'400 Million Years in the Making' with Changilloides

December 11, 2024

Nature often takes a backseat in our fast-paced, modern world, but Sydney-based studio Changilloides is on a mission to shift that focus. Through their intricate and thoughtful work, they shine a light on the overlooked beauty of the natural world, blending artistic precision with real-life observation and a deep respect for their surroundings.

What first inspired you to focus on nature in your work?

We are grateful that there are numerous professionals from different industries across the world that are doing a marvellous job for Mother Nature. However, we think in the mainstream creative industry, nature seems to be the forgotten part of how we live in our modern world, and Changilloides is dedicated to bringing our focus back to the natural world. Even though we are neither scientists, geologists nor entomologists, we would like to make our small contribution by piquing more people’s interest and fostering their appreciation for nature through our modest visual study of those small or seemingly insignificant subject matters from nature.

Do you work from real-life observation, photographs, or imagination when illustrating nature?

We use a combination of all three at times, but most time it’s real-life observation and photographs. Out of respect for the topic, we try to accurately portray the subject matter with little interpretation or manipulation to present nature as we found. However, we do have some works which are straight out of our imagination, such as our Still Life Collection. These are inspired by those unexpected moments we encounter in our daily life. We really appreciate those spontaneous moments that just come naturally without much effort.

What techniques or tools do you use in your studio to best capture the essence of nature in your work?

We are not one to overlook our nature inspired minds eye as our technique or tool. One of our favourite quotes from an ancient Chinese philosopher - Lao Tzu says “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” We think being stressed or a fast paced environment is not conducive to free flowing nature based design. We also believe that beauty is everywhere, just waiting for you to appreciate it with your curious eye. As for the tools we most used in our work, it depends on the subject matter we work on, for some of the detailed specimens or fossils, our illustrator starts drafting by using a microscope or sketching on the paper or a notebook. For most of our work, we usually use the photographs we take as the initial draft and work on them in detail on iPad and computer.

How do you balance commercial demands with your studio’s creative vision?

As a new comer to the industry, we try to position ourselves as least commercial as possible. Having had this in mind, we have missed a few collaborations and commissions. However, we don’t take that as our loss, rather, we take that as something that keeps us moving forward without losing our heart, which some people might think that is cliche. However, we want to maintain our work as authentic, humble and unpretentious as possible so we have to sacrifice some attractions that keep us away from our creative vision.

How does the unique culture and landscape of Sydney influence your work?

We are lucky enough to live on land that has been managed by the indigenous people of Australia for tens thousands of years. This in turn has influenced the unique flora and fauna of Sydney’s landscape which is the main source of our inspiration. Also, Sydney’s sandstone sits upon some interesting geology, running from the south of Sydney to the north is the Bulli coal seam which marks the Permian/Triassic extinction boundary. Exposures of this boundary occur along Sydney’s northern beaches where abundant Triassic plant fossils can be found. To us, knowing this added another layer of understanding of Australia’s flora and gave us a fresh perspective on how our plants originated. That has led us to have a serious dedication on ‘400 million years in the making’ through our nature - inspired work.

We consider the land we live on as a remote oasis, which probably allows us to have less hustle and bustle life than most other big cities in the rest of world. It enables us to connect more often with nature, in a way, that helps us to find a calmer part of our mind and an authentic side of our heart, together, they nourish us in a very positive and harmonious way. This is probably the reason why we are able to have a fresh mind and that definitely affects the way we work. We have more focus on creating something inspired by nature that could bring a positive meaning to encourage people to understand how the natural world can have an impact on our wellbeing.

Tell us about some of your most memorable collaborations and commissions.

Well, we don’t have many collaborations and commissions so far as we are still quite young in the industry. However, we did have one collaboration that really resonated to us, which was to illustrate and design a gift book based on a collection of Chinese poems. We thoroughly enjoyed working on this project. For us each poem was just like a life lesson, which encouraged and inspired us to reconsider what is of most importance in our life. We loved how well the author intertwined his real life experiences with his retirement time spent in nature. It wasn’t easy to grasp his poetic intention at the beginning, but all was made clear by the end.

Looking back now, this project made us realise that there are some universal things or beliefs in terms of being alive, regardless of where we come from, which language we speak or what religion we believe. Because at some level, we are one, we are all part of nature and part of the universe. If we could think this way, we might make our difficult life less so.

How do you incorporate realistic elements while still maintaining your own artistic interpretation of nature?

First and foremost to us is the subject matter and representing it in its already perfect form is our main priority. While also interpreting the mood of the subject we are working on and trying to reflect that through colour harmony, perspective, proportion and typography. This is a balancing act that is a unique puzzle for each work and no two works are the same, which helps to keep things challenging and ultimately rewarding.

What do you hope that people will take away from your work?

We hope people will be inspired to connect and engage with nature in a positive way and find their own inspiration and wonder of this amazing world of plants and animals. We also hope people appreciate more the seemingly insignificant side of the natural world and try to shine a spotlight on the parts of nature that are around us in our everyday life.

What advice would you give to young creatives aiming to enter the industry, and more specifically the Sydney creative scene?

What we believe is that you need to find something with a positive meaning that benefits others, and then build up your own niche to grow according to your own pace. Along the doing and exploring journey just focus more on each step, live in the present moment, rather than the destination, as you have no control of that. You will get where you want to be eventually if you are meant for it, if it’s not, don’t panic. That is not because you didn’t work hard or you are not good enough, it might be because there is something even better awaiting for you later, so just BE PATIENT.