Beautiful Little Monsters
Listen to this article
Sharp teeth. Loose tongues. Flies, sperm, snakes, lies, death, life, and all the other weird shit we pretend we have under control.
This is a new direction for my art. It lives somewhere between a Saturday-morning cartoon, a jazz club at midnight, and that exact moment when somebody realizes they have made a very bad fucking decision.
I like bold shapes, long curves, hard color breaks, and characters who look like they heard the rules and immediately said, “Yeah, fuck all that.” The creatures smile too wide. The people stretch farther than anatomy recommends. Tongues wander off and start their own side stories. Everybody looks like they’re having a great time while the whole goddamn world quietly falls apart around them.
That laughter is important. Life is dark, temporary, dishonest, horny, ridiculous, and sometimes absolutely fucking beautiful. We worry about stupid shit, chase stupid shit, hate people for stupid shit, and somehow live like there isn’t an expiration date stamped on every one of us. I look at all of it and—I don’t know—it’s funny to me.
The Snakes
The Sperm
I use sperm because, first of all, they’re funny as hell. They’re great little graphic shapes. But they also represent life—and more specifically, the race toward life. Millions of determined little bastards fighting to reach one goal. They’re ridiculous, hopeful, competitive, sexual, and deadly serious all at the same time. Basically, the entire human condition with tails.
The Flies
The flies are there because we’re all slowly rotting away. Put on perfume. Spray on cologne. Buy another cream. Pretend age isn’t happening. It doesn’t fucking matter—everything organic eventually rots. The flies also represent the stink humans keep trying to cover up: what we do to one another, what we do to the planet, and all the bullshit we mask with something shiny.We act like the clock never ends. That is some funny fucking shit.
Everybody’s a cult leader now
I’m also thinking about what we eat, how we take care of ourselves, the things we become addicted to, pornography, social media, likes, subscribers, followers—all of it. Everybody has a tiny electronic congregation now. We stand in front of our little glowing altars asking strangers to worship, approve, subscribe, and please hit the fucking bell.
It’s funny, but it’s also sad as hell. We spend this limited amount of time trying to become an individual cult leader instead of trying to contribute something, help somebody, make something honest, or just have a decent fucking life. Meanwhile, the flies are circling, the sperm are racing, the snakes are whispering, and everybody in the picture is laughing because they know how this shit ends.
I don’t always spell all of that out in the work. I don’t want every drawing to arrive with an instruction manual and a fucking PowerPoint presentation. But these are the ideas running through my head while I’m making it. The symbolism may hide inside the joke, but it’s there.
Influences
Saul Bass
I love the blunt graphic power—the way one shape can communicate an entire idea before your brain even has time to explain it.
Saul Bass
Jim Flora, UPA & Blue Note
Jim Flora’s wild musical chaos, the stylized artists of UPA animation, and those beautiful old Blue Note jazz covers all feed this direction: flat shapes, daring composition, strange rhythm, and design that fucking moves even when it’s standing still.
My influences include
Saul Bass,
the modernist artists of
UPA Animation Studios,
and the iconic
Blue Note jazz covers designed by Reid Miles.
Then I Fuck With It
Influence is the starting point, not the destination. I take all that shit, drag it through my own experiences, humor, obsessions, anger, and style, and turn it into something that feels like me.
The man behind all this shit
I’m Don Dixon—an animator, illustrator, director, motion-graphics artist, writer, and fine artist. After more than two decades making images move, I still love one frozen pose that tells you exactly who a character is.
This work is playful, graphic, theatrical, horny, funny, dark, alive, and already beginning to rot. So, basically, it’s human.
