LEMEAL Studio

Mary and Davit Jilavyan

LEMEAL is a 3D design studio founded by siblings Mary and Davit Jilavyan. Selections published here draw inspiration from music, film, literature, and visual art. LEMEAL has been featured in Dezeen, designboom, and Aesthetica Magazine, among other venues. 

Inspired by the work of Norwegian music collective Wardruna, conceived in the months preceding the pandemic, Dolmen Shelter reimagines the neolithic tomb as tiny home, as fallout shelter, as refuge from the world of material things. “I don’t really know who would live in such a place for a long period of time,” writes LEMEAL co-founder Mary Jilavyan, “but a couple of days would be useful for anyone.”

Dolmen Shelter

Moscow, Russia. November 2020.

3ds Max, Corona Renderer, Photoshop​

Dream Like a Kid is part of a series that releases animal-themed footstools into the wild. Informed by cartoons and stop-motion animation—notably, Wes Anderson’s treatment of the Roald Dahl novel Fantastic Mr. Fox—these images invite viewers to ponder the whimsical exploits of sheep, elephant, and water buffalo, now freed from their less than glamorous furnishing obligations.

Dream Like a Kid

Moscow, Russia. October 2022.

3DS Max, Corona Renderer, Photoshop

How to capture texture in digital art? Felt World, influenced in part by the children's television series Shaun the Sheep, overlays cartoon landscapes with a common household crafting material. One goal of this experiment, Jilavyan suggests, is to make “something you would like to touch…non-physical physical art.”

Felt World

Dilijan, Armenia. June 2023. 

3ds Max, Corona Renderer, Photoshop

Surrealism, to quote Jilavyan, “is a way to show everything everywhere all it once.” Reminiscent of Salvador Dali’s post-apocalyptic landscapes—see The Enigma of Desire or The Persistence of Memory—this image is part of a series that makes plausible metaphysical impossibilities, from floating pediments to dead snaking trees.

Surrealism

Moscow, Russia. July 2021. 

3ds Max, Corona Renderer, Photoshop.

Framed by skeletons, furnished with fossils, Jurassik Villa draws design cues from a film franchise deeply invested in spinoffs and replication. As Jilavyan notes, “Sometimes some small obscure detail on the image or video or film can become the beginning of your next artwork.”

Jurrassik Villa

Moscow, Russia. June 2022. 

3ds Max, Corona Renderer, Photoshop

Retro Pool blends coral hues, Art Deco accents, and grain effect to conjure another era. In a scene fit for Miami Vice or Hawaii Five-O, the central figure, a mysterious woman emerging from a hotel pool, gazes off screen at an unknown subject.

Retro Pool

Moscow, Russia. July 2022. 

3ds Max, Corona Renderer, Photoshop