concept central

Do you know Tomer Hanuka? According to the innumerable sites that talk about this award-winning illustrator, he's worked with Time Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, MTV, among others. He's done a great deal of work in the funny book and fashion industry as well. According to an interview at formatmag, he got hooked on comics pretty early in his childhood in Israel.

The "...whole idea of superheroes, visual icons, worlds within panels" fascinated him in his youth, and that's when he decided to pursue creating his own stories in the medium. After his mandatory service in the Army, he decided to pursue art as a career and enrolled at New York's School of Visual Arts. Mr. Hanuka describes living and studying (and eventually teaching) at New York as the "...ultimate growing experience in the way it’s set up for the young and hungry to become comfortable and still hungry."

His longtime collaborators Lorenzo Mattotii and Nicolas de Crecy have proved most fruitful throughout his career. He keeps close ties with his brother, Asaf, (he's based in France) and collaborated on a number of projects on life in Israel.


Did I mention that he absolutely loves the medium of comics? Mr. Hanuka stated that he drew inspiration from "... art... books, movies, and images." He states "...Can you imagine your life without them? We are all made of other people’s dreams, our memories, a song that reminds us of that girl, a chain link of associations flicker endlessly in our psyche, all fused with culture we’ve consumed at one point and all 100% authentically ours."

When questioned in another interview done by Quiet Color about contemporary illustration, and the trends he has seen in wake of the recession, he believed that "...illustration is becoming very trendy is in advertising, in places that we’re not short of the classic places in terms of the aesthetic space they used to create."

 
He goes on to state how "...a lot of the corporate world taking street creds from graffiti artists and putting it on sneakers and putting it on billboards to get cool points in a very cynical way. And there’s a lot of like that anti-craft, scruffy, un-digital, unrefined illustration that finds its way into advertising big time." Wow. "Magazines are shrinking, newspapers are shrinking but advertising is growing for illustration… nobody believes photographs anymore because there is so much Photoshop, so a drawn image is suddenly a silver bullet exploding hearts of unsuspected preteens and other desired market shares."


You can read more about the aforementioned interviews at:

QC INTERVIEW: TOMER HANUKA

FORMATMAG: TOMER HANUKA

Be sure to go the man's site and learn more about his current work!
www.thanuka.com
And check http://tropicaltoxic.blogspot.com/ to learn about the man's process.