interested in sending and specific message, his inspiration comes from a song, a
good day or an event in his life, we wants people to see his work and reimagine the
stories as they want, or just look at it and think is bad or offensive, he believes in
freedom so as its paintings and works.

Another quite representative artist is the Italian Emmanuel Viola, who has edited as
Ciraolo, but whit a little bit different characters, Viola went a little deeper looking
forward for less real characters, Viola has a particular taste for Disney characters
specially princess, but also some famous characters in greats movies as star wars
or even comic. Viola has a great sense for the illustration and defines his work as a
pin up edition with princesses who happen to be like models for him. Viola
reimagined the Disney princess as tattooed hipster girls, who like to tattoo, dance,
or just pose for his imagination. His work defines this princess as women of the 21 st
century, who are not afraid of showing themselves to the world, with a little bit of
their original personality in each of its works.

This Russian artist is another representative of this edited and well worked images
and remakes of representative characters of our daily life. Tarusov has dedicated
10 years of his life to study art, his work is also based on the pin up style and a
little more bold, his work shows in certain way much more skin, and contrary to
Viola he has done the villains and not the princess, but in certain way his work is
about make them much more sexy rather than hipster. His work is done the same
as the others, with illustration, painting and computer edition and design. What
defines Tarusov is how showy his work can be, the expressions he gets in his
work are amazingly detail and as Viola and Ciraolo he keeps the personality of the
character even do he is changing everything we know them for.

When we contrast these artists we can bring it up to a discussion between their

styles and techniques and what I can actually take from each of them in order to
make my own work. In one hand we have Ciraolo whos a more popular idol

person, he uses a controversial and pshycodelic technique which differentiates him

from the other two artists, since both of them Viola and Tarusov stick to the
characters style; they are not trying to make them look more like a human. The
Tarusov and Viola style works better for me since my edition process is done in the
paper and not in the computer, so from Ciraolo what is useful for my intentions is
his phsyscodelic style and great sense of perception and creation of the character.
In the other hand we have Viola and Tarusov, both good for my project, since I
want to stick to the technique originally used for those characters, which is
illustration and kind of a comic work. As Tarusov I want to do a more bald
expression of the character, much more sexier than what we are used to see, but
instead of a modern context a much more older one, my work is gonna be based
on making them look better but for consideration of someone of 1920 and not the
actual time.

Results:
As part of my results is important to say that it was a very joyful process in which I
did investigation and experimentation that lead me to the following results. After all
the process of experimentation we were able to see 2 possible results which would
be shown and explain respectively.

 Results #1:

This is the results number one which is an adaptation of the little mermaid
character into a more rebel, hipster and free character, Im also taking a few
freedoms in this drawing by changing the esthetics of the characters itself, since
Im using a more personal version of the character itself. I used color and pen, it
was a very interesting procedure since is like making a new character even though

it already exists and represents something for somebody. So thats were my

projects takes a very interesting spin and accomplishes its propose, which is
change this image we all recognize for something we still recognize because it
keeps the basic esthetics of the character but still it looks different, it looks cooler
in some way, the inclusion of the tattoos and the earrings was a very interesting
process as well, since they had to become part of the character itself, the needed
to be as if she itself had gone to the tattoo parlor and told the guy to make that to
her. So this appropriation process its very interesting and fulfilling. As part of
keeping the essence of the characters, we see that the colors are the same and
they are the biggest clue for us to recognize immediately the character. So its
important to see how the process its accomplished in the terms of appropriation
and in terms of the artistic references I used.

Results #2:

In this second part of my results we can see 3 different pieces that together create
a tryptic in which we can see three characters, Angela Merkel, Queen Elizabeth
and Pope Francis, in this part of the project I work in the aspect of personality and
character appropriation as well. The thing is that in this second result we can see
the evident difference between this and the first one, since in the 1 st one we kept
the nice and sexy esthetic weve been seeing in my artistic references, but for this
second result I tried to change the esthetic and for this issue I needed to use

different characters. At the beginning I tried to make these characters all sexy and
cool as the appropriation of the little mermaid, but then I realized that I could work
with the esthetics of this and change the game. So thats what I did, in order to pull
this out I used some pin up artists as reference and specially I used a model called
Tess Holiday which is an over waited pin up model, whos fighting against the
beauty parameters weve build as a society. Taking this into account I did the
experimentation with the woman and it turned out really good so I kept the project
and accomplish my problem as well using the change of esthetic and my
appropriation of the character into a new different thing which is an awesome
process.
Conclusions
Between all this polemic images we can conclude that the propose is most of the
times just to change your way of seeing things, to reimagine, to adequate things to
our time in order to make them more familiar or even less familiar to what we are
used to be. The work of this artists is bold, is sometimes reckless but it combines
with the freedom of our time, we are free to create or in this case to recreate those
things we love, in order to show those people who at the end would love how cool
our icons or heroes look. My findings were very successful and Im really happy
with my done work, since I experimented with what I said and work very hard on it.
I accomplished my appropriation of the image into different contexts which is great,
I change the little mermaid without vanishing who she is, and I did the same with
the 3 famous characters, which people actually recognized so it was all a success.
My last projects helped me a lot in order to get here since I worked with tattoo and
comic, so what I did was apply my ancient learnings in order to do a good work.
References
http://www.fabciraolo.com/
https://www.behance.net/evviart
http://www.tarusov.com/