Influences part 23: Thomas Allen

Yesterday a newspaper advert for National Book Tokens reminded me of the awesome trick photography of Thomas Allen, whose work influenced some research for my animated graduation film last year - so I've decided to promote his work on my blog.



Thomas Allen is an American photographer who, over the past decade, has developed a trademark portfolio of work by using modified pulp fiction books as his main subject.

As you'll see from the images featured in this blog post, Thomas Allen creates these highly intriguing photographs by using his mastery of composition and lighting in an otherwise simple process, as I will outline below...

- Starting off with standard pulp fiction novels (as popular in the 1950s), the artist searches for character illustrations that will serve his needs for effectively creating a single photograph to tell an intriguing new story.
- Having settled on particular characters and the composition for arranging the modified book/characters, the artist uses a scalpel to carefully cut free most of the illustrated character - although in many cases parts of the illustrated character will remain attached to the rest of the book cover so that the character can hinge and pop-up/out from the rest of the book (creating part of the 3D effect that you see in the final photographs).
- With the books modified and the characters popping-out, the artist arranges the book(s) in his desired composition, adjusts the lighting to create the desired aesthetic, and then sets-up his camera with a suitable depth-of-field (usually so that only a small section of the overall composition is in focus, while the rest of the image looks blurry) and then takes his photographs.
- The end result should now show the original book in a near-normal condition, except that the illustrated characters now seem to be alive and jumping out from the book itself (with the depth-of-field further enhancing this illusion).

The process that I've just described sounds really simple, and while it is not too complex to understand the basics of; from my experience of the technique last year, it does take a bit of time and persistence to get to grips with before you can start progressing it in your own way...
I reckon it took me about 2 hours to get used to my brothers digital SLR camera and to set-up a basic 3D-effect with modified books before I could even begin taking decent photos in the style of Thomas Allen. Even after those 2 hours of getting used to everything, I spent roughly a further 3 hours experimenting with everything and taking over 400 photos - only to end up with about 15 photos that I was genuinely happy with when viewed on the computer!


Allen's style has a really rare kind of aesthetic that many people appreciate as soon as they see it. In many ways I would compare it to the stereoscopic (3D glasses) effect that is currently sweeping through Hollywood cinema.
Allen's photography is simply a delightful little illusion that seems to appeal to everyone, in much the same way that everyone used to gasp with delight when an object leapt out from the cinema screen.
If you've not seen his work before, I hope you enjoy the small sample of work displayed here, and I'd urge you to look through the links listed below for more...







Related links:
- Thomas Allen's blog

- Thomas Allen's work at: www.mnartists.org

- Thomas Allen's work on The Foley Gallery website

- Robert Ayers in conversation with Thomas Allen

- Thomas Allen: Uncovered - Book of photographs for sale at Amazon.co.uk

Press feature & other news

From 10th-12th July 2009 Scotland's biggest music festival, T In The Park, took place in my hometown. For this event Mercedes-Benz UK supplied the local police force, Tayside Police, with a little Smart Fortwo police car to test around the festival site.
Official photographs of the highly popular little police car were taken prior to the big weekend, and I was asked to digitally enhance a selection of those photos for a nationwide press release by Mercedes-Benz UK.

The heading photograph (above) is the one used for the Mercedes press release, which has been featured in The Herald newspaper and is now spreading across the Internet. I had spent all of the Sunday evening during the music festival working at home on 10 of the official photos while The Killers headline set live on BBC Scotland blasted out from our surround sound system, yet this is the only photo that has been officially released.

Since T In The Park almost 2 weeks ago, the little Smart police car has now begun 'touring' around Scotland on official police duties with 4 of Scotland's forces, so it could be in a town near you one of these days (if you're in central Scotland)!

Today I was responsible for escorting the police Smart demonstrator across the central belt from Lothian & Borders Police HQ to Strathclyde Police HQ. Asides from 'unintentionally' breaking into the Lothian & Borders HQ, I also got to watch everyones pleasantly surprised reactions to the Smart car as we spent an hour scooting between destinations.
During an unplanned stop-off at the Mercedes-Benz Glasgow showroom, all their customers and employees (including the Mercedes mechanics working on much more sporty/luxurious/expensive models like the SL) hastily broke away from their engagements to see the quirky police car up close... (I don't think I've ever seen so many camera phones at one time!)

Saying as the environmentally-friendly Smart Fortwo police vehicle has been photographed so much, and is now making it's way around several towns in Scotland (therefore likely to cause its picture to spread across mobile phones and social networking sites like a cyber swine flu), I've decided to release some of the other T In The Park photos that I digitally enhanced for Mercedes.







On the way home I got to see Ibrox stadium (the home of Rangers Football Club) for my first time ever. (NOTE: I'm not a Rangers supporter, but I've always wanted to see their historic stadium).
Many of my close childhood friends passionately support Rangers, and one family whom I have been friends with for many years have always had a large picture of the Ibrox main entrance hanging in their home. That image of the stadium with its grand Sandstone masonry and large blue iron gates has always actively held a place in my mind, so I'm happy that I finally got to drive along the road outside the main entrance.
I'm perhaps slightly disappointed that I never got a better view of the stadium, and that it looked a lot smaller in person than the pictures in my mind led me to believe for all those years, but the historic architecture of Ibrox has certainly got a strong characteristic that I really admire and strongly regret about not being in most other football stadiums today...
(I'll save an analysis about the architecture of football stadiums for another day).

A mine of design

While drawing a new PoV shot for my film over the last two days I've spent even more time on the Internet looking for design influences... I just couldn't help myself - i love 'research'!
Over the last two days I've found so many wierd and wonderful things!!! Here's a round-up...

WebUrbanist is a great resource with loads of databases of very unusual things... One such database is 20 Unusually Brilliant Bookcase & Bookshelf Designs.

WebUrbanist also had these evocative databases collectively known as The (WU)ltimate 33-Part Guide To Abandonded Cities. I found it really useful for ideas to develop the spooky run-down aesthetic designs of the house in my film.

Another similar link is at Askville where people replied to a question asking 'What defines a house as spooky or haunted?' Although most of the answers are fairly common, it also has a few really unusual answers, and lots of good imagery and related links.

I found this blog post about Weird Chairs called That's What You Call Pain In The Ass. There are chairs made from cutlery, sharpened pencils, screws, and even featuring 3 sheep heads! But this set above, designed to look like a child's drawing, is my favourite.

Opera78 is a design board established in 2005 by Fiodor SUMKIN, and has lots of cool illustrations.

Tim Sale is the graphic novel illustrator who creates the artwork for Heroes. I just checked back on his website yesterday for the first time in ages, and forgot how great his work looks.

Earlier this evening I saw the advert for Ladyhawke's debut album on the TV, and it looks so awesome! It has wonderful watercolour illustrations and the coolest rotoscoping I've ever seen!
I checked out the music video for My Delirium on YouTube... It mixes live-action with the really cool rotoscoping and even has long sequences of animation created by digitally manipulating a series of watercolour paintings.
The illustrations and paintings were made by Sarah Larnach. And her watercolour paintings were turned into the awesome animation sequences by Frater at Partizan Lab.

Influences

Here is a list of my artistic influences from various art disciplines. (The list will grow as my own work develops over time).
I aim to write about the work of each artist and highlight how they influence me so that readers can learn more about my influences, and hopefully gain something from this.
So that readers can easily access more information about any of the artists listed, I have linked most of the artists' names to either the blog post that I have already written about their work, or to an appropriate website that showcases their work...

FROM ANIMATION:
- The animation department at ECA
- Piotr Dumala
- Aleksandr Petrov
- Yuri Nortsein - watch video on YouTube
- Michael Dudok de Wit - see work at ACME Filmworks.com
- Aleksandra Korejwo - her website
- Caroline Leaf - her website
- Paul Bush - his website
- Pixar - their website
- Aardman - their website
- Hanna-Barbera - read Wikipedia article
- The Fleischer Brothers - read Wikipedia article
- Walt Disney - read Wikipedia article

FROM FILM:
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Aki Kaurismäki
- Quentin Tarantino
- Tim Burton
- David Lynch - read Wikipedia article
- Martin Scorsese - read Wikipedia article
- Michel Gondry - see work at Partizan.com
- Nicolas Provost - his website
- French New Wave film theories - read Wikipedia article
- RKO Radio Pictures & Film Noir

FROM PAINTING:
- Edward Hopper
- Berthe Morisot
- Vincent Van Gogh
- Paul Cezanne
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Claude Monet
- Mary Cassatt - see work at MaryCassatt.org
- Rembrandt
- Vermeer
- Gil Elvgren
- J.D. Fergusson
- Camille Pissarro
- Wassily Kandinsky
- Pablo Picasso
- Banksy - his website

FROM ILLUSTRATION:
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
- Arthur Rackham
- Edward Gorey
- Gustave Dore
- Frank Miller
- Tim Sale - his website
- Rene Gruau
- Zina Saunders

FROM PHOTOGRAPHY:
- Thomas Allen
- Henri Cartier Bresson

MISC:
- Romanticism
- Art Deco
- Art Nouveau
- Gothic art
- Expressionism
- Music videos - blog post 1
- Music videos - blog post 2
- TV adverts - blog post 1

Research experiments after Thomas Allen

Today I experimented with trying to make flat bookcovers look 3D(ish)... It is just a bit of practice-led research for my essay, but the technique might find its way into my degree film if I can get it to work properly... Below are some tests:




The technique is based on the really cool work of Thomas Allen (below), which is certainly worth searching for!


I was introduced to Allen's work by Alison Cross, who used it as research for her beautiful graduation film Tale Soup (below) produced at ECA in 2008.