Mariana Villanueva (illustrator)

Mariana Villanueva (born 1990) is a Mexican artist and illustrator born in Mexico City, known for her work for Gears of War Ultimate Edition and collaboration with the band Slipknot. She is also known by her artistic alias "Haku," shortened version of the nickname "Hakunita." Her illustrations have been exhibited on many countries such as Mexico, Argentina, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Life

Mariana Villanueva was born and raised in Mexico City. When she was a child she enjoyed drawing and decided to dedicate her life to art. Her family has always been involved with the artistic media, mainly because both of her parents worked promoting arts and culture in the city with events and festivals such as Festival Cervantino. Also her grandfather was the founder of Los Folkloristas, which was an organization of musicians working to promote traditional Latin American music. Because of her family´s artistic background Villanueva attended many artistic expositions, concerts, plays, workshops and cultural events during her childhood. Additionally her house was constantly visited by artists who were friends of her mother. When she was sixteen years old her father died. This event made death a central idea of her art.

Career

Education

She began studying a bachelor's degree on Integral Design at the Design School of the National Institute of Fine Arts (La Escuela de Diseño del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) However, she did not like their educational system and decided to drop out in order to become a full-time artist. After quitting from her school Haku began to study drawing on her own, using online tutorials on the Internet as her main resource. Later on she was mentored by the graphic novelist Edgar Clement, which helped her reinforce her drawing and illustration studies and gain professional experience. Haku contributed to Edgar Clement´s project magazine La Punta in early 2013. The objective of this magazine was to showcase the work of Clement´s students while illustrating his written stories. According to Clement even though she lacked ability for graphic narrative, her illustration skills were promising.

Artistic Trajectory

Before drawing her signature skeletal figures Haku was geared towards anatomical and scientific illustrations of animals. It was while working with Edgar Clement when she made her first series of the Bastardos collection,which were illustrations of very detailed creatures combining elements of nature, animals, and mainly depictions human skeletons and skulls. She uses the Internet as her main networking and promoting tool, especially social networks along with her own web page. It has been through her social networks that she has been contacted by sponsors, buyers, event organizers and contractors. She does not search for the support of bigger companies or contacts; instead she has been contacted by people interested in her works through her social networks, such as in the case of the Microsoft, the band Slipknot and also her sponsorship by Skullcandy headphones.

She has had exhibitions of her artwork in casa Galería in Mexico City(2013), Galería Alias in Toluca, State of Mexico (2014), Box Studio Gallery in London, (2014), the University of Palermo in Buenos Aires(2014), the Miami Ad School (2014) and the "5 de Mayo" exhibition in Detroit´s Inner State Hall organized by 1xRun. In this event five of her illustrations were exposed along with the work of eleven other Mexican illustrators. One of those five illustrations was México Lindo y Que-Herido, an illustration Haku made in 2014 after the events of the Iguala mass kidnapping as part of the Illustrators for Ayotzinapa (Ilustradores por Ayotzinapa) movement. This illustration was one of the many protesting symbols used in the country at that time. By the time she turned 25 years old, her works have appeared in 30 different exhibitions at both national and international level.

At the beginning of 2015 Haku´s work was noticed by the developers of Gears of War Ultimate Edition and she was hired to design exclusive posters and T-shirts for the games promotional campaign. She was asked to create four illustrations for the campaign. She had one month to finish the first two and ten days to finish the rest, even though that was less time than her usual workflow. Her works for the Gears of War Ultimate Edition were published on August 17 of 2015 for the game´s launching event in Mexico City, and received a positive reaction from the audience. In 2015 her work was noticed by an organizer of the upcoming KnotFest in Mexico City, the organizer showed Haku´s art to the members of the band Slipknot and they decided to commission her the art for the event.

She was invited to the Pixelatl visual arts festival in June 2016 to teach in an illustration workshop and a panel.

Artistic Style

Most of Villanueva´s work is inspired by the concepts of life and death along with Mexican contemporary and pre-Hispanic culture. She calls the characters in her works "Bastardos" because according to her "they represent the mystery and constant uncertainty that the omniscience of death causes." Most of her "Bastardos" works usually depict nature, animals, and mainly human skeletons and skulls in intricate poses. Most of her works in this collection are made in big sheets of white paper (size A2 or A1) with the pencil drawn figures in the center of the page, no background, and it usually takes her one-month to finish an illustration. In her "Bastards" collection colors are very rarely used.

References

http://atomix.vg/2016/10/13/encuentran-enorme-plagio-en-arte-para-posters-de-gears-of-war-4/

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