{"id":4175,"date":"2018-11-07T22:52:14","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T22:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/?p=4175"},"modified":"2018-11-07T22:52:14","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T22:52:14","slug":"alumni-spotlight-eliot-sirota-fieldston-class-of-1990","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/2018\/11\/alumni-spotlight-eliot-sirota-fieldston-class-of-1990\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Spotlight: Eliot Sirota, Fieldston Class of 1990"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 <\/span>How the Grinch Stole Christmas<\/span><\/i> (2000).<\/span><\/p>\n

Sirota is the Art Director at Fonco Creative, a production company in Los Angeles, California. His creature designs have been seen in <\/span>Meet The Robinsons<\/span><\/i>, and many other science fiction movies.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/span> How to Train Your Dragon<\/span><\/i> in the shape of its main character, Toothless. More recently, he created a <\/span>Star Wars <\/span><\/i>spaceship to fit on the wheelchair of a young boy. <\/span><\/p>\n

A lifelong <\/span>Star Wars <\/span><\/i>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\u2019s film, <\/span>Unlimited Power<\/span><\/i>, was declared the best film by Lucas himself. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo hear George Lucas say my name, and it was on a screen, was one of the craziest things and it was a huge honor,\u201d Sirota said. \u201cPeople 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.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, every aspect of my life at Fieldston was art based,\u201d Sirota said. \u201cSo much of what I did at Fieldston factors into my life on a daily basis.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

What most surprised Sirota was how much he uses what he learned in Fieldston\u2019s geometry and algebra classes in his work. Eliot said he uses math \u201call the time\u201d when he is at work. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople may think, \u2018oh, you\u2019re an artist, you don\u2019t need to do any math,\u2019 and then you have to make something fit in a certain area,\u201d \u00a0Sirota said.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why Sirota is appreciative of his Fieldston education. Sirota also said history factors into his artwork, as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cArt inspired history, and history inspired art, and art shaped history,\u201d Sirota said. <\/span><\/p>\n

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. <\/span><\/p>\n

Eliot’s recent personal art is inspired by urban legends, and he said he finds cryptozoology fascinating. <\/span><\/p>\n

“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 \u201cyou can be inspired by anything.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":239,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[347],"tags":[],"coauthors":[350],"class_list":["post-4175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4176,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4175\/revisions\/4176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4175"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}