CJM Scholarship 2022: Mide Kadiri
Various elements of my art include curls and curves contrasting with straight lines, cartoon-like figures, and vibrant colours. I like to manipulate my use of colours in a polychromatic style. Sometimes I try to replicate realism. Other times I take realism and twist it in a chaotic way, so it also produces something beautiful
We are excited to announce the recipient of our 2022 Chris J. Melnychuk Memorial Scholarship and Residency: Mide Kadiri!
About Mide:
My name is Mide Kadiri. I love art and film has been something that has always interested me since I was a child. The way it appeared to me seemed so real and fascinating but also various elements of Film broke the boundaries of reality which I thought was an attractive spectacle. I enjoyed classic Disney movies from the 1990s to 2005, the hand-drawn elements are gorgeous.
I fell in love with classics like The Lion King, Tarzan, Mulan, and Aladdin etc. I decided to go to film school because I thought the freedom of being an artist involved in filmmaking would be rewarding. After my time at SAIT, I personally gravitated towards working in the arts department or anything that will get me started in the art industry. I want to focus my skills on making art, writing, and eventually working in animation as a long-term career. Working on video games would also be an amazing experience.
My artistic practice is primarily drawing and coloring. I’ve been drawing since as long as I can remember. I've always liked drawing cartoon figures and kid’s show characters since my childhood. I didn’t seriously get into art until about a year into my time at the University of Calgary. Before then I’d always been experimenting with scribbles and doodles, I would do on my notebooks. I never really challenged myself to complete something complicated and unique. Something that truly represented my artistic vision.
Various elements of my art include curls and curves contrasting with straight lines, cartoon-like figures, and vibrant colours. I like to manipulate my use of colours in a polychromatic style. Sometimes I try to replicate realism. Other times I take realism and twist it in a chaotic way, so it also produces something beautiful. My process is coming up with the idea of the piece I want to create. Then I draw it out completely before I place the desired colours in. My subject matter varies from focusing on animals, flowers, and people to shapes, science fiction and outer space.
My influence from art comes from traditional American cartoons and Japanese manga and anime. I grew up with these as a kid and I think animation is such a pure form of art. It requires the creator to not only create art but create moving art that is vivid and alive. Each individual frame carries so much emotion that I've been obsessed with it since I first laid my eyes on animation. My goal in life is to make my own animated movies by gaining more artistic and film experience.
My chosen medium I often practice on are pencil and ink but recently I have been doing a lot of digital work. I’m getting into Photoshop because it's a great way to create art that works well with Internet technologies. My post secondary education started at Mount Royal University. I’m now a recent film studies graduate at the University of Calgary and a Film and Video productions graduate at SAIT. I want to use this opportunity as I’m coming out of school to get active in the art community here in Calgary and Alberta.
CJM Project Summary:
My goal for this project is to create a 2D hand drawn short about different sized objects in our world. It’ll be drawn in Japanese animation/Anime style. The short will be compiled of different scenes. Scenes that each show different perspectives of objects in our world.
The visuals for this short will be an examination of objects moving in different sized spaces. Examples of objects moving in different scales would be a cell moving on a microscopic level compared to the rotations of planets within the Sun's orbit. The short will be a compilation of things moving from one point to another. With the distance between each point getting larger as the short progresses. I will take references from science to depict the movements of the objects in their respective scales. My inspiration for this film comes from the sheer size of our universe. Humans’ perception of size is different from how other beings perceive size. By using this short, I can explore the movement of various objects in our universe.
Also see our Previous CJM Scholarship Recipient, Pocholo Cabarroguis!
See some of Mide's selected works below:
