The Mammal Group: Benjamin Marra
A lot of people who’ve read my blog posts on the fictional nation of Kelv have asked me if I’m really doing it for a magazine. Yes, it’s true. The first issue of “Mammal Magazine” is almost ready to be printed. This week I thought I’d blog about each of the five other “Mammals”. We all met in the Syracuse University art program and have been doodling together and scheming something like this for almost a decade.
The first Mammal I’ll talk about is Benjamin Marra. Benjamin currently lives in Philadelphia but is working on moving back to NYC (and if anyone out there needs to hire an excellent designer let him know! He’s looking for a job in NYC). He won the Playboy Magazine student Illustrator competition two years in a row and recently was named a “Young Gun” by the Art Director’s Club.
The rest of the Mammals are consistently amazed by Ben’s sketchbook. He seems to effortlessly compose epic mini-frescoes of pop-culture armageddon. Conan, DMX, Stallone, Knight Rider, Traci Lords, Danzig… everything he’s interested in gets mutated into action-packed scenes of his own fascination. Not to mention all the brilliant characters of his own that he’s created. At the moment Ben is developing a sleazy 80’s-era crime story called “Night Business” he wrote for animation.
Take a look at his site and you will enter an intricately rendered world of supernatural sex and violence and most importantly, fun.
Also: Check out the new Mammal Magazine blog. It will have regular updates of cool stuff.
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