Jonah Dunstan

Jonah Dunstan’s work is a fine cocktail of ridiculous cartoon spectacle, mixed with the gritty weirdness of the low budget b-movies that he watched obsessively in his youth. This juxstaposition serves as an important crux for his work.  He blends these elements together into his wonderfully zany backgrounds designed for tv animation. While each piece is compositionally unique and varied, they all come together to create the setting of a run down town in the desert.  A place with no meaningful future, flanked by seedy biker bars and a mysterious military base.  . Working off of tropes and pushing them to another level. Shows like Over the Garden Wall, and Gravity Falls have deeply inspired him to pursue a career in designing for animation. These cartoons created such a strong sense of identity through their backgrounds, this has inspired Jonah to examine how far he can push narrative through backgrounds alone. Other artists like Paul Felix, Steve Purcell, and Gendy Tartakovsky have deeply shaped his aesthetic.

  With the burgeoning interest in adult animation, it’s never been a better time to create the pulpy cartoons that Jonah particularly excels at. Traditional materials are Jonah’s go-to whenever he starts a new piece as he finds it much easier to fluidly think about compositions this way.  All of the finishes are done digitally in Procreate. The act of creating artwork is like a deeply rewarding puzzle like sudoku.

 

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