Backgrounds for Megajump (iPhone game)
You’ve started to work in the video game industry. Are you more interested in working on concept art, in-game art, or both?
Both, of course. Concept art is the fun part of the job I guess, where you can be fast and creative. In-game art is a more mechanical job, in my opinion, but also a very fun job.
Working as a texture artist is something that I could find really interesting. I can imagine myself texturing my own concepts done in 3D, or another person’s models. I also think doing 2D backgrounds is something amazing.
Most of your art uses exaggerated or stylized anatomy, and is very expressive. In video games and film, the science fiction genre seems to strive for photorealistic art. What could science fiction gain from using stylized art instead of realism?
Having a recognizable and easy to remember visual style.
Realism is always realism. All the concept art behind the realism is very important, and most of the times recognizable enough. (I just freak out with many, many movies and video games concept art.) But an untrained eye will not notice the difference between two similar products. Having a more recognisable style will make people remember that movie / videogame / comic / picture.
But I must say that, in a movie for example, the story is more important than the visual style. Always. In a game, the gameplay is always more important than visual side, etc.
Ride It
You also have a love of urban fashion and extreme sports. Recently you did a piece for professional snowboarder Torstein Horgmo, and you’ve expressed an interest in doing more work like this. What attracts you to the art of urban fashion and extreme sports?
I’ve loved extreme sports since I was a kid. My father introduced me to the motocross world, and then I found interest in board sports like skateboard and snowboard.
It’s just natural that I want to participate in this industry. I would love watching a kid riding a deck designed by me.
I remember when we had new skateboard decks, the first day was the best day and the worst day. You had a new deck, but in some hours, the picture behind it was going to be destroyed because of grinds on rails and kerbs. I also like that snowboard pictures are indestructible (maybe this is why I would like to focus more in snowboard).
Another thing I love in extreme sports is that no one really looks in detail at the drawings and paintings. They are just colors passing, running here and there. A full body is a little piece of art if he/she knows how to dress and what colors to use for their accessories, like hoodies, backpacks, shoes, skateboards...
I see urban style like this, like a walking and ephemeral piece of art.
You’ve also illustrated several book covers for Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart series. What is your focus when you illustrate a book cover?
Yes, I did some covers for the Sally Lockhart books some years ago, when I was still a student. I always loved movie posters, like Drew Struzan’s covers (Blade Runner, Star Wars, Indiana Jones), so I learned from him. Doing big character busts mixed with tiny characters, plus some scenes from the movie/book, all of them together trying to make an epic cover.
But, I think sometimes this strategy is not the best one. I think very minimal book covers are also awesome because they are easier to remember.
Untitled Sketches
You were considering a Kickstarter campaign for a Sergi Brosa art book, but you decided not to proceed. Why was that?
Ok, here it goes. I wanted to do a kickstarter campaign because I wanted to do my own art book.
It was a mixed art book, where I was going to include my usual illustrations, short comic stories, concept art, and sketches. Of course, all of this was going to be new stuff, including some I had already finished. It was planned to be a 100-to-130-page full-color book.
I decided to put it in stand-by for several reasons.
The first one, I felt it was too egocentric trying to do a book with my own name as a title. It was going to be a very funny book, but I feel I am not yet the professional I am expecting to be, so, trying to do this at this early stage of my professional career was unrealistic.
The second one is that I still need to get more professionalism in the areas where I am focusing my work. I want to work first in companies to get more experience.
And the third one was all the very difficult things someone must do to get a Kickstarter done.
What sort of difficult things?
I just want people to know that everyone who gets a Kickstarter done is a hero. People don’t know about the “behind the scenes” in a Kickstarter campaign. They don’t realize what the real job is there.
I guess everyone (I am including myself before starting my own Kickstarter campaign) believes that doing a Kickstarter is simply: have an idea, work on it for some weeks, and upload it to Kickstarter. That is wrong. There is a really tedious and dangerous job behind all of that.
First of all, you should work on it until you have done at least 30-40% of the project in your free time. Considering that freelance artists don’t have any free time, this is totally crazy. But you can do it. It just will be some months of work. All those months, you won’t have free time for family, friends, hanging out, or relaxing.
Then, even though I had the help of some good French guys, J.D. Morvan (a well-known french comics writer) and J.C. Caurette (official distributor of Kim Jung Gi’s books), helping me with a lot of things related with printing books, the job of trying to contact printers, control the quality and colors on the prints, and so on is still an extra-hard job.
Then, there is the problem that the production of the initial job is reaaaaalllyyy sloooooowwww and it seems that it’s never going to get to the point where you have 30% of the book and all the material necessary for the Kickstarter campaign.
You need to talk with your government, to get the rights to distribute by shipping your books, understand the taxes you are going to pay to them, be your own lawyer in certain things.
All these things, you do them before knowing whether your Kickstarter is going to work. It totals how much? A whole year maybe. Spending a whole year without knowing if this is gonna work is a very big amount of time. You’re doing this alone. You can receive some help, as I did, but the entire big job is alone, with a very dense fog surrounding you. It is not easy, I promise.
I completed many of these things, but then I thought I should wait until I have more professional experience, because a failure in this case is a very low kick in your belly.
Untitled Sketches
Were there any other obstacles?
In addition, everyone must consider that, after having done all this, you must commit to the full duration of your Kickstarter campaign, working hard to get it moving, to put it in front of everyone. Do contests, talk to people, work a lot to get a new update every few days, give prizes, get prints, and so on.
It is a very complex job. So, I would like to say that I consider the people who get a Kickstarter done, successful or unsuccessful, are heroes, because all them have done all this work, almost alone. Not everyone is able to do this without the support of a company or an investor, just working alone at home.
Kickstarter has became very famous, but not everyone knows these “behind the scenes” aspects.
So, returning to my art book, I decided to put it in standby, because I feel I can get more professional experience and, in the future, I will be able to do a better book. I will use my free time to create new things that I will be able to include in it, but I want my book to be the best I can do, and I know this is not the right moment for it.
Speaking of crowdfunding in general, people are very excited about the positive impacts of artists being funded directly by their fans. (For example, directly communicating with the artist, and helping the artist know what the fans want to see.) Are there any negative impacts?
Well, the only negative part (and I am not sure it is very negative) is that the artist must do every task as if he wer
e a little company. But, this is just something to learn.
I mean, nothing is negative. Having direct feedback and communication with your fans is something awesome. I often take the time to speak with different people on my Facebook page, people who are from the other side of the planet, just to say “Hello, how are you? How is life in your country?” and so on.
Some people tell me what aspects of my art they like, so this just gives me a reference point about which aspects of my art appeal to some people. I have come to know many people like this, so for me it is very positive to be close to fans and other artists. Then, if we have a very busy day, we just stay off-line, disconnect, put on music, and work-work-work.
I think, the most exciting thing about doing a Kickstarter is the freedom you can get when you are not working for someone. You just do what you feel you want to do. The result is totally yourself expressed in a piece of art, in a book, video game, movie... No one tells you “No, we must change this turquoise for this blue, because of our enterprise policy”, or “We are going to change all the colors you did”, or any of that kind of stuff that happens more often than we would like.
Also, doing Kickstarters we avoid abusive contracts. We choose the rules. If we succeed, we have all the credit. If we fail, it’s just because of ourself.
Untitled Sketches
Let’s dream for a moment: if you could be fully funded to do any project at all, what would it be? The Sergi Brosa art book, or something else?
I would love to build a skatepark inside a starship with an anti-gravity area to practice.
Hahaha, no! (Well, yes, I actually do want to.) But, my dream project would be... I don’t really know, I have many dreams. I think all my personal projects are dreams.
Maybe... I would love work on a movie. Do the whole concept art for a movie or a TV show (a 24-episode season) and try to co-work on the script, or build on an amazing script.
Maybe, try to work on a videogame that could offer a complete emotional story like a movie. I remember the old Final Fantasy games, how their stories could enter our hearts. I never played games like that again (maybe because I stopped playing RPG’s). So, doing something like this could be awesome.
But I think I have like 7 different projects in mind, and developing any of them could be a dream in my opinion. Sergi Brosa’s artbook is a dream too, of course.
You’ve said that English is important to you, because English gives you the option to live and work in many countries. Now, let’s imagine a world where English is the only language. This might help businesses and governments, but how would it affect the world of art?
In my opinion, speaking only one language would help us a lot. I know many, many people who don’t speak English, so they can’t communicate with other people around the world, or at least there are a lot of difficulties in doing so. But of course, each language is important to preserve the individual culture of each country.
All the cultures are very related with their language, so, speaking only one language maybe would erase some important part of each culture that exists now.
The prehistoric world is also the beginning of different cultures. I guess that, if we always had spoken the same language, cultures would have grown very differently from how they did.
Distance also makes culture, even if the language is the same. We just have to take a look at Spanish-speaking countries. Spain is very divided in different cultures; there are big differences between the East side and the West side. Then, South America, Mexico, Colombia, Chile... very different cultures too. And, I think in the Philippines they also speak Spanish, but we have nothing in common with them. I think in the USA this phenomenon is the same, and in the rest of the world.
So, I guess there is no right answer to this. The world of art is changing every day. Every little thing you add or take out changes art. Every new artist can make a difference in the world of art.
As an artist, is it more important to explore your own culture or to explore other cultures?
As many cultures as possible. But not only as an artist, as a citizen.
Being able to understand other cultures and to know what is going on, directly from another citizen and not what the media tells you, is also very important. Travelling is important too, or at least knowing people within your own city who are from outside.
DRuGs
Let’s talk more about your own work. You have posted at least two pieces to DeviantART (Wasteland Churches and DRuGs) that have disclaimers stating “I don’t condone this behaviour in real life”. Why is it necessary to add a warning like this?
As they are only two, I’m going to answer specifically for both.
For DRuGs, it’s socially accepted that every drug is bad, even when people know nothing about them, they just assume that every drug is something that is going to kill you, like heroin. It is what movies show, what the news shows. That is not true at all, but some people are not going to believe that some drugs are less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco.
In Wasteland Churches, I didn’t think any warning was necessary, but someone told me that he was offended because he thought I was promoting violence against Christianity in India, Pakistan, and the Middle East.
Personally, I don’t like how the church manages religion. But I needed to clarify that I was not promoting violence, just to keep people calm. I am not going to destroy churches with my psychic powers today.
What are the benefits of exploring taboo subjects in art? Are there any risks as well?
Benefits or risks, I don’t care about this. I am free, and I can draw and paint whatever I want to in my free time.
If someone likes what I do, and I am honest with the things I do, this person is not just loving my work, he likes my self, too. If someone is going to hate the work, he can hate me too, not just my art.
Being an artist you will get haters, whether you want to or not. It is something automatic. Who cares?
Soviet Business
One of your pieces, Soviet Business, depicts human trafficking. When a piece of art depicts a crime or a harmful behaviour, does the artist have a responsibility to give a message or insight about that behaviour? Or is it okay to merely depict the behaviour, without giving any message or insight?
I just took that image as if it was a piece of a movie. I didn’t want to give a message in that one, just do a little concept of how that kind of mafia would look in a near future. Of course I don’t agree with human trafficking, I just wanted a picture of that thing in the sci-fi mode.
I don’t think the artist has the responsibility to give a message. The artist is free to do whatever he wants to do. And, I think, the day I want to speak about something, I would choose to write about it. It’s not easy to give a complete message in just one image, without text. So, I would prefer to fully express my ideas in a text rather than in a picture.
Is it possible for an artist to hide their opinions and make their work “neutral”? Or do the artist’s opinions always become visible in their work?
Yes, of course, it’s easy to hide your opinions; there are a lot of topics that are very neutral.
Actually, one difficult thing is to express opinions in your art. You can easily see some parts of the personality of each artist in their pictures, but nothing too deep. I guess you would need a whole life of hard work to give to express your full ideas and personality in pictures.
Some genres of writing, such as science fiction and horror, can explore very intense and disturbing subjects. Do you think text can explore subjects that would be too intense if they were represented as visual art? Are there things we can read about, but would never want to see in an image?
I guess it depends on the mind of the reader. I never heard someone say “I had to stop reading”, but I’ve heard people say “I had to stop watching”.
Maybe we don’t read enough to get to that point. Honestly, I don’t know, but if I have to take the risk to answer... yes, text is able to offer subjects that wou
ld be too intense to be represented in visual arts.
Maybe when images can be connected to our brains to let us feel more senses this will change, haha. It could be awesome.
Desert Pirates: Pirate Girls
Now let’s talk about your current project, these desert pirates. How did this project come about, and what’s the goal?
Ok, I’ll start from the goal. My goal is having fun working. (I think we all need this to be happy.)
Desert Pirates is just a concept art project I wanted to do to build up my portfolio. If we travel to my childhood, there we will find a day that I was skiing with my father. One of the first times I touched the snow. Then, we were sleeping in a friend’s apartment, so we cooked something and my father showed me a movie that would change part of my life. It was Waterworld. It amazed me, but I didn’t know I was going to want to do that in the future.
Then, I discovered amazing things like Mad Max and I fell in love with that amazing post-apocalyptic desert universe.
So the moment came where I decided I should develop some concept art based on a post-apocalyptic desert. Then, I just started mixing many things I love: from real life, from my inspirations when I was a kid, from my current influences—music, urban fashion, and other things—and I started developing characters and possible environments, and also vehicles.
Now, I have a strong assortment of ideas to make a lot of characters, different clans, vehicles, and so on.
After these first developing steps, I decided to upload the images to the internet. Not long after the day I uploaded my stuff, Fathom Interactive, a video game company, sent me an email saying they were interested in the images.
So now, I am working with them, developing concept art for a new and very fun project. At the moment I have freedom to create my own characters and vehicles, and we are sharing different ideas and options to create scenes and environments. I am having a lot of fun with it, and I hope I can continue to develop the tone of the concept art because I am having an amazing time.
International Speculative Fiction #5 Page 11