Natalia Stuyk is an up-and-coming animator to watch out for. Her most recent work is featured in the fashion film (below) by Mat Maitland for Kenzo’s 2013 Resort collection. The video’s 2D animations of bold jungle patterns and green-screen compositing techniques are in line with an aesthetic that’s been floating around the internet art world for a while now, and was catapulted into the mainstream most recently by Rihanna and Azaelia Banks videos. Stuyk’s is a sophisticated take on that fad.Kenzo Resort 2013 Electric JungleThe UK-based artist’s small body of work is exciting because she not only has a handle on these aesthetic trends but is also versed in programming, the creative potentials of social media, and interactive media. Her series of digital illustrations The Cult of the Rare and the Rich allowed viewers to interact with and manipulate portraits through body movements. The piece used the Kinect to record people’s movements as they explored the rituals of religious practices. Another project with a tech backbone was People Are Planets which crowdsourced twitter hashtags to create a 3D audiovisual universe which people could navigate around.
The Cult of the Rare and the RichWhile Stuyk has experimented with interactive art, most of her work has been making music videos. Her first, for The Mae Shi’s track "Lamb and the Lion", was also her first to experiment with different forms of animation. To create it Stuyk used a mix of digital and hand-drawn techniques to animate her own illustrations that borrowed from medieval tapestry battle scenes. The video went on to win the BAFTA New Talent award in 2010.The Mae Shi “Lamb and the Lion”Stuyk has also experimented with 3D animation—the video she directed last year for Slackk’s "Blue Sleet" harkens back to early computer and gaming graphics. And, although quite different in style from the Mae Shi video, both suggest a keen grasp of key media tools and an ability to make them engaging and relevant through her varied animations.Slackk’s “Blue Sleet”
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