Having done the creature collage project with students several times I was looking for a long term; just-for-the-fun-of-it, collage project of my own to dip into now and again.
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These are test pieces for a new stream of work based on the idea of designing sci-fi street gangs and placing them in real life surroundings. The origins of this go back to an idea I had in 2018 for squads of four soldiers, each with a different talent / theme. Then I saw the illustrations of Gerald Leung:
...about the same time as the release of Apex Legends and another viewing of Walter Hill's The Warriors. So I started to think of gangs and I started to think in threes and I started to think of themes. Caaaan you dig it?
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| Gerald Leung: Brackmetal |
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| Walter Hill's Warriors |
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| Apex Legends; EA & Respawn Ent. |
As I was about to take Animation students to Prague for a week exploring and drawing; I made some quick character assets to drop onto images of the graffiti that I knew was in Prague. As the first characters all had guns it seemed a bit less visually aggressive (and cliched) to have spray cans and cameras as their weapon of choice.
More gangs are in the pipeline utilizing the cultures of skateboarding, tattooing, basketball, hustling, biking and surfing.
So these are the beginnings of the work; rough composites following on from the tests in Prague, with bits missing, fuzzy edges, etc.
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| Plague Doctor gang member on top of Fuchs 2; a venue on a bridge over the Vltava River. Looks disused but isn't. |
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| Kabuto gang member, tram lines near Charles Bridge / River Vltara. |
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| Old Town gang member with experimental aerosol cannon, Tesnov, Prague. |
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| Old Town gang member; graffiti wall (not much graffiti in Old Town itself). |
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| New Town gang member, Underpass near Vltara River. |
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| Kabuto gang member, outside derelict canal building near Barton Road swing bridge, Manchester. |
