Work on Freedom 5 has just ended, and I finally get a little free time in the studio. The first thing I did was to grab my Tekkon Kinkreet dvd and ask for Ando-san’s autograph, who was the co-director on the film.

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Takeru’s maglev hoverbike from Freedom.

Now…what would one built with Lego look like ?
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A piece of conceptual artwork done for Freedom 4.

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Design for one of two new Freedom posters to be given away as prizes in an upcoming Nissin Cup Noodle Campaign. This is actually a scene appearing in Freedom 4, where Takeru says ” やっぱり外で食ってうまいよな！” – which roughly translates as “It ( Ramen ) just taste better outdoors !” Whatever that means.

Anyway, you probably won’t notice this, but if you are to examine the poster again in detail you might notice that Takeru’s noodle cup is just gargantuan ! Sure, we have 大盛り ( jumbo ) sized cup ramen here in Tokyo, but that’s really pushing it. A correctly sized cup would have looked tiny in Takeru’s hands, so I figured the modellers scaled that up upon request from Nissin.

I believe I first heard of the obscure word Chiaroscuro many many years ago as an art elective student in Victoria School – My then art teacher, a distinguished Irish gentleman named Paul O’shea, was an accomplished artist who taught the subject with such passionate fervor that Art history left a deep, lasting impression on me and continues to be a big source of inspiration for my works today. Mr O’shea also pronounced Chiaroscuro ( and Contrapposto ) beautifully; I lucidly remember my classmates and me grinning in childish pleasure every time the word escaped his lips.

Chiaroscuro, simply put, means light and darkness. In painting terms, it denotes the use of deep variations in and subtle gradations of light and shade to create the illusion of three-dimensionality, often to dramatic effect. The Baroque artist Caravaggio was a champion of Chiaroscuro, creating paintings ( Supper at Emmaus, below ) as hauntingly beautiful now as they were 400 years ago.

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With the first Rebuilt of Evangelion film hitting theatres in a month’s time the advertising onslaught is on, and what better strategem than to infiltrate the local ubiquitous コンビニ ? ( convenience stalls )

First off we have the Evangelion Doritos chips, followed by the iced milk coffee. Not a bad combination for an afternoon snack. The limited stamp collection was released a little earlier ago. These items were all cursory purchases; in that I didn’t set out specifically hunting for them but simply noticed it by accident, so there must be plenty of other merchandise out there for the EV fan.

Product placement through Anime is commonplace here in Japan, ( Freedom Project is an excellent example ), something which I feel creates considerable vibrancy and dynamism to both parties when executed skilfully. Sometimes “Product Placement” can be an oxymoron, because the very existence of the animation is to sell the product.

Evangelion Stamp Collection available here.