Bradford And Samantha, 2007

An apocryphal film about a celebrity couple who suffer at the hands of a deranged jazz musician.

Not sure what the hell was going through my mind when I made this. It was partly an indictment of vacuous celebrity TV, but mostly, I think, an excuse to indulge my love for schlock horror and neurotic comedy writing, from Ionesco to Édika.

I was somehow brave / brazen enough to pitch this to SEKIN / Cyprus MEDIA Desk in 2007, whose response was “the storyboard is fabulous, but there’s no way we’d fund such a bloodbath”.

Screenplay

Storyboard Excerpt

More Drawings

by Kimon

Magiko

Kimon

Takes from an impromptu concept video for a song demo

Amar Chundavadra is behind the Sony Alpha 7. I’m in the grip of some kind of thing.

We shot this in 2019 as raw material for a potential music video for a song demo I’d recorded. It was barely planned, beyond raiding a local art shop for clay packs. Andy P lent us some production lights, but in the end a single point source gave us more texture.

The song is a hermetic lament about unrequited love, in the style of electrified Greek “rebetiko”. I’m on voice, guitar and bouzouki.

Lyrics

Φέρτε πικρό δρακόχορτο
Που γεύτηκα προτού βρεθώ στον κόσμο αυτό
Και του βινύλιου την ηχώ
Που μου’δωσε χορό πριν να περπατήσω

Και κεχριμπάρι χιώτικο
Μέσα του να παγιδευτώ σαν έντομο
Φέρτε μου γη και άνεμο
Υλικό και άυλο
Για να κάνω γητεία και μαύρη μαγεία

Αφού ό,τι είχα κι αγάπησα
Με δόντια και με νύχια δεν κράτησα
Με του ύπνου πλοκάμια το κυνηγώ
Και την άλλη ζωή αντάλλαγμα το εξοφλώ

Γεννήθηκα στο έρεβος
Φαέθοντας, του Ήλιου ο διάδοχος
Μα πριν με δει ο αυγερινός
Του έρωτα λυχνία με συνεπήρε

Και με δεσμά ηλεκτρικά
Αγγάλιασε τα μέλη μου και τα φτερά
Τώρα στο χώμα έρποντα
Καρτερώ του έρωτα
Το λαιμό να τυλίξω
Και το φως να πνίξω

Δε θέλω άλλη προσευχή
Αφού ποτέ μες τη καρδιά σου δεν ηχεί
Δε θέλω με του υιού ψωμί
Παρά με το κορμί σου να κοινωνήσω

Μόνο για κείνον που μπορεί
Που όταν πρέπει να απαντήσει δεν αργεί
Παίζω τετάρτη δίεση και μια πέμπτη ύφεση
Για να βγει να χορέψει και να μας παντρέψει

Kimon Matara · Magiko

by Kimon

Hunterian Museum Sketchbooks (2010)

Kimon

Selections from a visit to the Hunterian Museum in 2010.

by Kimon

TD Reel

by Kimon

Way Out, 1998

Kimon

A pocket film I made on the second year of my Illustration degree

The film is a comment on totalitarianism through virtual reality, neatly wrapped up with the sort of twist typical of The Twilight Zone—a full year before The Matrix came out!

The animation process was rather tortuous. First, I storyboarded the whole thing on paper. Then, I used a bulky Panasonic to shoot footage of my classmate Dale Arndell running around London’s Underground to (sort of) match the storyboard.

With selects gathered, I taped tracing paper to a video monitor and rotoscoped around 80% of the animation with a ruler and a thick charcoal pencil. Since it’s hard to get footage of man-sized rats in lab coats, the rest was animated straight-ahead. Finally, the cels were scanned back in for assembly in After Effects.

Early line tests for the film were even more ambitious, and involved reference renders from Infini-D, which was the first 3D package I ever used, and a far cry from Maya. In the end I simplified things to meet the assignment deadline.

All the sound is original. Foley mostly came from the camera mic. I produced the fusion-y soundtrack using Deck II. The sounds came from a Roland Sound Canvas, Propellerheads’ ReBirth RB-338 VST synth, and my teen-dreams Ibanez shred guitar hooked up to a tiny Crate practice amp.

by Kimon

Prague Ballet Masterclasses, 2011

Kimon

In 2011 I was invited by my friend Jonathan Still to draw at the International Ballet Masterclasses in Prague.

I prepared for the trip by rehearsing a ‘shorthand’ formula for quick, constructive gesture drawing. This helped me capture lots of fleeting poses in the studios later:

Back home, I used my drawings as the basis for a series of illustrations where I reduced the forms to their fundamental action lines:

by Kimon