I’m with “I’m with Coco”!
I'm With Coco by Mike Mitchell
The whole Conan engtanglement has really caught people’s attention and it has generated alot of different kind of reactions. One of my favourite one of those, is this I’m With Coco –movement. Why I like it? The reason is this already iconic digital painting by Mike Mitchell.
Many professional digital artists are working in entertainment industries. Movies and games employ alot of artists that are perhaps working on with different kind of special effects, such as background matte paintings and character, creature and prop concept designs. I’d argue that the most well known internet names in the field of digital art are known best for their work with major Hollywood movies that are filled with special effects. I’d dare to say, that perhaps too many movies are solely based on just action packed, cutting edge effects. Bearing this in mind, it is no suprise that the role models and idols of digital art come from where artists draw robots and sci-fi landscapes for living.
If you look Sijun.com or CGsociety.org –forums, you can find huge amount of paintings (and other digital art works too) that are clearly influenced by the entertainment industry. I’m not a huge fan of these kinds of works. I honestly think that there are enough of robots, mechas, space station hangars, hyper tech cars, cheesy future laser beam war scenes, swat troops from the future and stuff like that already. At the level of ideas and originality, many of there pics are just copies and rip offs of one another.
Then there is another kind of group, so to speak, that populate places like Apedogs.com and the legendary Eatpoo.com. Check those places out and you can see the difference between the styles and topics of the artworks. I personally like this type of work alot more. Instead of mechas and laser guns, there are more original ideas and more high flying creativity with nice sense of humour and randomness, that you would probably most likely to see in book and magazine illustrations, CD-covers, gig posters and t-shirt prints. Unfortunately this seems to be the minority group and non-funny mecha warriors seems to be the rulers of planet digital painting.
The now famous portrait of Conan is, in my opinion, the kind of usage of the digital painting I’d like to see more in the main stream. I’m really happy that the picture has caught so much popularity. I think it’s a great idea to paint a stylish portrait of Conan digitally. I admire these artists who get these ingenious ideas about interesting topics and not just paint mindless robots, without even working with the movies, or just because Craig Mullins paints them too.
I’ve liked Mike’s works in the past as well. About a year or two ago, I saw this really funny pic, in Eatpoo.com perhaps, of a pirate, who has two wooden legs, two eye patches, and hooks on each hand. The pirate is making some sort of a jumping surprise attack while yelling his battle cry. The pic is hilarious and fell in love with pic immediately.
When I first saw the I’m With Coco –painting, I became interested of it. It looked cool and the idea behind it was great, and when I saw a larger version of it, I realized that it was done in Photoshop (or possibly in Painter). Of course I had to find out who made it and when I landed in Mike’s website, I realized that I’ve seen and liked some of his works previously too, which was indeed a very happy surprise.
So very nice work Mike! Good cause, great painting and a big thank you for making the world of digital paintings less cheese covered pile of mechas.
