Graphic Artist Gideon Slife Featured in LOST Thought

The compelling visual art of Gideon Slife, one of the most celebrated LOST artists, will be featured in the LOST anthology LOST Thought, edited by Pearson Moore. In this article, Gideon discusses his work, his interest in minimalist interpretation, and his fascination with LOST.



LOST, One Poster at a Time

By Gideon Slife



I am delighted to be involved in the LOST Thought project!

I am a graphic design artist. The concept of one poster per Lost episode began as a personal project: one poster per day, starting with the premiere of season six and ending three days after the series finale. The posters were uploaded to Flickr and posted on the DarkUFO forums, where after a month or so they spread through the Lost community and eventually onto other sites like SlashFilm and NYMag.com's Vulture section.

Usually I try to make each poster something that people who have seen the episode will remember. However, it’s important to me that those who haven’t seen the series won't be spoiled by the images. Generally I finish each poster in an hour, although a few took more time, like Jack's face for Through the Looking Glass, which I wish I had been able to spend more time on. All of the posters are completed in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, but a few have other mediums, particularly The Candidate, which was screenprinted at a smaller size.



Deus Ex Machina: I think this is definitely one of the most memorable scenes of the entire show and one that really represents Lost as a whole. It takes something that was currently a mystery in the show (the hatch) and uses it to develop a character. Locke's desperation is obvious, and it really boils his character into a man with no hope left. But this character movie also reveals more about the mystery AND more about the character.



The Man Behind the Curtain: Another great scene. I can remember watching this for the first time. I'm really happy with the way this turned out; representing Jacob and not just the chair he's in.



The Variable: I'm also really happy with the concept of this poster: relating Faraday's life to the metronome he played as a kid. I'm also really interested in great time travel stories, like the tragic storyline of a man who dies at the hands of his mother months before he was born. If you liked Daniel's storyline, I'd definitely recommend the short French film Le jetée.

On the controversial subject of the finale, I liked it all right. The on-island stuff was awesome, but I didn't really like the revelation of the flash-sideways as an "afterlife waiting room." it just seemed they took a lot of time up with those story-lines that weren't really relevant to that reveal. I wouldn't have minded so much if they didn't take up as much time, or if the afterlife was something different.



Minimalism: Minimalist art is very tough to do right. I think that minimalism is more of a building up of elements. You build up what you need to represent a subject, an idea, or a form, then take away as much as you can until it hurts. Minimalism is hard.

I graduated from the University of Delaware in 2012 from the Visual Communication program. You can find some of my other work at gideonslife.com.

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Gideon Slife, ArtGUS, and several other top artists will be featured in LOST Thought. The anthology goes on sale on March 9, 2012.