VINCENT MAKES PSYCHEDELIC ARTWORK FOR LEGENDARY ROCK GROUP
And suddenly Guns N ' Roses is your customerVincent Hocquet (50) has been active as a tattoo artist for 25 years, but the Koksijde resident also has a number of side projects as a visual artist. That is how he started studying the technique of Zoetropes five years ago. "These are optical illusions on a flat surface, which come to life when you look at them with the right light frequency. So this works like a phenakistiscope, which was invented by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau. However, I set up my sequence of images slipmats, which, as it were, show a GIF (moving image file, ed.) on your record player," he explains.
OPTICAL ILLUSION
Vincent originally gave these special works of art as gifts to the many bands that came to perform with him. "I have already made such animation films for a lot of Belgian artists such as Dez Mona, The Bony King of Nowhere or Johannes Verschaeve. I always spend a few weeks on that from idea to implementation. In the meantime I also made slipmats with photos of my tattoos, I entered a competition for Queen, and I translated Jack White's video clip Lazaretto into an elongated Zoetrope in my style," says the music fan. After all that free work, there were also assignments for Shtevil, Wouter Berlaen and Jef Neve, and last year a remarkable order suddenly fell into Vincent's mailbox: "Someone from Universal wanted to talk to me about a project for a major band. The next day I had a group discussion with him and an art director. Only then did I hear that it was about Guns N' Roses and that they wanted to involve me in the anniversary box of the double album Use Your Illusion, which came out thirty years ago. Of course I was immediately enthusiastic, because I had that album on cassette at the time and so it was part of the soundtrack of my childhood."
BREAKTHROUGH
Vincent was given carte blanche for the elaboration of the slipmat, which will soon be included in the deluxe set of the box. "Yet I made six versions before I sent one that I was sufficiently satisfied with," he laughs. "I suspect that they just ended up on my webshop via Google or YouTube. I'd rather not disclose the exact amount of money that I get for this, but I certainly have pride in working. Moreover, I hope that this will lead to even more orders, so it can be a breakthrough for my digital work.'
