Research

Comic Book/Concept Artist
Robert Kirkman

The comic book artist I have chosen to research is Robert Kirkman, famous for creating the Walking Dead. He is an American comic book artist who has also created Invincible for Image comics. In addition to Ultimate X-Mean and Marvel Zombies for Marvel Comic. 

He has also collaborated with Image Comics co-founder Todd McFarlane on the series Haunt. He is one of the five partners of Image Comics, and the only one of the five who was not one of its co-founders.

I personally love his art style because it is realistic yet holds those thick comic book lines. Even down to the shading he has created character depth and it shows how dark this series is. The gore in his comics are also one of the reasons why many are drawn to his style.

His work has a sense of eeriness and a disturbing nature. He has a unique style with his art and I love how he can make you feel with his drawings.

Animator/Artist

David Firth

I chose David Firth as he is my favourite animator and one of my favourite artists, He has an air of creepiness when it to his animations and his art. David Firth is most famous for his work such as Salad Fingers which now has a total of 10 episodes each being 5 to 10 minutes long. David mostly uses Flash however he differs from other artist because of his techniques of idea generation. Firth has said in an interview that he keeps sketch pads by his bedside in order to document his dreams which he uses in his animations. I love this idea and I take inspiration from him.

Not only does his document his dreams for animations but he explores abandoned buildings for "textures" he can use within his work. He will take supplies with him to draw on the walls and take images of the abandoned building which he also uses in many of his animations. He creates an atmosphere within his work and it makes you feel uneasy which is what I like when looking at his art.

For the music of his animations he finds old vinyl's which are dirty and have scratches on. To him this creates an eerie atmosphere which helps with his animation's storyline.

His website is called Fat-Pie. http://www.fat-pie.com/

Analysing Art and Design

Artist Name:

David Firth

Title:

Salad Fingers 2: Friends

Date Made (Upload Date):

July 4th 2008

Place Made (If Known):

Doncaster, England

Formal Elements:

David's second episode of the infamous Salad Fingers holds an air of a creepy atmosphere. The music has static and an eerie sound which is repeated. It suits the nature of Salad Fingers who is said to be involved in a Nuclear War which gives him the weird appearance and the almost mentally insane feeling.

The art style is fairly simple and has no blending which shows that it has been made on Flash. The thick black lines flicker showing that he redrawn each frame to make it look more scary and creepy. The animation itself is very dark and consists of mostly greens and browns. The images have almost scratched textures which adds to the creepiness.

Subject Matter:

The subject matter is the bald headed, green man named Salad fingers due to his long green fingers. The reason behind the name was because David use to play guitar and his class friends called him salad fingers. The animation is about Salad Fingers and his "friends" which are finger puppet.

Initial Meanings:

No one really understands what goes through David's mind when he animates however Salad Fingers has been left to the viewer to figure out what is going on. A lot of theories are that a Nuclear war happened which caused the landscape to be bare with just "floor Sand" and the odd tree which Salad Fingers believes to be his child. The meaning behind salad fingers is based on the fact David was called Salad Finger for playing the guitar but he developed it in to a creepy story due to his vivid dreaming.

One Comic/Many Artist

Iron Man

Iron man was designed by two artist, Don Heck and Jack Kirby, the character however was created by Stan Lee. He made his first appearance in Tales of Suspense. (March 1963). 

Don Heck:

Born January 2, 1929 In New York. One of his earliest known comics was Weird Terror in September 1952.


Jack Kirby: 
Born August 28, 1917 and died February 6, 1994. He was considered the most influential comic book artist and one of the major innovators in the comic book industry,

Cultural research:

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (Zombies)

Map: origins

Call of Duty World at War, Black ops 1 and 2 are most famous for the unlimited rounds of the undead. The storyline wasn’t debuted until Black Ops 1 when the characters spoke to each other and the player which was different for the Call of Duty franchise. A large part of the Call of Duty franchise influences is War films, comics and real accounts of different wars. (World War 1, 2, Vietnam)

Due to the amount of content that Call of Duty zombies contained I have decided to do research on one particular map called Origins which is part of the Apocalypse DLC pack released for Xbox August 27^th 2013 and on September 26^th 2013 for Playstation.

The game

The map is based in 1918 during World War 1 on the battlefield of Northern France in a Dieselpunk-style which still holds its historical references considering the content such as giant robots being powered by element 115. The map has references to World War 1 trenches and the environment represents the conditions of the trenches in that time era. The game is based on how the zombies came into being which was the effects of Element 115 with it's strange powers. Not only does the environment mirror the research of World War 1 but the zombies are wearing what German soldiers would have worn and wearing gas masks. In the cinematic at the beginning the first zombie to appear was a Roman empire soldier which was buried under the trenches of northern France. Also the dead of World War 1 were reanimated which then killed the surviving people.Only the four main characters survived the zombie herd.