Jungle, 2000
E-mail: 8 mei 2001 0:56:30 GMT+02:00 i’m not sure where you draw inspiration from, in terms of other artists. but i have found, what i believe to be, strong references. one in particular is the episode where you’re on a safari photo-shoot snapping pics of businessmen. there’s an 80’s artist named Robert Longo who did these life-size images of businessmen in mid-action - whether being hung by their ties or gunned down. he left it kinda ambiguous as you have. both works seem to be about the same thing - modern life in the corporate realm. but whereas longo’s work has scale to his advantage,you have interactivity and further meaning by including yourself taking the photos.
28
29
SOUND & MUSIC Something in the Air Anyone with a well-practiced ear and a more than average knowledge of recent pop history may sometimes be baffled by the samples Hoogerbrugge drew upon to produce the background sounds and loops for Modern Living / Neurotica. In his quest for precisely the right music, Hoogerbrugge was forced to raid his CD collection, albeit reluctantly. Creating the soundtracks for Modern Living / Neurotica’s Flash animations was a time-intensive process. Once he had found the right music, a sample needed to be distilled and then manipulated. He would process the sample in some way, until it was just right. And even then it wasn’t always right. The answer? Make your own music. After Modern Living / Neurotica, Hoogerbrugge stopped using samples. Since then, he has used a keyboard and a powerful music programme as a faster route to hitting the right note. Now, he has recourse to a lavish archive of compositions, loops and music fragments. His quest for the right sound only begins once the animation has been completed. It is the images which, as it were, dictate the soundtrack to accompany them. In both Hotel and Nails, Hoogerbrugge consistently uses soundscapes of his own composing, which skilfully weave a particular mood. In Nails, the mood is crucial because the characters are set against a nondescript grey background, in a kind of non-space. The music and sound effects evoke the illusion of space and have thus taken on the function of the background images. An added benefit of these soundscapes is that they are audible even before the animation has fully loaded. References to pop music and popular culture abound in Hoogerbrugge’s work, sometimes quite explicitly: in Spin, a man gets on his knees to pray to an electric guitar. Pop icons like David Bowie, Sid Vicious, Kurt Kobain, and what they represent (talent, creativity, untamed energy, tragedy, temporary insanity) are a constant source of inspiration. And so are the themes so often at the heart of alternative pop and post-punk songs: religion, existentialism, death and the darker side of life. (Also note the eternal black suit of Hoogerbrugge’s main character). Hoogerbrugge regularly portrays himself as a musician – seated in wistful contemplation at the grand piano in ‘Prelude’ (Modern Living 98), or as rock star musician in ‘El Mariachi’ (Modern Living 71). Being a former guitarist himself, he has always really remained a musician at heart.
previous spread: Spin, 2002 44
E-mail: 15 mei 2004 1:53:57 GMT+02:00 I find your work difficult to watch and the disturbing music makes me feel slightly naseua after more than 10 minutes.
Strummer, 2005
45
82
Clown Basics, 1999 - 2000
83
Hey Boy, Hey Girl, 2003
104
Void, 2003
Wiki: Void In astronomy, voids are the empty spaces between filaments, the largest-scale structures in the Universe that contain very few, or no, galaxies. Voids typically have a diameter of 11 to 150 Mpc; particularly large voids, defined by the absence of rich superclusters, are sometimes called supervoids. Voids located in high-density environments are smaller than voids situated in low-density spaces of the universe. 105
E-mail:4 januari 2006 8:45:14 GMT+01:00 awesome site man. i stumbled across it by complete fluke. i cant wait for the rest of hotel. is there a print version of the comic?
148
DR.GOLDIN THE 3RD ANNUAL TOPOLINO BOYS MEETING
DR. GOLDIN GETS INSTRUCTIONS THROUGH HIS CELLPHONE. HE FEELS A BIT LIKE BRUCE WILLIS IN DIE HARD 3. RUNNING FROM ONE POINT TO ANOTHER WITHOUT GETTING ANY CLOSER. CLOSER TO.... ACTUALLY HE DOESN'T KNOW !
149
168
178
Charger, 2005
D-Day I, 2005
E-mail: 11 maart 2003 4:09:44 GMT+01:00 I have been Cuban but alive illustrator in Chile for years. Would like saw I my portafolio Web. I would like to interchange links if it is possible. E-mail: 29 april 2003 23:40:07 GMT+02:00 I think maybe your work is a little too raucous at times though, if you made your work a little more operatic or mellowdramatic... but that’s just my preference.
179