Inspiration: Keith Thompson

   I'd like to make a record of some of the artists or resources that inspire me, and I thought I'd start with one of my favourite artists, whom artwork I have loved for a very long time. His work has always been a source of great interest and inspiration to me, because of its illustrative nature. Here is a link to his blog!

http://blog.keiththompsonart.com/

   Keith Thompson is a freelance artist, who has worked on films, games, and produced beautiful book illustrations. He drew all of the illustrations for Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy, one of which I have read. I have yet to read the others, even though I really enjoyed the first.

   These are some illustrations Keith Thompson did for the book 'Drakia'. I think they're fantastic, I absolutely love the atmosphere he achieves in his work. Especially in the bottom image, I love scanning over the picture and seeing what creepy additions can be seen in the scene. That's actually another thing I've always loved about Keith Thompson's work, it is so detailed and I enjoy looking closely at his work to see if there is something I didn't notice the first time. I could seriously just sit and look at his work for ages.

    These are some of my favourite pieces by him, because they have a dark but still quite beautiful nature about them. The Urban Faun, for instance, is eerie and haunting but still soft and gorgeous. I think this feeling is achieved by it being black and white, with the mood being achieved with the tonal qualities. The character is very much the subject of the piece, with the background being subtly hinted at in the background.

   Ooh! Something I didn't know that I only found out the other day, Keith Thompson created the creepy creatures in a film called 'Don't be afraid of the Dark'. I haven't actually seen this, but I've seen an advert for it, I THINK on the trailers on the Chernobyl Diaries DVD. I will have to cover THAT another time because, how interesting I find the Chernobyl disaster is a whole separate issue.

   Anyway, these things are horrible. But I can totally see elements of Keith Thompson's style in there. This illustration for the movie that goes alongside these is so creepy, but beautifully drawn.

  

 It made me really happy actually to find that a 3D character artist called Alex Stratulat, who has made a model inspired by the above piece by Keith Thompson called 'The Thief'. You can look at his other works here; http://alexstratulat.com/

   This model is very beautifully made and very detailed. Alex Stratulat uses a vast range of tools and programs to create models such as this, like 3D Studio Max, Softimage XSI, Maya, ZBrush, Mudbox, Unfold 3D, V-Ray, Mental Ray, KeyShot, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effect,  Corel Draw, Corel Photopaint. This makes me realise the competition that is out there, and that I must strive for every bit of knowledge I can, and learn all the time, wherever and whenever possible!