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InspirationIllustration

Planet Madness: Illustration inspired by detective comics and 1950s America

Artists have long been pairing fifties Americana with surrealism. A decade often described as one of the most economically prosperous in the whole of American history, it seems that anything was believed possible under the guise of 'the American dream' in the 1950s.

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A rusted brown car crashes into a giant yellow cactus outside a modernist concrete building under a blue sky, with a figure standing nearby

In his series Planet Madness, Hungarian director and motion designer Rene Mednyanszky has provided his own spin on the period – injecting supernatural characters into neat concrete landscapes that contain pop cultural references associated with the time.

A bottle green vintage car is slotted under the yellow awning of the Blue Moon Diner, while a mummy stands by. A woman rides an escalator through a twisted, concrete landscape reminiscent of a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. An unmistakably 1950's brown suit and hat balance in mid-air in front of a hotel tower block, with a yellow taxi cab parked outside.

The methods used to create the images are photo-manipulation and digital painting. Mednyanszky states his inspiration for the series as detective comics, 1950s America, Magical Realism and Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite Introduction theme.

A large orange ram's head explodes through concrete on a desert highway, with a vintage diner and motel visible in the background
A vintage bottle green car parked outside the Blue Moon Diner with a mummy figure standing nearby in a 1950s-style street scene from Rene Mednyanszky's Planet Madness series
Group of people in 1950s attire and spacesuits stand on a barren Mars-like landscape with a dog, city skyline visible in the distance
A giant brown suit and fedora float in front of a tan brick hotel tower, with a yellow taxi parked below in a desert landscape under cloudy skies
Woman in dark swimsuit riding an escalator through a surreal concrete landscape with yellow palm trees and a vintage diner sign in the background
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