Thomas Rohlfs on Artistic Growth, Change and a Willingness to Try

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Whenever you ask, “what’s the top city for artists to live in?” There will always be a good number of people who’ll default to saying, “Amsterdam”. And there’s a myriad of real reasons for that. After all, the city houses the Van Gogh Museum, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, and even Guerrilla Games, the AAA studio with one of the game industry’s strongest art departments. It’s a city that’s brought change into many artist’s lives, and as it happens, one of those artists is Thomas Rohlfs, a thirty-five year old freelance illustrator.

Michal Sawtyruk on Painting What You Enjoy

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Michal Sawtyruk is a digital painter and illustrator based in Warsaw, Poland. His work was recently published in THE BEST POLISH ILLUSTRATORS 2—a hefty art-book that features some of Poland’s best contemporary artists. A few well-renowned ones have already been featured on Vox Groovy. But today’s interview is with someone whose work we absolutely love! Sawtyruk has a wonderful collection of personal artworks on ArtStation, but he’s also had the opportunity to work with 3DTotal, DreamWorks Animation and Platige Image in the past. We’re going to talk to him about why you should only draw what you enjoy, and what that could mean for your future as a creative professional. As well as that, we’ll be looking at the ongoing changes in the Polish art scene—specifically at how digital art has changed the industry’s landscape for the better. Finally, you’re going to learn more about Sawtyruk’s journey and personal approach to creating art.

R&Ding With Riot Games’ Geoffrey Ernault

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Geoffrey Ernault is a French concept artist based in Los Angeles. He’s currently working on R&D for Riot Games, so there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing his ideas come to life in the near future. Of course, this isn’t the first time Geoffrey and his team started from scratch. He was actually R&Ding for Guerrilla Cambridge when the team came up with RIGS: Mechanized Combat League—one of the first games made available on PlayStation VR. He’s only been with Riot for a little while, but in the interview, he said that, “Working at Riot felt like a natural progression to me, as I love being a part of projects at the core.” It seems that Geoffrey is a concept artist through and through.

Leon Tukker: Still Jumping High

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Leon Tukker is a twenty-five year old freelance artist from the Netherlands. He is currently working from the city of Utrecht, and has recently finished concepting for Starfinder by Paizo Publishing. Alongside that, Tukker is working on a new installment in the System Shock franchise. Together with OtherSide Entertainment, and Warren Spector—a renowned American video-game designer—they’re sure to make a standout title for us in the near future. Of course, those are some of the more recent clients. Tukker has worked with Paramount Pictures, and the more local KeokeN Interactive, in the past.

Irakli Nadar on Painting the Perfect Portrait

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I love painting portraits more than anything else, mainly because of their ability to tell you more about a person. One of the things I like to include is photo-references, and I have a tendency to use these a lot. Popular opinion — or the loudest one anyway — holds that using photographs in a painting is cheating. Moreover, copying is another things that this community frowns upon, but you actually learn a great deal from copying. To tell you the truth, it may well be the fastest way to improve as an artist. My recommendation is to study old master paintings. You will need to be very observant in order to learn how they did it, but you can apply everything you learn here in the future. On a side note, the 10,000 hour rule is not going to apply if you are practicing wrong.

Kael Ngu and the Malaysian Art Scene

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The Malaysian art scene often goes unnoticed in the art community. After all, there’s only a handful of names that we all know and love. Incidentally, we have interviewed Puppeteer Lee in the past, but we didn’t get a chance to ask him what it’s like to be an artist in his home country. This is why we interviewed Kael Ngu, a Concept Artist from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “I feel that there will be many more young aspiring artists coming out of Malaysia in due time, and the culture will get stronger as time goes by.” said Kael. The artists all know each other, and they collaborate on various art-books, two of which have already been published. Of course, their day-to-day tasks at work keep them busy, but you can look forward to more collaborative projects by Kael and the others in the near future.

Stella Chen Yui: Art Is Not a Competition

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Stella Chen Yui is an illustrator from Taiwan, currently living in Taichung and using the pen name of Stellarism. She is completely self-taught and is majoring in Japanese language this year. Of course, you may have already seen Stella’s artworks around if you are a fan of anime and manga since she’s one of the more popular artists in that Internet community. However, she also does her best to try her hand at different projects. We asked her about the work she did for Marco Kalantari’s short film toward the second half of the interview, and she told us a little bit about how different it was to working for Taiwanese clients. Of course, we also talked about her journey so far and her plans for the future.

Feelings of Sincerity with Jonathan Vair Duncan

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What is attractive and accessible to the public eye will be a society’s natural inclination, so I’m certain strong influence from media is still as present as ever. The most important thing an artist can do about this is question where ideas came from and where they’re going. Syd Mead, for example, creates timeless futurist concepts that affect how most artists today romanticize the future.

Simona Hromadová on Freelance

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Simona Hromadová was born and raised in Veľký Krtíš, a small town in the south of Slovakia. She’d go on to move to London a few years after finishing high school, and she’d live there for thirteen years. Her passion for digital art started there, right after she found out about Adobe’s software lineup. Simona graduated in art and graphic design at the Middlesex University in London. Having finished her studies, she chose to move back to Slovakia, and take up freelancing. Simona searches for a personal style to better herself as an artist, and improves with time. She hopes that when she finds it, she can make a name for herself in the industry.

Darek Zabrocki on Changing Medium

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Darek Zabrocki is a Polish freelance concept artist and illustrator living in Gdańsk, Poland. Over the past few years, he’s worked for a good deal of reputable companies such as Blur Studio, Framestore, and Ubisoft. Zabrocki made the transition from hobbyist to professional in 2007, when he decided to try working in the digital medium. As an artist, he continues to explore different software and processes, and that helps him create a diverse portfolio – allowing him to showcase a wide range of skills and abilities. Time after time, he’s shown us that he’s an artist who’s willing to step into the unknown, even after he’s perfected a personal style.