User:FCSundae/L E V
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Lev Yilmaz, creator and star of the “Tales of Mere Existence” comic series is a San Francisco based independent film maker, artist and publisher. Born July 16, 1973 in Boston, MA as Levni R. Yilmaz, he is the youngest of three siblings. His father is Turkish physicist, Huseyin Yilmaz, author of the Yilmaz theory of gravitation, and his mother is Karen Carlson.
As a child, Yilmaz was interested in film and made a series of short satirical films with his brother, Emre Yilmaz, by using his mother’s Super-8 camera. He took up video again at School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1991. After graduation, he continued to work with his brother making short, mostly satirical animated films. In 1998, he moved to San Francisco, and in 1999 he began making "Tales of Mere Existence."
Each video in the "Tales of Mere Existence" series shows a series of static cartoons, which appear gradually as if being drawn by an invisible hand. Yilmaz achieves the effect by drawing the cartoons on paper attached to glass, and placing the camera on the other side. The paper is backlit to make the cartoons show through, so the viewer sees the comic appear without seeing Yilmaz's hand or pen. Yilmaz got the idea for the technique from the movie “The Mystery Of Picasso”(1956), which similarly showed Picasso's paintings appearing from the other side. Yilmaz writes, draws, films, edits, and narrates the "Tales" videos, which touch on mostly mundane aspects of life and have been described as "bleakly hilarious."
Yilmaz’s career path to comic artist has not followed the traditional path. Usually a comic artist draws a strip and then creates the animated version second. Yilmaz made the films first, and only began drawing comic books because he wanted something to sell with the DVDs at film festivals.
Yilmaz notes multiple and varied influences to his work from other artist and performers such as “Matt Groening's "Life In Hell," Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast Of Champions," Scott Dikker's "Jim's Journal," John Cleese, and Bill Cosby's standup comedy records from the 1960s.
In 2004, "Tales of Mere Existence" was featured on the short-lived Comedy Central show “Jump Cuts.” In that same year, Yilmaz had several illustrations included in Davy Rothbart’s 2004 book “Found,” which feature a series of discarded articles giving clues to the inner working of people’s private thoughts and lives. In 2005, Yilmaz toured France at the invitation of Yann Broly and BOXLAND, where he showed live his technique of storytelling and animation. He was an Audience Choice Award winner at “The World Of Comedy Film Festival” in Canada in 2006, beating out Aardman Studios, known for producing films such as The Adventures of Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, and Flushed Away. He won the 2006 and 2007 Audience Choice award in the Florida Film Festival, becoming the first person to win the award two years in a row.
Yilmaz’s older brother Emre Yilmaz is also in animation business, and has worked on such features as the “Shrek” series (Dreamworks: 2001,2004, 2007) and “Sesame Street's Elmo’s World” (1998-present). As of November 28th, 2007, Agent XPQ (Yilmaz’s YouTube channel) is the 69th most subscribed to channel.
External Links:
http://www.ingredientx.com/
http://www.talesofmereexistence.com/ (Under construction)
http://www.myspace.com/tales_of_mere_existence
http://www.youtube.com/AgentXPQ
