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From Russia with love:
All I can say now is, be careful, what you wish for. So, here we are, freelance illustrators, the one of the most heroic challenging professions to be in these days...
Life is obviously not boring anymore and we are facing plenty of challenges every day.
We are Lola + Bek, the husband and wife team, moved to US after Perestroika during very turbulence times. We're so grateful that we had an advantage of the Russian classic Art school. So, Bek is graduated from Moscow's Fine Art Academy and I (Lola) graduated from Tashkent Institute of Art and Theater.
Our art background helped us tremendously to challenge ourselves from fashion to film industry. We've been lucky to work for years as designers for Ralph Lauren, DKNY, Tiffany in New York City. Once we had even designed for Vatican for the Christmas special.
First breakthrough:
Ad Company owns all the copyrights and they requested all art works to be done in oil on canvas technique, so they can keep them in their private collection. We had a privilege to exhibit our posters in Forbes Gallery in New York City.
Stoli ad ran for several years in major magazines like, New York Times, Rolling Stones, GQ, Vogue and etc. It opened up a great opportunity for us in publication field.
I see a "dead" people: Since we've always want to try ourselves in animation and broadcast industry, we've produced our first independent 3D short animation titled "Bibi". Film is designed for preschool children and runs about seven minutes, but it took plenty of our time from start to finish. The characters were created in Maya and composed in After Effects. The process was very basic, starting with pencil on paper, nailing the concept, creating the main characters, then moving to the storyboard. Bek build all 3D models, I've textured and animated them. We've learned heck a lot during the process. Even all our experience in fashion industry came pretty handy during the creation of the interior shots. When we've finished our first independent short, we were almost "dead" broke. After this short we decided that we'll never do such a suicides run anymore. Surprisingly when we saw our animation receiving a very warm reception from children our pain has melted away! So far, a "Bibi" has been screened in more than 46 Film Festivals worldwide and won several awards, including best Children's Short Award in Brooklyn International Film Festival. The Japanese and Taiwanese Public Televisions had licensed our animation. It opened up yet another venue in our life.
Currently, we are working on our next independent animation short. Unfortunately, we can't to fully dedicate ourselves to this project. It is sort of in and out in between service works. As a boutique studio, we're concentrating to produce more animation spots. It includes creating a concept design, then illustrating and animating in house. 2D illustration animation and motion design are our most priority. When our clients want to use some video footage in clips, we have a camera team on the side, so we always join forces to complete the project. The flexibility is a key for us. We like to try the different styles and our client list ranges from MTV/Italia to Daiichi Pharmaceuticals.
The most challenging thing for small studio:
It is a tough environment to keep up with constantly changing technology speed and sort of "globalization" side effects in our daily life. The only tool we can use is to concentrate more on being creative and utilizing our artistic side to the full extent on all of our projects.
This way we can stand out from the crowd. The creative industry became more like "breaking news" these days, it just pops out for a second and it's gone next day. Creative industry has become more tabloid and consumerist, lacking emotion, and spirit. These days it is more about the following a trend and making a noise to grab attention.
Recently, we were privileged to have our work featured as a Lola+Bek studio in a book titled "Creators base in New York", published by IDEAfried Studio Publications based in Taiwan.
Escapism:
Our motto is "A world truly undiscovered lays out there..."
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