This text will be an attempt to summarise my final work, The Philbert Project.
The full work can be seen here.
The Philbert Project started with this illustration.
You can see the post here.
It started simple, but quickly expanded into a story about exploration, discovery and adventure. I wanted to incorporate everything I had focused on for the last few years into one project, with the sense of atmosphere and narrative.
With this project, I wanted to explore the idea of not planning ahead. I avoided planning my next piece, or the story for the pieces. I just drew images with Philbert, showing without telling. I think this makes the Project very unique; even I don't know the full story.
I have mentioned this before, but I want the viewer to feel as if they're looking through an unoriganised photoalbum, trying to piece out which pictures goes where. I want the viewer to dictate the order.
It has been very interesting to work in this way. I can't decide what happens, when it happens or why it happens. Working without planning has been very freeing, and let the images take their shape without anyone telling them how to be.
I often think of my images as frames of a bigger animation, or even full movie. But the one frame is all you get to see. I think this way about Philbert too. Sometimes the frame chosen is the most crucial, important frame in the movie, and sometimes it doesn't even begin to tell the full story. The gaps in what we learn about the pieces, is whats the most crucial in The Philbert Project.
It is exactly about what isn't being shown and what isn't being told. What we don't know is way more intriguing than what we do know. And I think that is the main reason I myself was so intrigued by Philbert in the first place.