Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Inside The Mind of Michael Clinard
When Adweek Magazine contacted Michael Clinard about conceptual images for the mag’s year-end “Hot List” issue, the photographer knew he’d have to make a tight turnaround time, made tighter by the Thanksgiving holiday. But for an artist who thrives on pressure and never hesitates to push the creative envelope (or shred it), this was the good stuff.
On the day before Thanksgiving, Michael got his marching orders: create imagery representing Twitter for the magazine’s “Biggest Time Suck” list and the hit AMC program The Walking Dead (rated by Adweek as “Best Edge-of-Your-Seat TV Show”).
With an assist from a master prop builder, his friend John Lavin, the Seattle-based photographer concocted a brilliant design for the Twitter shot: a flock of blue Twitter-esque birds stealing the numbers off a simple clock. From his own gently bent mind he conceived an image of a zombie arm pointing a remote toward a television’s glow (beside an enormous bowl of cheese puffs, a Clinard staple).
This level of creativity—and impressively swift execution—is nothing new for Michael, whose work is always ingenious and just slightly off. Well, maybe that’s an unfair comparison to artists who actually are just slightly off: Michael is way off, a brilliant and imaginative conceptual artist who thinks so far out of the box his thoughts can’t even see the box from there. Whether he’s capturing images of a man swallowing a rainbow, hamsters guzzling Jack Daniels or a variety of oddly contorted models, Michael’s eye for angles and mind for messages never disappoint.
Both the Twitter-clock and zombie-arm shots scored with Adweek. The magazine’s creative director was especially pleased with the clock shot, which Michael notes started as a German cuckoo clock but evolved into the analog clock face and time-snatching bluebirds.
“I’m really thankful to have clients who trust my intuition and drive to deliver imagery that pushes both their expectations and those of their readership,” the artist says. “What a fun job!”
Click here to see more of Michael’s amazingly inventive work.
