Animator, filmmaker, and digital artist Victoria Vincent, known as Vewn on her various social media accounts, is still relatively unknown in the art and animation world – which is extremely unfortunate. Her Instagram features a wide range of her digital artwork, with a following of 147k. Her YouTube channel surpasses her Instagram in terms of followers – on YouTube she has 678k subscribers – but not in terms of content. Despite being fairly popular, her page features just 14 short videos, ranging from around 1 minute to 9 minutes in length. Vewn’s videos and art are gritty, sexy, and most importantly, possess a quality of openness and vulnerability that contribute to making her an underrated animator.Â
https://www.instagram.com/p/B6UUc1kjn5D/
Despite the cartoonish style of her work, featuring elaborate character art and bright, popping colors, the message of Vewn’s work is far deeper than it originally reads. Victoria Vincent depicts characters dealing with anxiety, inner turmoil, and the sort of instability faced by all teenagers and twenty-somethings universally. The worlds in which her characters appear are a mere reflection of them, with bright colors serving as a facade for a distorted and unstable landscape.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByTbevGAhGs/
Some of Vewn’s artwork makes use of text bubbles and speech, furthering her cartoonish style, but for the most part, her characters are able to speak to the viewer without any presence of text. One of the most captivating qualities of her art is Vewn’s blatant disregard for proportions. Her work features people that stand taller than buildings, winding streets that go against the laws of physics, and walls that turn in directions and ways that are not geometrically possible. This disregard for proportions is not, however, a sign of bad craft – on the contrary, it’s intentional and purposeful, creating an almost claustrophobic environment so that the viewer may feel the same sense of disillusionment and anxiety as the created characters.
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The illustration above is a personal favorite, and aptly captures the essence of Vewn’s character art style of work. Tones of pink and purple give the image a sort of soft, feminine glow, but there’s also a darkness in the details of the work that is captivating. Two girls are drawn on a narrow street, stretching back into the distance and cluttered by wilting towering buildings and billboards. The girl in the foreground of the image stretches her hand into the distance to clutch at the hand of another girl, appearing quite similar to her in terms of clothing and hair. However, this is not an image depicting a healthy relationship. The girl in the front looks back with an expression on her face that can only be described as annoyance, or perhaps even anger. In contrast, the girl presents further back in the image stands tentatively, with a look of nervousness and fear on her face. There are various interpretations for the meaning behind this aesthetic and twisted illustration. One could be the stigma that still surrounds lesbian relationships and the anxiety that comes with being open about one’s sexuality. This can be perceived through the two girls’ apprehensiveness at showing physical affection in a public setting. Another interpretation of an image can also be viewed as the toxicity of an unhealthy relationship, and of how there is rarely ever an equal balance between two partners. The beauty of Victoria Vincent’s artwork lies in the details. In this particular image, a billboard at the top of the artwork shows two naked, green-haired women in the midst of an act of intimacy. On the side of the image graffiti is sprayed on a garage door with the message “There is only 1 certainty”, and a taped-up poster next to it reading “Sign my petition to achieve world peace”.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BwNnUXwFFk_/
The piece above is one that many women in their twenties can surely appreciate and probably relate to. A blue-haired woman dressed in only a bra and panties lounges on a magenta couch as a man is depicted climbing out of the room’s open window. With her halo, angel wings, and a lit cigarette, this character is the picture of a woman who is sexy, cool, and of course – emotionally unstable. As the man leaves her apartment with a simple “Peace”, the woman – or better yet, fallen angel – thinks to herself, “I didn’t even get to the part about my insatiable emotional void….”. Sure, at a surface level this work has an air of nonchalance and even humor. However, on a deeper level, it speaks to the unfulfilling nature of hookup culture, about how the craving for romance and for intimate emotional connections is the core of most people’s desires and the collective human experience. As a filmmaker and digital artist, Vewn is creating a space for all sorts of women to exist in art: Women who exist as beings who are sexy, dangerous, dark, confused, in love, and in pain. And thankfully, she’s just getting started. Check out all of Vewn’s work on her Instagram and YouTube pages, and you can also support her by buying prints and apparel from her store.