Eliot Sirota (1990) is an award-winning graphic artist who lives in California. He makes computer-generated characters and real models for TV, movies and personal collections. A natural artist who developed his skills at Fieldston, he has wowed the world with a Millennium Falcon shaped piano and character designs for How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000).
Sirota is the Art Director at Fonco Creative, a production company in Los Angeles, California. His creature designs have been seen in Meet The Robinsons, and many other science fiction movies.
Sirota has also been involved in designing innovative real-life models for fantasy and science fiction fans. One of his favorite projects was creating a couch for a superfan of How to Train Your Dragon in the shape of its main character, Toothless. More recently, he created a Star Wars spaceship to fit on the wheelchair of a young boy.
A lifelong Star Wars fan, (his twitter name is @OneEyedJedi), in 2011, he created an animated short film featuring a small droid dancing. At ComicCon, during the George Lucas Selects Awards, Sirota’s film, Unlimited Power, was declared the best film by Lucas himself.
“To hear George Lucas say my name, and it was on a screen, was one of the craziest things and it was a huge honor,” Sirota said. “People were cheering. It is something that I will never forget, and my film is one of my favorite personal projects that I have ever worked on.”
At Fieldston, Eliot was one of the art editors for the Fieldston yearbook in 1990. He was also one of the editors for the art magazine.
“Basically, every aspect of my life at Fieldston was art based,” Sirota said. “So much of what I did at Fieldston factors into my life on a daily basis.”
What most surprised Sirota was how much he uses what he learned in Fieldston’s geometry and algebra classes in his work. Eliot said he uses math “all the time” when he is at work.
“People may think, ‘oh, you’re an artist, you don’t need to do any math,’ and then you have to make something fit in a certain area,” Sirota said.
This is why Sirota is appreciative of his Fieldston education. Sirota also said history factors into his artwork, as well.
“Art inspired history, and history inspired art, and art shaped history,” Sirota said.
This is why, even though he admits to not liking many non-art classes, he applies math and history, as much as he does art, to his projects.
Eliot’s recent personal art is inspired by urban legends, and he said he finds cryptozoology fascinating.
“I don’t necessarily believe in that stuff, but I find it fascinating that other people do and the lengths that people will go to,” Sirota said. He said the political climate has inspired his artwork as well and, for some projects, he lets his mind wander because “you can be inspired by anything.”
