Liam Brazier

Overview

The London-based illustrator and animator Liam Brazier has a rare ability to look at the world differently, and his artwork certainly reflects this. Bold shapes and bright colours come together to form people, places and objects in a fascinating way. He’s an artist who can give any project a unique and distinctive look and feel, drawing the viewer in through deconstruction.

Liam’s work is often grouped together with the low poly art movement, but whereas low polygon modelling is a form of CGI, Liam’s focus is on using shapes and colours to reduce images to as few basic forms as possible. He started off in paper collage rather than with 3D wireframes.

His inspiration comes from Charles Sheeler’s paintings of buildings, and also from popular culture and film - Disney and Star Wars are big for him. Liam grew up on England’s East Coast, but today he’s based in the capital where he lives with his wife and two cats. The latter form a patient audience for his guitar-playing hobby.

Training

After completing a National Diploma in General Art & Design at Southend College of Art and Design, Liam specialised in illustration and completed a BA at the Kent Institute of Art and Design.

Approach

When he first started out, Liam would painstakingly cut each shape out with a scalpel, using different coloured papers to construct a final piece. Today, he has distilled this process down to a digital one, drawing and colouring his shapes in software. “I am also a fond of strong saturated colours, often using them to suggest depth. Overall each piece becomes a giant puzzle I create, and piece together, and see complete as a work,” he says.

Styles

Liam’s goal is to use shapes and colours to show the planes of an object, depicting three-dimensional forms on a two-dimensional surface. He tries to use as few shapes as possible in doing so. It is often likened to low poly art, but his intention is different. Using both his imagination and Adobe After Effects, Liam pushes the boundaries in both still images and animation.

Client List

• BBC
• Marvel
• 20th Century Fox
• GAME
• Casio
• Transport for London
• Queens of the Stone Age
• Megadeth,
• David Letterman
• Team France at the Tour de France