Employer Freelance Known for Illustration | Website StollArt.com Name Christopher Stoll | |
Born 9 January 1991 Fort Worth, Texas Occupation freelance illustrator, web producer | ||
Christopher Stoll, born 1991 is an American illustrator, who has been featured in magazines such as Popular Mechanics and Metro International as well as the websites Huffington Post, Comedy Central, Kotaku, and Buzzfeed. He is the author and illustrator of multiple fantasy artbooks, and produces weekly content relating to popular culture and the current state of art in America on his website and various social media outlets.
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Career
Early in his career Stoll attempted work as a caricaturist , working at events and fairs in rural Texas, but he was not met with much luck in the field. He also briefly ran a Xanga blog, "State of the Art", which he billed as "A mix of creativity, culture, and controversy." Although he states he had "some success" with the project, he ultimately found the endeavor unrewarding and deleted the blog. During this time he began working full time as a freelance illustrator, producing work for friends and local businesses; the success of this work lead him to apply to companies like TPK Games and the online publication Star Frontiersman.
In 2013, he published a series of fanart images of Disney Princesses as Avengers which were quickly picked up and circulated by sites like Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and the Disney owned website Babble. These images were viewed and shared hundreds of thousands of times and achieved momentary internet pop notoriety. It was here that Stoll established his public persona as an advocate of cultural inclusiveness and female empowerment. This series set a precedent for later work reinventing pop culture characters through changes in theme and setting. A popular recent example of this trend was "PokéNatomy" which was also widely circulated on Reddit and other online forums.
In 2015 he ran multiple successful Kickstarter campaigns for his artbook bestiaries. This included "A Natural History of the Fantastic." and "The Feminomicon," an artistic guidebook chronicling mythical women from around the world based on the stylings of H.P. Lovecraft.
In late 2016 his series of anatomical illustrations titled "PokéNatomy" was featured widely, accumulating tens of millions of views online. This work appeared in the Metro magazine across Europe, Asia, and South America, as well as the Russian October edition of Popular Mechanics
Reception
Stoll's art is occasionally polarizing, but generally well received. His work has been described as "a powerful way to flip the culture inside out." by Emma Mustichby at The Huffington Post and similarly lauded by Comedy Central UK's website From views espoused on his personal websites, Stoll positions himself firmly as someone who believes in the rights of creators to express themselves fully even in the face of potential controversy. Despite a reputation for fan art and sexual subject matter, Stoll demonstrates a progressive attitude against sexism in modern popular culture, and has argued against it frequently on his own site and various webpages. He regularly criticizes contemporary media for using attractive women as "decoration" and failing to account for alternative expressions of sexual desire.