Mr Jake Armstrong’s Creative Odyssey | Mr Porter x Samsung
Photography by Martin Scott Powell
Who needs higher education when you’ve got the collected works of Mr Jim Carrey? For Mr Jake Armstrong, the New York City-based film editor, illustrator, and musician by way of Brighton in the UK, the Mr Carrey cannon served as a kind of alternative to attending university, with comedy being the foundation and fuel for a career in the creative field. “I always knew I wanted to do something creative,” Mr Armstrong says. “I didn’t want to get a pointless degree that would land me in a job I hated. So, I stuck with music, a bit of drawing, anything that I could put myself forward in a creative way and work alongside creative people.”
Mr Armstrong isn’t a comedian by trade, but his work in film and art has been shaped by a lifetime of consuming slapstick cartoons (Tom And Jerry to be precise) and repeated viewings of classics like Dumb And Dumber, The Mask, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. After all, the key ingredient to comedy is timing, something editors work their entire lives to master. And there’s really no better source of inspiration for an illustrator than an actor who happens to be a living, breathing animated character, complete with zany antics and unnaturally elastic facial expressions.