Andrea Innocent aka Innocent Girl

October 2008: There are two things about Melbourne illustrator Andrea Innocent you need to know: she has a great affinity with nerds and otaku, and she has a deep obsession with trivia…as you are about to find out.

What have you been up to lately?
Desperately trying to finish some drawings for an upcoming group exhibition, working on storyboards for an ad agency, designing a print for textiles, creating some zines, working out an organized mailing list for my new print promo, wanting to update my website, creating illo’s for editorial and answering interview questions.

How would you describe your own work?
Urgh! This is really up to other people way less subjective to do I really think. However as your question includes the word ‘would’ then if pushed I would describe my work as a mixture of eclectic imagery, informative trivia, hidden meanings using stories both real and imaginary to describe a world that is much less organized in my own head whilst giving me an outlet for some socio-political issues that I feel need to be expressed.

How did you first get into illustration?
I was on a one way train to illustration from the beginning only I read the map wrong and took the fashion and animation lines … luckily I found the connection somewhere in Tokyo and got back on track. It was around 2004 that I first began putting together storyboards that never made it to animations due to time constraints. They became ‘single frame animations’ which is just a fancy way of saying ‘illustrations’ really. On my return to Australia I began exhibiting my work in galleries, I was then sent an email to join The Jacky Winter Group, which is an excellent agency getting Australian illustrators out into the world.

What is the fascination with Japanese culture?

I am not 100% sure and to be truthful I didn’t really notice my obsession until others pulled me up on it. My guess is that as I grew up in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne where there were a lot of Asian immigrants moving in at the time, so most of my friends were from China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Japan. I would go to their houses and watch anime and read manga, we would draw and create our own characters on our schoolbooks and collect all sorts of ‘fancy goods’ and stationary.
The Asian aesthetic feels natural to me, in fact even when I lived in Japan I never really felt any feeling of ‘culture shock’. Here in Melbourne I experience it much more often. I clearly remember at age 14 being the only one in a class of 35 that had visited the National Gallery of Victoria more than once and adversely the only one not to have been to a football game.
There is definitely a deeper appreciation for the drawn image in Japan, just recently a manga on wine appreciation was released, it became a best seller and has affected wine sales in Japan dramatically. I read somewhere (trivia alert) that Kanji, the Chinese characters that make up the Japanese alphabet are read by the same side of the brain you use when you are looking at a drawn image, whereas our alphabet requires us to go back and forth right and left sides of the brain when reading a book such as a graphic novel or a picture book. Anyway, at this point I have no idea whether I answered your question so … next.

Where (else) do you find inspiration?
Everywhere and anywhere, it’s all about the connections for me. I see an image or hear a song, or read a sentence which reminds me of that time which in turn reminds me of this and that and hey presto there you have a succession of ideas and icons that make up a coherent whole. Thinking in pictures. Actually I re-discovered something I had scribbled in a notebook the other day and it went something like this “I want my pictures to mix imagery like Cornelius mixes sounds and tell their stories like Haruki Murakami’s prose”.

What advice would you have to younger designers entering the industry?
Firstly, travel as much as you can and as early as you can. Also, when resolving illustration problems make sure you don’t settle for the first idea that comes into your head, I am also a real stickler for accurate research. Oh and its better not to add something just because its fashionable, I know skulls are real cool but I’m more impressed when someone draws a hand and nails it.  On a lighter note, go retro and look back at the pictures you did as a child (if you still have them) and I can guarantee you will see some sort of theme or style that was there at the beginning, really it’s quite amazing how some things never change they just evolve. Oh and most importantly, don’t worry too much if you don’t know what you really want to do, all courage is in the beginning.

Any additional thoughts/words?
“Let’s be making happy pictures!”

Links:
www.otoshimono.org

Other sites:
www.sketchcrawl.com
www.jackywinter.com
www.illustratorsaustralia.com