Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Life With Girls - My Neighbor Totoro

We love My Neighbor Totoro. When the girls were very young, this movie captured their attention and imagination in a way that was just amazing. One of the things that we especially loved about it was that it was just about a family going through a rough time. The loved each other and were good role models for the girls. Watching the Miazaki movies in comparison with modern American shows, I'm coming to the conclusion that needing to have a desperate struggle between good and evil is a conceit of Hollywood.

In 2012, I created a calendar featuring the characters from Life With Girls dressed as characters from movies that I loved and still love. Calling it my "poor man's portfolio, it was a way that I could offer 12 high quality illustrations for a very reasonable price. The concept behind this personal project was that the kids would have super high quality, movie authentic costumes, and the parents would have the kind of crummy "mom and dad made these" costumes. Each scene had to make sense in a setting that we could reasonably be expected to set this up if we'd done it for real. It was a lot of fun researching the real costumes, as well as figuring out a way to make the parent's knock offs and settings. 

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