Shaun Tan - Creative process and inspirations for Academy Award winning short film The Lost Thing

Shaun Tan is an artist and author whose illustrated works have received widespread acclaim. His works transcend the 'picture book' genre through their meditative exploration of daunting spaces and existential themes.

If his illustrations contain threatening elements, they are rarely found in the characters and dialogue - instead the structuring logic comes from the liminal and transitory spaces through which his characters move. Shrinking the inter-planetary themes of science fiction to fit the suburbs, Shaun has also worked as an author, compiling a number of his short stories for the collection Tales from Outer Suburbia.

In recent years he's applied his techniques to animation, directing the Oscar winning short film The Lost Thing. Whilst the final product was produced using CGI, all the forms and textures started out as two-dimensional, painted surfaces.

[davidbrianorchard]

This guy is a brilliant artist and an original thinker... loved Tales from Outer Suburbia, and Lost & Found. so so good.

[swimminlane]

The book caught my interest from the reference to some famous Australian paintings

[erlenelobo]

I would like to recommend the Australian artist and author Shaun Tab to launch ' The Arrival' at the International Organisation for Migration ( IOM- UN) and at the United Nations Bookshop.

[nahomi]

1:57 there is a toaster running without the cable plugged in!

[AnnaMaledonPictureBookAuthor]

Wonderfully bizarre. In a good way, of course.