Gianluigi Toccafondo - The Tail

Gianluigi Toccafondo is a very talented painter, illustrator and animator who lives in Milan since 1987. He was born in the tiny country of San Marino (like Nicoletta Ceccoli) in 1965, and received his artistic training from his ceramist father and later at ISIA graphic school in Urbino. He has collaborated with many important Italian publishers and magazines, and is famous for the animated videos he creates for advertising and tv show title sequences. Toccafondo has also produced seven animated short films as personal projects. For his 1989 debut La coda (the tail), he used about 1200 stills from Buster Keaton movies, which he photographed, xeroxed, painted and then filmed with a 35mm camera.

The animalarium wishes you a wonderful holiday!

Illustration by John Alcorn

Bestiarium Wilkonia - The Horses

This is the second in a series of posts dedicated to the works of Polish artist Józef Wilkon.

You can see Wilkon's big cats and read a short biography here.

We sailed away on a winter's day

...thinking of Joanna Newsom, this sweet stop-motion video was produced 

by Jovana Sarver in the Film and Video classroom of her high school in Harrisburg, PA.

the sight of bridges and balloons makes calm canaries irritable!

The Meadowlark and the Chim-choo-ree and the Sparrow

Amy Dover is a young artist from County Durham in North East England. 

She studied Art and Graphic Design, and after graduating in 2008, 

has been devoting her talents to art, illustration and letterpress printing.

Amy's draws inspiration from nature, folktales and ancient myths. 

She loves antiques and vintage ephemera, and sometimes uses old books 

and letters as a support for her graphite pencil drawings.

Amy also loves listening to music, and for her degree show she decided to illustrate 

some of the animal metaphors contained in Joanna Newsom's Ys. Seeing her Ys-inspired

 artworks on Behance really piqued my interest, since I am a huge Newsom fan. 

In fact, after discovering Ys, I spent months obsessively listening to it and extolling 

its virtues to family and friends. I think that Amy's project is a fantastic idea, since

 Newsom's songs are full of poetic narratives, deep symbolism and beautiful imagery.

 Dover's haunting animal pictures, much like Joanna's songs, are exquisitely 

and traditionally crafted, and explore the dramatic aspects of the natural world 

and its conflictual relation with our "civilized" approach to life.

Blind My Buttons with Salt. Fill My Long Ears with Bees,

from Newsom's Sawdust and Diamonds

Ursula, from Monkey and Bear

Half-word, from Only Skin

Amy's first solo show was held last July at her sister's Electrik Sheep gallery in Newcastle,

and her prints, stickers and postcards can be purchased from her website.