Channel Frederator Blog

Hanoch Piven is a unique illustrator who combines painting and 3-D objects in his artwork. He is best-known for memorable portraits of famous people, both real and fictitious. Behold Borat:

On his website, Pivenworld, you can see examples of his work. He also has a Drawger blog. And the book Faces: 78 Portraits from Madonna to the Pope contains a great gallery of merry mugs.

Now Piven’s art stars in a show called Superstuff, airing on Hop! TV (the Israeli pre-school channel). It’s fascinating to watch a pair of hands juggle a pile of miscellaneous junk until it’s transformed into a recognizable image and then springs to life. The show uses mostly real time live-action footage, but there’s a bit of stop motion animation sprinkled in.

More clips from the show after the jump…

To learn more about Piven (currently living in Barcelona) this article from the newspaper Haaretz (in English) is a great intro. It also describes the innovative art workshops that he brings to kids all around the world.

—Anne D. Bernstein