I first became acquainted with Vincent Marcone's work from a Macworld show many years ago. I in fact seem to recall it was an image called "Don't You Know How to Fly?" which had a little bird-girl creature climbing up a staircase. It intrigued me. It was this very simple composition, but, as I would soon find out about Marcone's work, it would reveal more and more details the longer one would look at it.
The little harpy girl doesn't seem to have legs; her lowest limbs seem to be part of the wiggly, warped staircase railing. She has no pinions, only little stickly limbs that look more like bird legs than arms or wings. Wisps hover over the image as if there's an imperceptable fog over it.
Following the art to his website, I found a spooky little site full of little skeletons, often jarring or unsettling work, and the haunting strings of music as I ran my mouse pointer over tiny houses, moons and diminutive scarecrows.
This was Marcone's older My Pet Skeleton site. I never forgot the music or the images I found there, often going back to check things out a little, see if there was some new art, or maybe see a piece I liked again. The above is but one wallpaper from the site, and I totally encourage you to seek out the rest (in particular a cute little one of ghosts and binary code).
There's a playful macabre style to Marcone's art that drew me to his work. The kind of work that dreams and nightmares are made of, though his images tend to lay on the more nightmare end of things. Sometimes they appear cutesy, other times, like in the image at right called "Twisted Devotion", they seem downright horrifying.
Marcone's new site, the revamped and beautiful My Pet Skeleton.com, showcases lots of new art, and contains his blog where he posts new pretty deadly things like wallpapers and even talks about his band Johnny Hollow, whom did the haunting music from his older site--albeit only small, lyricless loops of the whole piece, "SkeLeToN SoNg".
Marcone has won numerous awards and accolades over the years for his unique vision and compositions. They're layered with details as if they almost seem to be composed with a 3 dimensional comp in mind, using many digital techniques that feel almost like magic. His figures are culled both from life (as if from photographs) and the world of the imaginary, like this detail of the piece "Shadow Monster".
He has dabbled in film, which shows in his small video gallery, from a video montage of his personal work, to music videos he has directed for Johnny Hollow. But his most recent project, the short film The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow is by far one of the most impressive short films. A story told through a single photograph, the animated photograph feels most like an exploration of a 3 dimensional model rather than a static, 2 dimensional photograph. This is where Marcone's composition work really shines through. This is what really makes his work shine, rising above like a phoenix over the trend of "spooky macabre" art. Set to the beautiful music of his band, this short is not one to be missed.
I heartily recommend visiting Marcone's site. The smaller screens I've grabbed are NOTHING compared to the real thing. Please support this amazing artist and his pretty awesome band. Highly recommended.
--Dio (10/18/11)
(All art belongs to Vincent Marcone)