CONCEPT
The idea for this project was very spontaneous. I accidentally discovered a genre called Bizarro fiction, when one of my friends was laughing on a group chat at the book called The Baby Jesus Butt Plug: Fairy-tale. I was so intrigued by the title, that I went through the rabbit hole and purchased a book full of best bizarro stories. I knew from the start that I will enjoy it and I will illustrate majority of the stories. I was not sure should I choose ants colony in a skeleton, or human dog firefighter, but than I started reading about a travelling dildo salesman and I had an idea. Why illustrate a bit if I can try illustrating whole story? And publish it (non-commercially) to include it in my portfolio?
After those questions few other conclusions arrived. Bizarro publisher is not big, got a niche target group and my style definitely fits there. What if I will send them printed picture book? Maybe they will like it? At the end of the day, they will see a finished product. There is 0.0001% chance they will buy it. If not, maybe they will offer me some commissions (in that point I just let myself dream).
After that stream of excitement, I looked up the author. I could not find him on Instagram, but I found him on Facebook. Seemed approachable. I messaged him, but first he did not see the message. So, I added him to friends list – and he saw it! Currently we are having conversation (I will include it in here, because I believe it is crucial to development).
And now I will explain what idea stands behind the visuals itself. Because of the specifics of bizarro I wanted to do something rough and weird. Use a lot of turpism and expressionist influence – do not make pretty aesthetic illustrations but illustrated expressions, more like an angry sketch done on a random piece of paper with any tool I can find. And against that I want to play with typography, by placing text in uncomfortable positions, roughly resembling illustrations on the other page. I have seen many zins and art projects using typo that way, but unfortunately except one example is all I can remember now (I will try to find more during the project).
In that point I am printing a book. But there is a possibility that there will be another twist to this project- I ordered print of 9 example illustrations with text. It is going to be done in a nice, high quality paper. It will let me see how they look, and I am planning to roughly sketch on a top of them. If I will be happy with result that is how final pages will look like. If not, I will create framed separate artwork using them.
