When I first wrote about the delightfully original and idiosyncratic art of South African artist Ree Treweek back in March of 2006, I was a little disappointed in the lack of information about the artist and her work, and the limited number of her images available online.

I was pleased when artist/blogger Siouxfire (Michael Curry) wrote to say that he has posted an interview with Ree Treweek on his blog siouxwire.

In addition to her editorial illustrations, many of which were done under the name of Cheri Treweek, Ree Treweek has commercial clients that include Virgin Atlantic, Levi’s, Musica and HP, and she continues to move forward with her fascinating animation project, The Tale of How, a collaboration between herself, Jannes Hendrikz and Markus Smit, collectively known as The Blackheart Gang.

I also wrote about The Tale of How; in April of 2006. Since then, the sample video clip from the project has been extended by almost double, to about four and a half minutes.

The movie, a hybrid of animated drawings, live action manipulation of drawings and CGI, is mesmerizingly otherworldly and visually unique. The current clip (which weighs in at around 70mb), is available on The Blackheart Gang site.

(Though it’s obvious they mean for you to be able to download the clip, they’ve put the link in a Flash file, which means you can’t right-click/control-click to download, and some may have trouble downloading, rather than viewing it in Quicktime in the browser. If you’re using Firefox, you can go to Tools: Page Info, go to the Media tab, select the name of the file and click on “Save As” to download the file. There are other download options on No Fat Clips!)

The interview with Treweek on siouxwire includes sketches of her original ideas for The Tale of How, and in it Treweek talks about her influences and working methods: “I begin with the outlines, often drawing straight into pen when possible… I then do the patterning and detail. I generally draw all the elements as separates and then composite them together later. Usually I do all the coloring in Photoshop.”.

There is also some discussion of the collaborations on the animated film and the planned coffee-table book/DVD release.

Siouxfire also provides a more extensive list of links for additional information, including The Blackheart Gang on MySpace, and an article on Motionographer, in which there is a description of The Blackheart Gang’s collaborative process.