The Work That Made Me: Fede Kanno
Fede Kanno is a 3D artist and art director based in Barcelona. With a passion for modern aesthetics, he collaborates with forward-thinking clients and creatives across the globe to push the boundaries of the digital medium and create authentic, contemporary results.
Drawing inspiration from photography, architecture, technology, and art, he utilises CGI as a tool to envision work that seamlessly integrates these disciplines, creating work characterised by a clean, minimal aesthetic with meticulous attention to detail, resulting in visually stunning and impactful creations.
LBB> The music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Fede> I grew up watching a lot of MTV, and I still remember the first time I saw Michel Gondry's Star Guitar video for The Chemical Brothers. At first, it seemed like a simple train ride video, but then I realised it was much more than that. Many years later I came across the making of it and it was amazing to see how something I had fond memories of was made, it was like spying on a scientist's experiment.
LBB> The TV Channel that made me want to get into the industry…
Fede> In my childhood, there was a channel called Locomotion that would play animation shows, but it had a different approach to other channels, it was more mature, and aimed at young adults, there I was introduced to things like 'Akira', 'Evangelion' and 'Ghost in the Shell'.
In 2001 they did a full rebrand of the channel and that made a huge impact on me, Doma Collective made it and I’ve never seen anything like it, it felt super innovative and most of the time I didn’t understand what was going on, so I became quite obsessed to it and that eventually drew my interest into graphic design.
LBB> The creative work that I keep revisiting…
Fede> The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch is my all-time favourite painting, it’s so beautiful and so complex, the structures, the animals, the different moods, the narrative. It has so much stuff going on at the same time that now and then I like to go back to it and find new things to look at in detail, I could do that for hours.
LBB> My first professional project…
Fede> One that I don’t have any record of, but my cousin was running his design studio at the time and got a project to design a McDonald’s paper tray liner, those disposable ones, the job was to make a scene with hundreds of characters.
You had to find different things in it, a "Where’s Waldo" kind of thing, some great artists were in charge of the design of the characters and I had to paint each one of them in Photoshop with a mouse, no Wacoms involved, the process was painful but I keep very good memories of that time.
LBB> The piece of work that still makes me jealous…
Fede> The Semi-Permanent Titles made by Raoul Marks blew me away when they came out, the level of craftsmanship was insane, and then to learn that it had been done by a single person was something I could not conceive of at the time, the technology we used to work with was changing and this work marked part of that inflexion point for many 3D artists and me.
LBB> The creative project that changed my career…
Fede> Probably the HBO Rebrand we did at Plenty back in the day, I was focused on TV branding at the time and this was the first project that I got the opportunity to art direct.
Being part of the whole process, from the early stages, pitching (and winning!) to actually making it was a pretty fulfilling process. It gave me great insight into how the industry works, how clients think and how managing and collaborating had to be done.
LBB> The work that I’m proudest of…
Fede> We had a great time working with Casa Ignatia in 2021, and conveying a short story about nature and their lamps was something I really enjoyed.
This was one of those projects where things aligned and made it an enjoyable and smooth process, working with talented friends also added to the equation, which led to a few awards.
LBB> I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Fede> We all have projects we would rather hide under the rug in our creative careers, but I believe it's part of the process of finding what we truly enjoy and what steers our careers in the right direction.
LBB> The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Fede> The latest project we did for Bespoke Digital was a lot of fun and spending time experimenting usually yields great results. Having an open brief is exciting and scary at the same time, but collaborating and sharing ideas is like turning a rock into a gemstone, and that's what we're here for.
Fede Kanno is represented in Europe by BOL. To collaborate
with him get in touch at
newproject@bolprod.com.
