Artist research: Trove Jansson

Trove Jansson is a Finnish Illustrator that has created many different works of art throughout her lifetime, but she is best known for the much loved children's TV animation Moomin that is still popular today. Moomin started off as a weekly newspaper comic strip for adults in London in 1954 and in 1955 the strip started to be published across the Nordic papers. Creating a strip every single day of the week became stressful so her brother eventually took over until it ended

The comic strip then got turned into a TV animated series in 1990 based off Troves comic strips and books, about a troll that lived in moominvalley. A lot of the scenery and colours used in the animation is based off and inspired by her homeland of Finland. The illustration style and colours that are used are very typical of the nordic illustration style. The look of the illustrations give a really nice happy nostalgic feel. The characters are simply coloured with block colours, this is how i usually like to colour my images so looking at these illustrations will help me with the way I use colour within my illustration for my CD cover. 

Here is a video of the opening scene from moomin

As in more recent years moomin has became more popular the merchandise that is made for the moomin series has been updated with a more modern nordic feel to it. The characters and imagery have all been kept the same but with an update in design placement and colour pallet. This is really good to see how one thing can grow and develop in to something new over the years. I think the update has worked really well and successful as the products seem to be very popular amongst fans and collectors as there is an extensive range of things available to buy. I really love the modern nordic illustrative feel they have to them, I feel as though it is very representative of where they are from. 

Moomin Candle Holder 2014

Moomin bed cover