A Tale of Two Wonderlands...

I saw the Teaser Trailer of Tim Burton's upcoming "Alice In Wonderland" film. Let's be clear about many things up front:

1) My illustrated version of Alice has nothing to do with the upcoming film by Tim Burton except that it might end up being released within proximity by random circumstance.

2) I cannot realistically or even egotistically compare myself to his entire team of talent. Even if his version of Alice turned out to be disasterous (which I doubt), it goes without saying that he deserves the utmost respect for his long running level of excellence.

That being said, I watched the teaser trailor, which is available to view as of today around the web, and it looks as visually stunning as one would expect a film from Burton's camp to look.

Inevitably, it's only human for me to compare the film with, not only my humble book version, but the hundreds of versions of Alice that I've become aware of over the years. I was pleased and heartened to see that, although the film looks rich and vivid in detail beyond belief, I , as a mere single artist with nothing but some sketchbooks, pencils and one computer, can still keep up with the power of a gazillion dollar think tank, army-sized art department and a state-of-the-art renderfarm of creative computation. (At least keep up with the immaginative details of a single frame, anyway) There's something comforting in that.

Next entry I will point out a few things about the teaser clip that are innovative when comparing them to the vast archives of Alice imagery that I'm aware of.

I'm going to start showing cropped sections of my Alice art, as a teaser trailor of my own!

A Decade in Wonderland...

Alice In Wonderland is one of the all-time most popular children’s books ever written. It has been translated into 125 different languages and has never been out of print. In 1998, it became the most expensive children’s book ever known, as an 1865 edition was sold at an auction for $1.5 million (eclipsed later by J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard).

Over 100 editions have been illustrated, each a unique and wondrous reflection of its time, and a coveted literary and artistic treasure. Nearly one decade ago, I began outlining and sketching my own version, which set out to accomplish the lofty goals of:

1) Creating original and highly contemporary illustrations for my version-being the first to incorporate both time-honored, hand-done media blended with 3D digital sculpture. There has not been any version like this and the closest thing to it would be Tim Burton’s forthcoming movies based on Alice In Wonderland.

2) To be the first artist who actually tries to bridge both time periods, drawing on rich Art Nouveau and Victorian ads and antiques and mixing this with the spectacle of high strangeness in today’s "wonderland" of high-speed pop culture, art and media, so that Alice’s dreamworld is unlike anything ever imagined-like a dreamworld should be!

3) To do justice to the original 1865 work and respectfully preserve all of the classic text by Lewis Carroll.

4) To create a version of Alice In Wonderland that is noteworthy, eagerly sought, collected and loved by fans of the original tale.

This Blog is a book end in the story of what will become of my version.