Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Jake Fried’s Hand-Drawn Animations Use Unconventional Materials

About 30 seconds into one of Jake Fried's hand-drawn animations, you're hit with the sense of how much time it took the artist to draw each frame of these intricate, multi-layered works. Fried works with a combination of art supplies and household materials: ink and gouache are paired with coffee and white out. Try doing such minuscule, detailed line work with the tip of a white out pen. Those things were not designed for the type of precision Fried somehow manages to elicit from them. View the animations after the jump.


Still from “Head Space”

About 30 seconds into one of Jake Fried’s hand-drawn animations, you’re hit with the sense of how much time it took the artist to draw each frame of these intricate, multi-layered works. Fried works with a combination of art supplies and household materials: ink and gouache are paired with coffee and white out. Try doing such minuscule, detailed line work with the tip of a white out pen. Those things were not designed for the type of precision Fried somehow manages to elicit from them.

His work is busy and surreal. The transitions between frames are sometimes rough, but this shakiness only serves to remind viewers of the slow, analog process that goes into creating these videos. In such a digitized medium as animation, it’s refreshing to be reminded of the presence of the human hand. Paired with eerie, ambient soundtracks, Fried’s visions unfold and morph into moving vignettes that can be both dreamlike and nightmarish, but equally fascinating either way.


“Head Space”

“Down Into Nothing”


“Raw Data”


“The Deep End”


“Sick Leave”


“Last Meal”


“Waiting Room”


“Night Fall”

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Somewhere on the scale of lovable to repulsive lie Sam Lyon's "Jelly Gummies," a series of experimental digital illustrations and GIFs the tickle the senses. These 3D-looking creatures make you want to reach out and poke your computer screen to feel their squishy texture, only to quickly recoil at their intestine-like sliminess. The jolly blobs flop and wiggle in Lyon's repetitive, animated GIFs. But the illustrator and designer puts them to another surprising use: clothing and textile designs. Many of the Jelly Gummies are featured in repeating patterns that he plans to make into fabrics, adding another dimension to his otherwise multi-sensory work.
In Tabaimo's worlds, nothing is as ordinary as it appears. Light bulbs morph into moons, walls dissolve, and trees turn into snakes. These eldritch environments capture the viewer who stands at the center, and transports him into an unknown underbelly of the everyday. The artist achieves a totaling effect by manipulating architectural elements and allowing hand-drawn animations that reference both Japanese manga and traditional Edo-period prints, to organically bleed out of the two-dimensional plane and into the exhibition space. The result is a pseudo-theater where the viewer is the main actor among anthropomorphic objects and a cast of characters, whose interplay raises social, political, and gendered topics of contemporary import.
Cartoonist and illustrator Dave Cooper has made a career of multiple passions. Whether it’s his animated shows for kids on Nickelodeon or his fine art practice, he’s garnered praise for his distinctive style and irreverent humor. (He was last mentioned on cctvta.com here.) In an interview with Hi-Fructose, he talks about his studio space and returning to the canvas.
Colin Raff’s “Perturbatorium” is a collection of unsettling animations and collage work. Recalling the work of Max Ernst or Terry Gilliam, the work has a particular movement because of his “step-frame animation” method. The animations are rooted in Raff's photo-collage work, which he has described as having "distinct 20th c. antecedents (Heartfield, Ernst, Höch, etc.)."

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List