Body Pixel

For those of us hooked up to Miguelanxo Prado‘s atmospheric and, kind of Borgesian graphic novels, animated film ‘De Profundis – The Sound of the Sea‘ was simply an extended version of artist’s imaginative and poetic world.

This film has all complexity of the novel structure that characterizes Prado’s work with interlaced elements, like music and fluid atmosphere that simply slide on the big screen the idea of deep Ocean life and parallel, the idea of deep artist’s imaginarium inherited from his life experiences.

With Miguelanxo Prado’s work thingz are quite easy – either you hate it or love it. His work was never easy to digest to regular comics readers, which is exactly the reason why Prado entered the big league of cartoon artists.

His conceptual channel hasn’t suffered when being projected on the big screen; on contrary… it’s an opportunity to see his ‘Egon Schiele & Johannes Vermeer & Toulouse-Lautrec’ inspired characters in a wider art context. Don’t get me wrong here; I’m too passionate on comics and graphics novels, but ‘De Profundis’ is really one of the best ‘comic book style’ adaptations for big screen, I saw lately.

Prado is telling a story on Ocean… THE BIG Ocean… scarry… deep… wonderful… cruel… lively… ocean with its rules… ocean with its mythical creatures… bottom of the Ocean as the last harbour for ships… The Ocean…

The story of ‘De Profundis’ is based around the following ideas:
Once upon a time there was a house in the middle of the sea where a woman melancholically played the cello as she waited. She was waiting for her lover, an artist who always wanted to be a sailor so that he could take to the seas with the jellyfish, the starfish and the multi-coloured species he dreamt of in his paintings. His fascination led him to set out on a journey to discover the thrilling beauty and mysteries of the depths, following which neither of the two were sure if they would meet again.

Miguelanxo Prado is artist from La Coruna. He is one of the best-known and important European comic authors. Ever since the early 80’s, his work, including illustration, painting and conventional animation, has travelled the world. His over 30 books and comics have been translated into numerous languages and have garnered several awards. “De Profundis” is not his first audiovisual experience, but follows his participation particularly in the “Men in Black” animation series. (synopsis and bio taken from: www.animafest.hr)

‘De Profundis is a visual and musical poem. It is also a history of love that is strange and fantastic. And it is a creative voyage of a painter, a game of metaphors. It is an homage to the Sea, the real sea and its mythical qualities’.

‘Effectively, I wanted to change the equation for what had been done in standard animation. To obtain something close to perfection, we sacrificed style and richness of drawing (because you need to have simple styles that favor the process of repetition) for the plastic richness of the image (flat colors — or almost — without texture, without any question, etc.…). I wanted to renounce the spectacularity of the movement to conserve the plastic richness of the image. Sincerely, I think it was worth it’, says Miguelanxo Prado.

I’ve found a Spanish documentary (no English subs, sorry) entitled ‘Making of De Profundis’. Doesn’t matter if you do not talk Spanish, it was shot quite intuitive for following the process of work…