Dir En Grey : : Sustain The Untruth
This is a fan art work I’ve put together over the weekend to express the overwhelming excitement I felt when finally listening to the new single „Sustain The Untruth“ of my favorite band Dir En Grey. This might sound a bit childish, but the band and it’s work has become one of the most important sources of inspiration for me over the past years: the music, the artworks, the shows, the packaging, the attention to details, etc...
The Poster - The article "the" resembles the kanji for death, placed on the symbol for "hazardous" - the title and the song deals with the imagery of hypocrisy and lies, and everything connected with Fukushima. The "devil" is no devil but an evil version of „saru“ – the monkey, an important animal in the japanese culture. You might be familiar with the "Three Monkeys of Nikkô", who used to symbolize the best way to deal with „bad“ things (bad stands here for many terms, such as the lack of aesthetic or he lack of kindness): One closes his eyes, so he does not see the bad thing. One one shuts his mouth and does not complain. One does not want to hear about the bad things happening. In the western culture thought, these monkeys are a metaphor for ignorance. Knowing about the truth, but sustain the untruth,.. that would bet he evil monkey.
The process: The monkey is based on the picture of the cover artwork. I reduced the depth of the image and vectorized it, I then rearranged some vectors the push the look into an even more evil direction. Then I brushed some rough textures in illustrator and used them as a mask... after some dozen more steps I achieved this look... I attached some detail shots, but won't publish a real size poster, since I'm still waiting for feedback of the band on this.
Ok, that's pretty much it - thank you very much for your attention and your time. Have a great sunday and a good start into the new week.