Artist Highlight: Onorio D' Epiro
It's a new year so I've decided to learn from the last year of blogging (yeah it's been a full year I can't believe it either) and start to do things more regularly than I have. So one of those things will be to do an "Artist highlight" every month of someone I've found who's quite interesting in what they're doing. This could be anying, I'd love for it to be TV related but as you may or may not have realised...I'm into quite a lot of stuff so it could literally be on anything.
This month I'm focusing on Onorio D'Epiro who is part of a two man collaborative team (the other part of the team being Scott) behind a little known but amazing robot figure making initiative called Just Robots.
UK based they combine their respective skills in art, 3D printing, painting and photography to create some pretty ace works of art that are full of character for being just robots.
I think in one of my instagram sessions I stumbled across Strong Bot which led me to discover that he was one of a growing army of robots being created by Onorio and Scott.
On a bit of a fact finding mission and thinking I probably wouldn't get an answer I took a chance and messaged Onorio to see if I could do a write up on him & Just Robots and I was surprised to find he wrote back!
So without further ado here are the questions I asked him and his answers.
T: Did you always have a talent with art and model making in particular or did it take a little while to cultivate it?
O: I've always been interested in drawing and I would create silly little monsters at an early age. It wasn't until I left school that I began to have an interest in the practical side of things. I now find myself making the little things I once used to draw.
T: What medium do you prefer to work with most?
O: I really try to use everything and anything I can get my hands on. I keep things that I find interesting that I think I can re-use at a later date. In terms of clay- I love Sculpey and Epoxy clay as I like the way you can model with it and keep detail without having to be gentle with it. I have used a big range of materials but still look forward to experimenting with oil based clays. I have now begun to use 3D software to produce my sculptures and it looks to be perfect for my robots!
T: When made you start up Just Robots and how did you meet your partner Scott?
O: I began a new job where I had many like minded people around me. One evening myself and Scott sat by a computer and made our first robot, which later became "chunkybot".
It was very easy to produce and we worked perfectly together, bouncing ideas back and forth. We decided to continue making more robots and soon developed enough bots to start "justrobots"
T: Where do you get your inspiration from?
O: Everything around me. I have been interested in SFX from a young age so films and animation has helped me develop my style and interests. I love stop motion animation puppets so creating the bots to look like they have joints was very important to me.
T: What other projects do you have in the pipeline?
O: More robots really. We have about ten still to come so just keep your eyes open and follow my instagram and website :)
Little known fact is that I'm probably one of Just Robots biggest fans who hasn't purchased one yet (as much as I really want to). So I have been keeping up with all the things they've been doing over the past few months with Chunky Bot, Strong Bot, Beep Bot and Chatter Bot including naming competitions, epic photography on homemade sets and sharing of their process.
If one thing can be said for Onorio, it's that he is anything but a robot just doing his program. His creativity with Scott is building something amazing in Just Robots and I can't wait to see it blossom.
Follow Just Robots and Onorio via the links below.
http://justrobots.co.uk
http://instagram.com/onoriodepiro/
http://instagram.com/justrobots/
And if you really like them maybe you'll buy one too like I will be soon (when I'm not so strapped for cash).
Hope you enjoyed this write up and I for one am looking forward to seeing more robots come to life on Just Robots.
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