Art & Inspiration letters from NIGHTEͶ (Nathan Guilhot)
My personal magazine documenting my creative journey :)
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Good morning!
How is spring going for you so far? :)
I'm so happy to finally see the sun coming back. It motivates me even more to make art! This week I have more illustrations to show you, but also a lot of tidbits of inspiration that I'm excited to share with you!
Illustration progress of the week!
Here is my usual weekly illustration report 🫡
As a reminder, I started the project of redoing my favorite scenes from my inktober project into fully fledged illustrations to add to my gallery, and I’m happy to share more progress with you :)
First thing first, here is the finished illustration I showed you last week:
You can see that I corrected and added a few extra details since last time; I’m super happy with how it turned out!
I’m also so surprised by how fast I was able to finish it! Of course, most of it is because I already thought about the subject and composition back in October, and this made the rest of the process much more pleasant :)
Now, drawing some roofs is also in my comfort zone 😄 And I intend to do it again!
Here is the sketch of the next illustration I’ll be redoing: The East Port!
Original sketch from October!
This one is a bit more heavy when it comes to details, but I’m excited to show you progress next week :) I’ll do my best!
The Red Turtle 🐢
This weekend I had the opportunity to watch again a movie I really love: The Red Turtle.
It’s a very unique film by itself: It’s the story of a man shipwrecked on a deserted island, but beyond its premise it’s a beautiful poetic story, with incredible animation and music.
The backgrounds were done traditionally! :D
Outside of the movie itself, how it came to be was very unique: it was produced by Studio Ghibli, and it’s in fact the only time they ever financed a project outside of Japan. The whole project was made in France, and it really shows in the style. It has this unique French-European aesthetic that influenced me a lot.
The exact story is even more incredible. Here’s an extract from a ScreenDaily article about how this came to be:
Around the time of Ponyo I visited Studio Ghibli,” recounts Maraval [one of the producers], referring to Miyazaki’s 2008 film. “Miyazaki showed me Father and Daughter and said ‘I want you to find the director for me’. I said that would be complicated. He replied, ‘If one day Studio Ghibli decides to produce an animator from outside the studio, it will be him’.
“On my return, the head of acquisitions tracked down Dudok de Wit and we visited him in London to ask if he would be interested in doing a feature. He said he wasn’t but we added: ‘Too bad, Studio Ghibli wants to produce it’, and his eyes lit up.”
And that’s how Michaël Dudok de Wit became the director of the movie. Crazy story :D
As I said earlier, the animation is stunning: it has weight, expression, and it feels human. I was actually convinced that it was rotoscoped at least partially, but it turns out they did this using footage only as reference! Anyway, you got it, I’m super impressed.
It has no dialogue, it’s pretty, poetic, a bit sad, and I really encourage you to watch it if you haven’t already!
(I don’t think it’s available to stream anywhere? Netflix used to have it but it doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Your best bet is to rent it then I think… It’s surprisingly hard to watch good movies legally sometimes.)
Cool links of the week
Go here, turn on the volume, and click on the first/second item at the top of the page. I promise you, if you like weird Japanese humour and experimental web project you will not regret it! It has been in my head for 2 weeks now 😄
Since the last newsletter, it has been the 128th anniversary of the article about Waffles riding a horse in Philadelphia. You can read the original newspaper from March 18th 1898 here. It has some fun details :)
I hope you have a good time as well 🙂↕️
I love this gouache illustration from Victoria Maderna 😊 Incredible work!
Alright, thanks a lot for reading! :)
If you enjoy and want to support my art, I invite you to have a look at my art shop! If you need some colors on your wall, I’m sure you’ll find something you like there!