Biomechanical art is a distinctive part of our culture. Inspired partly by Nature and partly by industrial design, this genre of art was first popularized by the great Swiss artist H.R. Giger who designed the creature and sets in the original Ridley Scott movie Alien.
Not long after, as the tattoo art form was gaining artistic momentum, a number of tattooists such as Aaron Cain and Guy Aitchison began translating these biomechanical visions onto skin, seeking novel ways to fuse the functional organic nature of the designs with the form and flow of the human body.
In the past few years, biomech tattooing has begun to explode, with artists from all over the world creating their own unique abstract styles in many bandwidths, some more robotic and technological, others more organic and natural, with countless variations in between. As these artists have inspired one another and collaborated on projects together, it has become clear that the range of visual potential of biomechanical art is absolutely limitless, and will never stop surprising us.
The Biomech Encyclopedia is a result of this great and growing community. Produced and curated by 29 year veteran tattooist Guy Aitchison, this book project is a community effort unlike anything ever published before.
A large part of its content consists of fully realized biomechanical art made in collaboration by dozens of artists, working through a private online gallery where high resolution images could be posted and updated. There have been two major rounds of collaborative design work already, and a third round is happening during this Kickstarter campaign.
The completed art is featured in the Encyclopedia in a way that showcases the versatility and range of the biomechanical style. Alongside dozens or articles and features by a variety of artists, this design work is intended as a source of inspiration for tattoo artists, filmmakers & special effects people, game designers, and any art fans who want to dive deep into this abstract alien realm. The book will be hardcover, large format (10x13"), and approximately 500 pages.
We are offering a lot of great rewards for supporters, everything from a cool sticker pack to original drawings and paintings, limited reproductions, T-shirts, and of course, advance orders for the book itself.
Funds will be used for printing, shipping, file preparation and other book production costs; the more we raise, the more energy we'll be able to give the project. We've exceeded $70K and are pushing for $80K before the campaign closes tomorrow. In this final few hours, if we can reach 200% funding- $80k- then I'll be giving one of these 4x4.5" oil sketches to each supporter who has pledged $350 and up, in addition to all the other stuff you get with your pledge. You can choose any combination of items from our list of rewards in order to total $350. For example, two copies of the book, 3 T-shirts and a poster would work. We will be contacting all our supporters before we ship out our rewards to make sure we have it all straight. You can upgrade your existing pledge if you've already made a pledge but want one of these fun collectible paintings. Thanks for all your support, this book is gonna rock!
Risks and challenges
The layout and production work on the project is well underway, and should be close to completion near the closing of this Kickstarter campaign. However, some of the final details will be decided by the amount of money raised; Some of the more deluxe editions will require additional design work. With all these factors considered, we hope to be sending the finished book files to the printer by the end of February, with a 4 month printing turnover being normal.
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Funding period
- (30 days)