Name: Stuart Pantoll, aka Slinkachu Born in 1979 Slinkachu was born in Budleigh Salterton, in Devon, UK. His father made him a train set when he was a child and the miniature people, trees, and houses captivated him. In 2002 Slinkachu moved to London, where he pursued his career in commercial art and design. In 2006, while looking for more creative ways to express himself outside of commercial work, he came up with the idea of the Little People Project. He started by buying simple train set characters and setting them on the street to recreate typical London life.
Style
Slinkachu makes contemporary art. His art style is also very visually distinctive. His work has miniature figures with life sized objects. Most of his work plays off of the size difference. Sometimes the real life sized object will be used as something else, like a shoelace as a serpent for example.
Philosophy
Slinkachu's work shows how lonely people are living in a big city. He tries to reflect the viewer's emotions. He also tries to get people to pay closer attention to their surroundings by "abandoning" his sculptures. Slinkachu tries to capture the universal feelings of being overlooked, lost, and overwhelmed. But he also tries to include some humor in his works. He wants people to empathize with the little people struggling to live their lives.
Influences
Slinkachu influenced my photographs as soon as I saw one of his works. The concept of tiny people in settings with life sized things going about their business as we would fascinated me. I didn't have figures from train sets, so I used Lego minifigures instead. And while bigger, it accomplished the same goal. While my work is more whimsical than Slinkachu's, I think that I still captured some of the loneliness in a couple of my pictures.
Compare and Contrast
The pictures of Slinkachu are much more somber than the pictures I took. They also have more depth to them, while I took mine to tell a comical story through toys. The pictures I took are also more based off of the concept, rather than the philosophy, of Slinkachu's pictures.
Personal Artist Statement
My images tell the story of a stormtrooper who' s just trying to have fun. The first image is of a stormtrooper drawing a self portrait with materials much too big for him. My second picture is of a stormtrooper who got rained on at the beach, and the third is of him playing a video game indoors instead. But uh oh, his boss caught him slacking on the job in the fourth picture! Now he is being fed to the aquatic monster as punishment while his boss is laughing; How mean! I try to create contrast with some contrasting colors in my pictures. The bright colors add to the light hearted feel of my pictures. However the first two pictures I have are darker (in terms of brightness) than the others, making it seem like the stormtroopers are sadder.