Flight Of The Tiger

Its kinda late... but Happy New Year everyone!

Done for our IFS new year greeting cards Something different for a change, taking a step out of my comfort zone.

Title layout by none other than

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P/S: A bit on the concept behind the image:-

This image was designed to be a universal New Year Greeting card for our clients; except it contains a Chinese New Year twist, given the fact that IFS is based in Singapore.

The Chinese Zodiac features 12 different animals, which represent the years in a 12 year cycle. 2011 is the year of the Rabbit, and 2010 was the year of the Tiger.

This was as much a personal piece as it was an image done for professional purposes at IFS.

Quoting one of my replies:
"It's really the culmination of the million and one homage ideas that were running around my head as I conceptualised this piece. From a homage to Miyazaki, to sky pirates and steam/dieselpunk, quasi-WW2 warfilm posters...Kamikaze fighters... Banzai Bunnies in pressure suits... <_<

To give you a better picture, the image I had in mind was originally inspired by the famous scene in Empire of the Sun, where a young Christian Bale sings the Welsh song 'Suo Gan' to Kamikaze pilots about to embark on their mission. I wanted something that felt somewhat melancholic... yet proud and hopeful at the same time, an image with plenty of symbolism and subtext and ultimately one that was open to interpretation.

Basically something different for a new year card.

The biggest challenge was in getting the light and colours to represent the Chinese New Year twist, and then secondly trying to get the various 'homage' elements across and not detract from the overall image. I still am torn between the idea that the Tigers were sent on a suicide mission (as some have guessed at..) in which Bunny One Eye is a traitorous sky pirate scumbag, or that Bunny was merely the unwilling second in command given the opportunity to take over. The eyepatch serves to provide that sense of added mystery. Is he crying inside for the loss of a friend? Or is he smiling with his other eye? With all that fun going on, at the time, the concept of defining a particular era/genre didn't matter as much as making up your own story given the many elements provided."