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TIM O’BRIEN: SOVIET APE

September 23, 2011

Tim O’Brien was given an article over the summer, to be published in Playboy, about a clandestine program to attempt to breed a human ape hybrid race in the Soviet Union around the time of the Second World War.  The goal was to breed a powerful and vicious soldier.

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Tim had two ideas he wanted to paint: One was a tortured and crazy eyed chimp soldier behind some bars.  The second was a soldier with some real emotion on his face, almost an anxiety and a suspicious sideways glance.  The art director chose the latter and Tim got to work.

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Artistic evolution ensued:

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“The end of the story is that there are no results of this program, no rooms filled with the offspring of this effort,” says Tim. “However, they tried.”

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