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Dave McKean Biography

David "Dave" McKean (born December 29th, 1963) is an English illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, filmmaker and musician. His work incorporates drawing, painting, photography, collage, found objects, digital art and sculpture. McKean's projects include illustrating books by amongst others Neil Gaiman, Heston Blumenthal, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, and directing three feature films.

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Dave McKean Quotes

My stuff is generally quite collage-y anyway. So it's sort-of suited to gathering raw materials like shooting actors, then making stills or animating characters, then just bringing them all together in a 3D space. That process is very close to my 2D work anyway.

Actors, Bringing, Character, Materials, Space, Together

The filmmakers I really love are the ones that let me look through their eyes for a while. They have an aesthetic and social point of view.

Eye, Views, Looks, Eyes, Let, Ones

Everybody's a bird, locked up in a pretty cage. Sometimes you fly to a slightly bigger one, but you never quite have the courage to abandon captivity completely.

Bird, Captivity, Never Quit, Locked, Abandon, Fly

I don't want to get pigeonholed just doing just family films and fantasy films. . . I don't really want to get pigeonholed just doing anything in particular.

Family, Fantasy, Film, Particular, Pigeonholed, Want

I think the two jobs I dreamed of doing as a teenager were comic book artist and record cover illustrator. Maybe film director was in the mix as well, but that seemed to be an impossible mountain to climb.

Book, Comic, Film, Jobs, Maybe, Teenager

If you want to be a chef or a scientist, you've got to know what the current thinking is, so if you want to write comics or draw comics find out what the very best ones are and look at them all and then you'll know where the bars are because the bars are often very high, if you are going to make a splash and make yourself known, you need to get to that level.

Comics, Draw, Look, Needs, Thinking, Writing

I tend to be known for different things. I mean, there are a lot of comics or sci-fi fans out there who sort of think of me doing that kind of work, but there are just as many people who like the CD covers I've done, or the children's books I've done. So different people like different things.

Book, Children, Kind, Mean, Things

Film gives me live actors, editing, music, sound, a huge and powerful toolbox to play with. If there is a problem for me, it is that film gives me too much. There is less room for the audience to add their side of the conversation.

Audience, Conversation, Editing, Play, Powerful, Problem

PhotoShop is a program I use all the time with my 2D stuff. And that's an extraordinary program - you really can do anything there, and I've never hit my head on the ceiling. The 3D stuff is incredibly complicated, monstrously complicated, but for the things that I want to do, I've found very simple and interesting ways, I hope, of making images without getting tied up too much in the maps and technicalities.

Interesting, Maps, Monstrously, Simple, Too Much

Reading a good comic is a creative act. Watching a film is often a more passive experience, and since I'm interested in engaging that conversational aspect of creativity, I'm trying to find ways of achieving that in my films.

Creative, Creativity, Engaging, Reading, Watching, Ways

Sometimes the things I learn making paintings or drawings - composition, colour, expressionism, texture - can directly influence the making of a film. Sometimes it's great that they are different, and simply taking a break from one medium to spend time with another, recharges the batteries and I feel refreshed.

Drawing, Batteries, Different, Paintings, Directly, Colour

I'm a huge science fan; I read a lot of science books. But I'm not a scientist, my interest in science is I love the facts, but I like to interpret those facts. They become the raw materials for stories and paintings and things.

Book, Facts, Fans, Love, Raw Materials, Read

I kind of enjoy the limits. If you've got no limits, you can do absolutely anything, it's very difficult, actually. I always enjoyed working with machines like color photocopiers and letter-pressing type settings, things where the limits are very apparent. You push the machine to do something, and it tries to do its best, and it usually has wonderful qualities all of its own. Then you get a sort of dialogue going, and the limitations become qualities.

Color, Enjoyed, Kind, Quality, Tries, Trying

You could easily spend several lifetimes trying to master film. It make very good use of all the things that I love. Narrative, image-making, also sound and music. It's so full that I can't really imagine getting tired of it. Or getting to the point like I feel like I know it.

Know, Like, Sound And Music, Tired, Trying, Use

When you just get fantasy stories that are about fairies or goblins, I just don't care. I'm never going to meet a goblin, it doesn't mean anything to me. So my definition of fantasy is very broad, it's anything to do with memory, or dreams, or ways of interpreting or making sense of the world.

Broad, Definition, Dream, Mean, Memories, Sense

Usually, the most difficult thing to do is photo-real stuff. Something that has to actually look like the real world, because it's just so difficult to do that. We're just so used to looking at the real world, our brains instantly see when something is not quite right.

Brain, Brains, Looks, Real, See, Used

The human face is the most deeply ingrained image in our brains. It is the two dots and a dash we connect with as babies. It is the focus of our attention in our relationships with each other. The face and the human figure express all we are. Everything else - architecture, art, even landscape - we usually understand in relation to us.

Art, Babies, Baby, Relation, Two, Usually

I'm always thinking about story, and the development of ideas or images, so with all types of media, I'm simply trying to communicate the feelings and ideas in the story or characters in the most appropriate and effective way.

Character, Development, Media, Story, Thinking

The inspiration is all in the script, in the text. So whatever it is, either it is a film or a book to be illustrated, anything. Everything you need to know is in the text. So the thing is trying to find right tone and voice, the right style, the right way of expressing the emotions in a story or in the location of the story, but it is all in the text.

Book, Expressing, Inspiration, Story, Voice

The reason I love comics is that they DON'T move, and there is NO sound. As a creator I have to evoke those elements in the drawings and writing, and the reader has to create those elements in their own minds.

Comics, Drawing, Drawings, Moving, Reason, Writing

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