Why Tilt?

Conceptual art and rough colour test for on of the Tilt cast....

I turned down an apprenticeship with Disney many years ago to pursue my own direction. A choice vaguely criticised when I made it, though never regretted for a minute, for despite the 'opportunities' and shiny possibilities offered with it, it simply wasn't the raw creative, passion driven life I envisioned for myself.

Years passed and the shiny bauble of animation that had so fascinated me and first attracted me to the path of an artist at eight years old started to dull and the more intricate, complicated neusances of comic art made me pack up that childhood toy (though still fondly loved) and move from video dreams to illustrated page.

And then I met Tilt, and I decided this was the thing I had been looking for when i turned down Disney. But what was it that made it so attractive?

The alternative comic scene is stagnating.

A real example of this is simply asking yourself to name five well known alternative comic writers (Not counting personal favourites well know to you and your friends alone). Neil Gaiman. Alan Moore. Jhonen Vaquez... and... and...
Look at the shelves of the big comic book stores and find the shelves flooded but only a few creators are represented. The big local deamon has ten or so shelves...four for Neil, four for Alan...and a handful of sundry tucked to the left.
That handful is heartbreaking....that handful should be fists full - swelling with new ideas, compelling and tugging at sleeves to pull people in to new realms.

My personal heartbreak is the art. The art is either edgy, angular and oh so Gothic in the manner of Vaquez, or hails back to the rounded, mannish and still, unfortunately, live and kicking classic western style started by superman and slavishly repeated and updated by everyone who could pick up a "How to draw comics" book.

This is what I want to break. It's a cycle that needs a breath of fresh air and as ambitious, possibly even arrogant as it sounds, that's what I strive to be. That's what I want to represent in my artwork for Tilt.

Myth and Fairytale is always dangerous ground. It's ripe and fertile for stories, and has been ploughed, sewn and harvested countless times, but because of that the yield is often wilted, dry and flavourless, the stories oh so done and the style of art cliche. "Modernized" fairytale is even more over harvested then classic. How many feminist Snow Whites can you have? How many pictures of blood soaked, axe wielding Red Riding Hood?

So. How does one make this poor, starved resource tempting fodder again? Certainly not by digging in the classics, but by stopping to look at what fairytale really means.
Fairytale isn't a label exclusively owned by a specific set of stories. It's actually a genre tag, like fantasy, crime or thriller. You don't need to re write old tales, you simply need to examine them for what makes them a fairytale...and perhaps dig a little further than the surface of tales. Suddenly the ground is new again, fresh threads to weave with - and more importantly, new design ideas to interpret.

Tilt is the crop grown in this ground. A fresh fairytale and a damned exciting project for any artist to bend their talents to.

This is why I chose Tilt to work on....this is why I'm looking forward to years of work with the glimmer of a child promised candy. I have boundaries to push....

Natalie