Travel Journal: Spectrum Live 2014

Forest Rogers - A talented sculptor...
and fellow admirer of Baba Yaga

Dear Reader: If you don’t know what Spectrum Live is, please check out my post about Spectrum from last year.

The Journey to Kansas City

We brought Batman with us again

It hardly seemed like a full year had passed on the evening of May 2nd, but as Kaitlin and I attended the senior showcase at the Ringling College of Art and Design it was clear that Spectrum Live was just around the corner. We observed our normal weekly routines, cleaning the house, watching Game of Thrones, and working on our respective creative projects during the late night hours seemingly unaware that we were a mere 48 hours away from an amazing cross-country road trip.

Fields of flowers

We shopped for food, packed on the evening of Tuesday, May 6^th, and departed shortly after 11am the following morning. We observed the ancient traveling traditions of quietly waiting for a few moments in the doorway before departing (a tradition designed to help people remember if they forgot to pack something) and stepping on each other’s feet (we’re not really sure what this one is supposed to do, but we do it anyway) before loading up the rental, a white Ford Fusion hybrid, and departing for Kansas City, MO. With the box of semi-perishable food items like single servings of soy milk, peanut butter, honey, bread, cereal, cereal bars, pickles, nuts, and the like we felt pretty pro at traveling until we realized that we forgot to pack floss.

This is the place we got sick last year...

This year we avoided the Subway that gave us food poisoning, instead opting for Quiznos and drove without incident straight to Birmingham AL… A quick aside about the Ford Fusion: It’s a pretty awesome car with many interesting quirks that I thoroughly enjoyed for the 41+ hours of driving we endured. The colored HuD had the same color scheme as my comic book (a fairly uncommon color scheme), and the battery charging mechanic shows you how much power you’re able to store every time you apply the brake, making a little mini-game out of slowing down. All in all it was a pretty cool car and for the first time ever, Ford has impressed me.

Colorful HuD of the Ford Fusion
...and no, I didn't take the picture.

We passed wild flowers, familiar signs from the previous year, cows, rivers, farmland, the” Waffle King”, an aviation museum, an alligator farm, the rest stop we’d stopped last year to get sick, and our GPS navigated us to a Macaroni grill that was no longer in business for dinner. Perturbed we drove 2 additional miles out of our way through traffic to a Panera Bread and had a pretty awful experience there: Ultra cold air conditioning combined with soups containing scant portions of food. No meat or noodles in my chicken noodle soup and an utterly underwhelming garden vegetable soup for Kaitlin. We enjoyed the day’s drive though, listening to the No_Sleep short-story horror podcast that’s really grown on us and a Librivox rendition of Don Quixote, a story I found to be much more depressing than expected. We ended the night at around 10pm CST, in a Day’s Inn with an extremely slanted parking lot but with a very friendly staff and patrons.

The charm of the hotel was lost as we got to our room, had difficulty getting through the front door (due to a key-card issue everyone else also seemed to be experiencing too), and endured the rank stench of pot, heavy in the air.

This photo does not accurately depict just how slanted the parking lot really is.

At 8:30am the next morning we drove through a really pleasant part of Birmingham, saw a miniature statue of liberty, conducted business for work that I can’t really discuss here in a closed restaurant, and promptly drove off for O’fallon IL. We passed goats, more cows, gigantic fields of yellow and purple flowers, a giant rocket, and a number of familiar rest stops we remembered from last year. We had a wonderful little picnic at the TN welcome center & rest stop, consisting of peanut butter and honey sandwiches with pickles & chocolate soy-milk. We drove on while listening to more of the No_Sleep podcast, which is something we really enjoy when driving because the stories keep you awake and present. Around the time I took a wrong turn just north of Nashville, followed by another wrong turn, I got some insanely good news about a series of upcoming performances with my band and Video Games Live and had to stop myself from speeding while discussing the details with the man in charge. I’ll probably talk about these performances (happening this weekend) in a future blog post so I won’t go into details here.

Picnic!

We saw more interesting sights and when we arrived in O’Fallon at about 7pm we were treated to a delicious dinner by friends, and introduced to a show called River Monsters while playing Munchkin and chatting about the horrors of retail work until the late hour of 11pm, CST.

Early Morning in O'Fallon is brighter than expected

The following morning at about 8am we departed for more business related activities in the St. Louis area that concluded at around 11am. From there, we passed the familiar old buildings of St. Louis, the comically well intentioned ‘Jesus Saves’ billboard next to Larry Flynn’s, and stopped for gas at an old style general store in Missouri that sold food, clothes, guns, gas, and antiques, all in the same building! The dog outside of the store really sold us on the idea that it was perhaps an old general store from the 1900’s or earlier that had simply adapted over the years to stay in business. It was pretty cool and we both regretted not spending more time/money there on arrow heads, boots, shotguns, and fresh fruit.

Yep... We're tourists...

Within Kansas City itself we stopped at Café Gratitude for a quick lunch and in addition to the meal, we learned far too much about the people sitting on either side of us. The food was great though! We checked into the Aladdin Hotel (which, despite being slightly less classy than the Hyatt is a lot more convenient to get in and out of), and eagerly walked to Spectrum!

Spectrum Fantastic Arts Live III

We arrived at Spectrum just past 3pm and checked in. A number of Spectrum attendees had remarked on their own blogs last year that it was good to actually speak with the people that they worked with regularly (via computer) in person and I found myself mirroring their thoughts as I caught up with the artist I’d met last year and have been working with since: Eirich Olson.

Darlene Nelson creates fantastic creatures out of sticks, stones, and bones!
[If anyone can find her website or Fb page let me know so I can put a link here]

It’s sort of difficult to put this into words but our experience from one year to the next has really shifted our perspective of the event. Last year we were outsiders experiencing a strange new world. This year we frequently found ourselves speaking with artists we’d met last year, gotten business cards from, had purchased books by, read books by, or interviewed. We could also visually see what some of them had worked on over the last 12 months or how they had grown or changed their style. While we noticed the absence of certain artists we had enjoyed meeting last year, there were also many new faces, both of artists and attendees alike. Attendance seemed to have grown as well. We walked row by row, each booth brimming with talent, and it seemed like there was hardly enough time to see even half of the exhibit hall before the doors closed at 6pm… Because there wasn’t.

Colin Nitta paints a woman

About 30 minutes later we took part in the artist meet and greet, being social and chatting with the people who stood nearby. To our right was one of the designers for the upcoming game Lichdom Battlemage, and to our left were a few concept artists who work for Red Storm Entertainment (This is a big deal for me as I used to be on the top 1000 on the R6V & R6V2 leaderboards and am generally a huge fan of Tom Clancy games). To clarify: These were just regular folks with the “attendee” badges that I was able to freely chat with, who I probably would have waited in a line at any other festival/convention to watch give a panel. The environment of Spectrum Live is pretty magical like that and you never know who you might be talking with. Later the same evening I seemed to further prove this point to myself by chatting with Frank Cho about traveling to Spectrum before realizing who he was (admittedly on the following day).

Many friendly faces at the Meet and Greet

We got back to the hotel around 8pm, ate an extremely light dinner in the room, and decided that we would take a short nap before returning to the evening’s events, which started up again at 10pm... Instead, we wound up sleeping through all 3 alarms and woke up the next morning at about 8am. We had a quick breakfast and arrived at Spectrum a full hour before the exhibit hall opened, primarily due to my watch still being on Eastern Standard Time. I recognized Cathy Fenner, who we got to chat with for a few moments, and who was kind enough to offer an official statement for MF magazine.

Throughout the day various artists traded off their work on 1 of 3 sculptures

As the doors to the exhibit hall opened we interviewed three really interesting artists (the interviews will be posted here at a later date), and caught two panels: one on being a female artist, one on figuring out how to price the pieces of art you’re selling. I often watch panels at other conventions to be amused or in the hopes that I might learn a single tid-bit of information that might be relevant, and found the panels at Spectrum to be significantly more informative. The panel speakers were extremely knowledgeable industry professionals, freely telling it like it is and answering questions from the audience. You can also freely approach them after the panel is over if you have any additional questions free of formalities. It doesn’t get much better than this.

From artist to art director, each person above
offered a unique perspective on being a woman in the art industry

The rest of the day was spent trying to see all of the remaining booths in the exhibit hall, purchasing some great art pieces, and chatting with the people we met. I really can’t stress just how incredible it was to be able to speak with the artists themselves about their works. The best example from the weekend was when we passed a series of sculptures I didn’t really understand or have an appreciation of at first glance. I causally asked the artist what they sculpts meant to her, how she’d made them, and the answers she gave me, the passion with which she spoke, and the subtle details which I’d completely missed really gave me an appreciation for her work. I wasn’t hearing someone’s interpretation of what they thought the artist was trying to accomplish in the work, I was getting a very personal account of exactly what she was thinking when she made them, and also picked up that one shouldn’t just look at a sculpture in the same way you’d look at a painting (a misconception I’m admittedly guilty of), but instead observing it from many angles and perspectives. While she didn’t outright say this it was something I picked up based on her making some of her sculpts appear as if they are different creatures when observed from different angles.

This is the same sculpt visible on the far right of the other picture...
Later the same day

On a fairly personal note I bumped into someone who works at my favorite comic book publishing company, who offered some extremely valuable advice on how to go about submitting my comic book. I also talked with a seasoned veteran of the comic book industry who also offered some really fantastic advice that changed my entire release strategy… It was the sort of detailed information you can only really learn by doing yourself or talking with someone who has.

Dan Chudzinski - Easily one of the most interesting people I've ever met

It took us until 5pm to finish all of the above. We departed and caught a quick meal at Café Gratitude’s bar. Again, the food was fantastic and after we noticed that the person sitting next to us was wearing a Spectrum Live badge, we wound up talking with an aspiring young artist with a lot of talent, passion, and an impressive portfolio.

Downtown Kansas City, MO

A few hours later we found ourselves at the Midland Center for the Saturday award ceremony. Last year we sat there alone, not really knowing anyone, and quietly observed the events unfolded as outsiders. This year we saw a number of familiar faces from this year and the previous one, talked with a few of them, and were genuinely rooting for people we’d met or talked to as the awards were announced. In short, it feels like we’re slowly becoming a part of the Spectrum community and it’s pretty awesome. Notably, during the nominations for the “Unpublished” category we recognized a piece we’d seen the previous week at the Ringling Showcase! We stayed a little bit after the ceremony, said our goodbyes, and promptly went to sleep. Due to the sudden shift in events for the next week we would be forced to depart Spectrum Live a full day early.

The historic Midland Center... A truly massive and impressive place

We left the Aladdin Hotel by 7am because we had at least 20.5 hours of driving ahead of us. It’s funny how you can watch your GPS change its estimated time of arrival with each MPH you speed up or slow down on long trips like that… The drive itself was fairly uneventful, save for Siri navigating us again to a restaurant that didn’t exist. Highlights included goats, cows, discovering how to use cruise control, the No_Sleep podcast, random sing along sessions with our iPods, and passing through eastern Tennessee around dusk, which was so beautiful that the phrase “purple mountains’ majesty” would have been an appropriate descriptive phrase. We sadly passed I-75's scenic RockFalls, vowing to return as tourists one day, accidentally explored the pleasant architecture of Chattanooga while looking for a Moe’s South-West Grill, and stopped for the night just south of Macon in a very nice hotel. We arrived home the following day at around 2pm. And then, before we knew it, Spectrum Live III was over. However, the creative effects it had on us were only just beginning to take form.

Featured Interview: Dan Dos Santos

After much delay and a lot of excitement, I can finally announce that the January issue of Mir Fantastiki made my interview with the talented Dan Dos Santos the featured article! The cover you see was produced and printed over 30,000 times out of Moscow and is available in hard copy throughout Russia! Special thanks to MF for allowing me to post the interview in English, thanks to Sergey & Cate for the introduction and formatting, and a special thanks to Dan Dos Santos himself for agreeing to the interview and answering the difficult questions.

The Cover of the December issue of MF

A conversation with Dan Dos Santos

Dan Dos Santos was born in 1978. A dedicated fan of comics, his childhood dream was to become a science fiction artist. Dan studied at the New York College of Visual Arts where he perfected his love of painting on oil, the technique in which he creates all of his works. After college, Dos Santos rented a studio, prepared a gallery, and began work as an illustrator. Dan Dos Santos has collaborated with well-known companies like Disney, Universal Studios, Wizards of the Coast, and DC Comics.

Dan Dos Santos, by his own admission, likes to portray beautiful and powerful heroes in his paintings. Works by this American artist, who's favored genre is Urban Fantasy, decorate many book covers. Today Dos Santos shares his thoughts with us on how to break down stereotypes about comics, reveals some of his "kitchen" secrets, and confesses his love for the show Firefly.

You are a famous fantasy artist. How would you define the genre?

There was a really good quote I heard recently that said "Fantasy begins where nature ends" and I think it's a perfect affirmation of what it really is. The fantasy genre is broader than people give it credit for and while many people just assume it's a lot of boobs, armor, comics, and dudes with swords it's really anything that doesn't exist. This includes the majority of the novels that we read. The genre I work in primarily is Urban Fantasy, which includes anything with a little bit of magic in it or anything a little larger than life.

I think maybe 15 or 20 years ago fantasy art had a stigmatism to it and even great artists like Greg Manchess would work under a pseudonym like Ravenwood (or Rick Berry who worked under the pseudonym Rakeland) because being a fantasy artist would not quite ruin your career, but it would seriously add enough stigma that you couldn't be in a gallery or earn the same respect. My generation grew up with Spectrum, which I had in college, and I particularly aspired towards fantasy art. Even at a young age all of my favorite cartoons in America in the 80's were ThunderCats, Dungeons and Dragons, Voltron, and Transformers, which were all fantasy.

In your work, which is more important: Trying to tell a story with an image or showcasing a character?

It depends on the subject. I never think of myself as a fine artist but when I do get to do a piece for myself I'd say it's probably a little bit about the story and the emotion. When you say story I'm not thinking a literal novel but for the most part that is my primary goal: to achieve the flavor of that novel. I'd say 99% of the work I do is commercial work so i'm really focusing on the accuracy of the character, capturing that character's attitude, and getting not just a scene of the story but the flavor of the whole book.

Do you get to read the books that you're asked to create a cover for? If so and you don't like it do you get to reject the commission?

[laughing] So i'd say most of the time I get the manuscript and I always read it. Every now and then for the really big titles the cover actually gets painted before the book is even finished, like all my Mercy Thompson covers. I'm working on a cover right now and the author hasn't even begun work on the novel because they start promoting it to the Barnes and Noble buyers early. By the time I read the manuscript no, you can't say no anymore, and sadly there's a great number of really horrible books I've read, that even though the book is bad those are some of my favorite covers, oddly because they just have good visual material to work from. Maybe the character looks really cool or some absurd scene makes for a great cover even though the story is not so good.

Is it easier for you to draw with more specifications from a client or less?

Just enough. I really do need a compass to tell me what to draw. If you tell me "Oh just paint whatever you want" I could do a guy, I could do a girl, I could do a dragon, a vampire, anything. If you tell me to draw a cool vampire now all of a sudden I can think of 20 different cool vampires and can really focus in on it. Some of my hardest covers have been the ones where they let me do anything I want. It's difficult when you have a million options and you don't know what you want but if you box me in I'll find a way to think outside that box a lot easier.

Do you ever feel too limited by the description of a character?

No. Oddly enough authors tend to provide a surprisingly small amount of description in most of their characters because they want their reader to envision them (the character) the way that the individual reader wants to envision it. It's usually "oh she was really tall or really buxom and had glaring blue eyes" but usually not much more than that. So no, i'm not too restricted.

Do you think that portraying the portrait of a character on the cover of a book in some way inhibits the readers imagination?

It's kind of tough because when it's nondescript you always envision it the way you want to envision it and the moment you put a face to something people will love or hate it. It's either what they envisioned or not what they envisioned. So I can [create] what I had in my mind but if there wasn't that much description in the book, all of a sudden you start getting complaints from readers saying "that's not what he looks like," and I think "no, the author doesn't say what he looks like. It's just what you though he looks like." There's a book I love called Name of the Wind and the main character Kvothe is described as having red hair but that's pretty much it. I've seen so much fan art because the covers don't actually show is face, and no one ever gets my Kvothe, the one I have in my head. I'm not even sure that I could achieve that if I tried painting him, it's tough.

What's it like working on preexisting characters, like your Firefly/Serenity piece?

That's a geekout for me. I got that job because the A.D. knew I was a huge Firefly fan. I'm a browncoat forever and I might be doing a 6 issue miniseries (the covers). We'll see though, their first deadline is tight and I don't know if I can make the first issue. If I can't make the first issue I might not get any of them because they don't want to change artist mid series. I've got my fingers crossed. As for the piece I already did that was a funny job. It was a total geekout but because I have so much passion for Firefly I felt this weird weight in having to really do it justice. It gave me an excuse to go back and re-watch the entire season for the zillionth [**Translation Note: a fictional number that Americans generally use as an exaggeration. It rhymes with Billionth**] time, doing screen captures of Nathan Fillion's face, because I didn't want to use the same Google Image photos everyone has. Then, I flopped the screen caps, trying to  figure out a good face that no one had and I put it on my body to make a new pose that didn't exist. That's kind of what we artists live for and even though those kind of jobs don't pay as well as some of the other book covers those are the ones that make it all worth it.

Do you often use yourself as a photo reference?

Sadly so. I've posed as 14 year old girls on covers but usually I'll find a really handsome model to get the face. I think maybe it's the way I draw. I tend to draw poses for comic [projects] that are so off the wall that it's really hard to get people to take those poses sometimes, and I know what i'm looking for. I'll usually set the camera on a timer, get that body pose, at least just enough for reference, and then when I hire the real model I can move them like a mannequin and just mimic what I did. I'd say at least 50% of the time i'm using myself.

In Russia and in America people regard comics as simple entertainment for children. What do you think is the origin of this perception and do you think there's truth to it?

Absolutely. We don't give comics nearly the respect that they deserve. Some of the most talented and hard working artists I've ever met are in comics, particularly American comics because they come out on a monthly basis. French comics, called bande dessinées are treated so much more like an art form, and they take a year for the artist to complete. I wish we had the same amount of respect for them here. As for why they're considered childish, we don't get pictures in our books anymore. If I want to read Treasure Island, it's not childish to me to have a chapter head drawing or a picture in the book but for some reason we have that bizarre stigma here where people say things like "Oh there's pictures in that book so it must be for kids."

How do you think we can overcome the stigma?

I'm hoping e-books might be the saving grace. For a lot of people reading seems a lot more cerebral than simply looking. It's a higher art form or it's considered that, so I think pictures went out of fashion. Financially it's also really difficult to print a book with pictures in it. I'm hoping E-books, because there's no overhead cost to having an illustration inside an e-book will revive that a little bit.

What do you think of the oversexualization of female characters in fantasy art?

Artists get so much blame for that but it's the market. Almost every single art director I work for on a regular basis is female and all of those covers I do that seem overly sexualized are these female art directors asking me to do that, generally for a female author and a female readership. You can't blame it on sexism, it's not a guy thing. It's really just a market thing. Women know that if they want to read a romance novel there's probably going to be a buxom woman on the cover so they want me to paint a buxom woman on the cover because that's their audience. If I painted it to look like something else they're going to miss their market, not that it's necessarily faithful to the book, but you've got to reach your audience.

I feel like people are so worried about it lately that it might change. A lot of the worry is from the internet. Outspoken people are always outspoken but if these people really had what they wanted there'd just be words on the cover. They wouldn't have any pictures and no picture can ever do justice to what they want. My problem with sexualization: I don't mind making a woman sexy. Sex is okay. Making her look weak or like an object, that's different. If you make her look sexy and make her look tough, or make her look powerful, who doesn't want that? Guys want to be sexy and powerful in the same way. It's the submissiveness that I take issue with and for the most part I don't do those covers.

Everything you do is by hand but there are those who think that digital (versus traditional) methods of creating art will take over the industry. Where do you see the future of art?

It's kind of like saying the Casio keyboard is going to make pianos obsolete because it's not. Top 40 music will be created digitally, commercial art will probably be produced digitally, but there's always going to be a niche for traditionally created art. When you go to a concert you want to hear a real grand piano. If you want to hang a piece of art in your house you want it to be an original piece of art. So it may come to that, but I also still think it has a place commercially. I expect that within the next few years we'll see a [demand] for people to painting traditionally. There's just so much digital work and it's all become a little incestuous because digital art is so young that people are feeding off the same artists over and over that I think they're lacking the voice that they need, that they're going to look for new ways to do be creative and they might go to traditional media and manipulate their works digitally, almost like CGI in a movie. I think the perfect blend is a little bit of practical effects mixed with CGI.

Could you explain the concept of Muddy Colors?

Muddy Colors is a fantasy art collective. The basic idea was that it's hard to maintain a daily blog with a daily readership on your own (as an artist) unless you're James Gurney, so I got some of my best friends to help me put together a blog and it's grown from 9 to 14 people. It's basically some of the leading artists in the fantasy industry providing insight to their process and the industry for the benefit of aspiring illustrators. I have a really poor concept of time but I think it's been around for two to three years.

You've done a few videos showing your creative process. Do you have any advice for young artists?

Drawing is a super important aspect of painting. My painting was not as good as it could be for a long time because I kept overlooking the amount of effort that drawing takes. One of my teachers once told me that beneath every good painting is a great drawing. If you don't have that great drawing don't take the next step yet. You have to start with the under-painting a little bit before you take the next step.

For more of Dan Dos Santos' work, please visit his website: www.dandossantos.com/
For more information on Muddy Colors, please visit their blog: www.muddycolors.blogspot.com/

Published Interview: Steven Belledin

I had the privilege to interview an extremely talented artist for the Russian Sci-Fi/Fantasy magazine Mir Fantastiki! This is an English transcription of that interview, which was done in English. The rest of the article was translated from Russian, though I've taken out the uniquely Russian Idioms that don't translate well into English. Special thanks to Sergey Serebryanskiy for the intro and formatting and to Mir Fantastiki for allowing me to post this!

A Conversation with Steven Belledin

Belledin was born and raised in Pennsylvania. After high school he moved to New York and studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Over the years Belledin has worked closely with Wizards of the Coast. He started illustrating Dungeons and Dragons books and then became one of the leading artists working on the collectible card game: Magic: The Gathering. In addition to concept art, Belledin works on covers and interior illustrations for various projects.

"The main thing is catching the mood."

When and why did you become an artist?

It was just something I did and enjoyed since I was a little kid. For whatever reason my parents were encouraging so from a very early age this was something I wanted to do. I had some really excellent art teachers in school and I ended up going to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. That's where I learned the nuts and bolts of how to put a real painting together and learned the craft. I've always taken art very seriously, as a profession. I didn't really understand what the lifestyle would be but I understood that I wanted to make art for a living. I'm not sure that if I really understood [what it entailed,] that I would have made the same choices but now that I'm where I'm at I wouldn't change a thing.  I just wanted to make cool pictures and tell stories visually. I didn't really have anybody telling me that I couldn't or shouldn't be doing it. I was just very fortunate because I was always encouraged and I happened to be decent at it. It was one of those things where I've had a fairly realistic view of how good or bad I am and at the very least I feel like I can say "well at least i'm decent enough to warrant getting jobs here and there." I'll probably never be Frazetta* but I'll keep doing it because I'm compelled.

*Frank Frazetta - The famous American artist of science fiction who has had

a big impact on fantasy art.

What projects do you enjoy the most and why?

Any project where I really get to explore more introspective or moody imagery because I like to explore broad emotional cues. I'm much more interested in the quiet moments and thought driven imagery as opposed to cool battle scenes and giant swords. I love all that stuff but what I feel most fulfilled by is the weird, austere, emotive exploration.

Some people see your art as being somewhat dark. Would you say it's something that you put into your work or do people seek you out to create dark images because it's something you're good at?

I think it's much the latter. It's not something I ever set out to do as far as the imagery goes. Perhaps the people that assign work to me see it in me or they were curious to see what I would create with that subject matter. It's one of those things where it's sort of self-propagating. Someone will say "Oh, he's done this well so let's give him more of it!" For the most part I don't really mind as long as it's not over the top. Darker imagery doesn't really bother me. I didn't set out to become a horror artist but in a strange way I've sort of stumbled into it.

You once said that the beauty of the horror genre is "what's not shown," as opposed to gore or gratuitous violence. In your opinion, what is more characteristic of modern horror?

There's room within the genre for both but for awhile there was a trend towards more explicit torture or blood and guts films. I think there was a whole sub-genre for a few years called something like 'torture porn' and that's what horror became for awhile. I think people like Guillermo Del Toro really appreciate moody, suspense-driven horror which is my cup of tea way more than the blood and guts. I also think it's a little more universal. 

Do you have any favorite horror films?

I'm still a sucker for Jaws but I don't know that people would really call that horror by today's standards. To me the idea of it is really horrifying and I still don't like to swim. I think it's a good example of "things not seen." Of course Spielberg couldn't show the shark because the [mechanical] shark didn't work but [as a device in horror] it worked. That shape in the water basically takes on whatever you impose upon it. To me that's always more interesting.

Tell us how you first got involved with Wizards of the Coast and Magic: The Gathering?

I played [Magic] in high school and college but when I graduated I could basically afford art supplies or Magic, so I chose art supplies and stand by that decision. I got involved with Magic because I was doing Dungeons and Dragons [Edition 3.5] work for years. I did artwork in 20 or so books so while I was in Seattle I got to take all the art directors I ever worked for out to lunch. While I was there I figured I could maybe get an interview with the art director for Magic. He agree to see me but as far as I was aware he didn't like anything in my portfolio but he hired me for the next set.

There are many differ artists who work on Magic: The Gathering. What unites them in their works and would you say that there is a MTG style?

I don't know if there is a specific style but, at least currently, Magic is driven by more realistic artists. There's a lot less stylization than there used to be in classic Magic. It's very much a realist-driven fantasy aesthetic. There are no caricatures anymore and there's an effort to try to make characters and environments as realistic as possible.

Are you often given strict guidelines in your creations? 

It varies. Some assignments have been extremely explicit with "this is exactly what we want, please make this for us." Others are very broad. To me, and probably for most artists, the broader assignments are the most fun simply because there's more wiggle room. The less we as artists get to bring to the table the less interesting things tend to become. The more open ended and the more abstract it is, the more fun it is.

Do you prefer to work from your own creative imagination or other people's ideas? How often do you think clients restrict your creativity?

I enjoy doing everything and get bored very easily. I think that even in working on my own stuff constantly I'd eventually get bored so I really enjoy the challenge of having to work within the confines of clients' needs. Restriction is inherent to assignments but whether restriction inhibits creativity probably varies on a case by case basis. Creativity thrives from problem solving and usually [as an artist] you're given problems that you have to solve. Sometimes the solution is obvious and sometimes it takes a lot of thought and exploration to come to the solution. There are some clients that crush a certain degree of creativity by dictating everything down to the color pallet or composition of a piece but in general restrictions within the confines of an assignment aren't restrictive to creativity. I'm game for anything at the end of the day.

What inspires you? Where do your characters and ideas come from?

I'm mostly inspired by "old timey" painter guys, basically the American golden age of illustration. That's one of those things that has always recharged me. As far as i'm concerned the kings of that era are N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, the Leyendecker brothers, and Norman Rockwell. They're just visual storytellers who were amazing painters. I grew up not very far from where N.C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle lived and worked and they've always been a huge inspiration for me. Rockwell was everywhere when I was a kid too. There was a Rockwell calender up in just about everyone's house, it seemed. Those were the guys I looked to while growing up and who I still look to for inspiration. If i'm not sure how to approach a painting, I'll go back and look at their works or even go further back and look to Jacques Louis David and a lot of 19th century heavies. A lot of 19th century painters also serve as my inspiration.

What fantasy/sci-fi books or movies do you like and do you think they influence your work?

I'm all over the place. I'm more of a movie guy than a book guy for whatever reason and when it comes to Sci-fi, modern sci-fi always aesthetically comes back to Blade Runner. I'm a big fan, aesthetically of Dune (The Kyle Maclachlan version, not the SciFi Channel series) as well.  Fantasy wise, oddly enough I like the 1980's movie Dragon Slayer with Peter MacNicol. It's pretty cool. The design of the dragon is interesting and it's got a very earthy, used, and dilapidated feel to it. It's really atmospheric and cold, as well. The hero of the film is some shmo [Interviewer note: word meaning "a nobody" or "an insignificant person"] who's thinks he's a wizard. I saw it when I was relatively young. And of course Star Wars is huge (the old ones not the new ones) and as far as fantasy: Lord of The Rings (both the films and the books).

You have very strong beliefs on how you portray women in your work. Could you elaborate on them and talk about your views on the oversexualization of women in fantasy art and video games?

I think it's something that's coming more to light as more women start to play video games, as more women get involved in gaming in general, and as more women get into the genre. There is objectification of both sexes but there's a huge disparity between the breadth of ways that men are portrayed in science fiction and fantasy versus the very narrow way that women tend to be portrayed [in those genres]. At the end of the day there's always going to be people who continue that narrow depiction of women. Ideally I would like to see less of it, but the only thing I really have the power to change is my own work. I've been surrounded by very strong women throughout my life and I find that more inspirational than anything. I just can't see myself doing something that depicts women just as sexpots because it doesn't ring true to the women I know and have known. So that's one aspect of where I'm coming from. Another aspect is that a lot of the products I work on are targeted at people who are between 15-35 [years old] but there's a lot of younger people who get into it [Magic, D&D] much younger than 15 and I don't want to color their perception or contribute to little boys seeing women a certain way and little girls seeing themselves a certain way. I want to give them way more options than that if I can.

Do you think the limited portrayal of women in these mediums will change in the future?

I think it can. A surprising number of art directors and decision makers within the industry are women and their numbers are increasing. Their awareness of the subject is very real and the industry will change because they'll make it change. I strongly suspect it will, anyway. It's not that I have anything against sexiness or sex. What bothers me is that sexiness is what they use to define women, whereas it should be character first and sexiness if it applies. That's the thing, I like depth to every character and I think women are just as deserving as men of that kind of depth.

Do your values bring you into conflict with prospective clients?

They have. I don't work with certain clients because of it and I've almost lost jobs over disagreeing with changes to pieces. I try to work a middle-ground as much as possible and I've compromised more than I'd liked to on certain pieces, which I have regrets over. I have tried to stick by what I want to do as much as I can but it's kind of difficult because a lot of clients expect certain things out of you and you do have to eat. A lot of people have a very difficult time finding a path. I'm very fortunate in that I can afford to turn down certain jobs, but not everybody can.

Do you ever reject offers for being boring or do you try to make them interesting?

I reject certain clients because the aesthetic they require of me is not what I want to do, sort of like forcing a round peg into a square hole but I can't say that I've found something so boring I didn't accept it. I'll give anything a shot and feel on some level that if it ends up not being interesting it's because I'm not interesting.

You work by hand. A lot of your work is by done hand. Where do you see the profession of the artist evolving (or not) in the future?

In general everything is becoming more digital. I'm always at a disadvantage there because I work traditionally and my stuff has to go through a process of digitization to work in those mediums. I wonder whether there will even be actual books or just [digital] files except for very rich collectors 50 years from now. Despite the rise of digital media, there's been a growing population of people interested in owning original artwork. I suspect that there will always be people collecting art, passing those pieces on to their kids, and stoking the fires of the collector inside their kids. If that's the case, then there will always be room for traditional artists but I think the evolution is clearly progressing in a digital direction and there's no escaping it. 

Do you know any Russian artists?

As far as Russian painters there's a guy by the name of Viktor Vasnetzov who did these really fantastical but realist paintings. They're really cool. If I recall he lived in the 19th century and while I don't know much about the politics of Russian history of that era, a lot of his work was allegorical to what was going on at the time.

Do you have any advice for any young artists?

[Jokingly] Don't do it! Ha ha... Building a community of peers is really essential, people you can trust to tell you the truth about your work whose criticisms you can take but not take offense to. They can help push you in a positive direction, slap your wrist when you make mistakes, and urge you towards getting better while you return the favor. You also get to grow together and build upon on another's successes. For me, personally, that has been one of the huge hallmarks of how I got where I am.


You can see more of Steven Belledin's work on his website. He also maintains a weekly blog, outlining his latest projects.

Captions: 
Overgrown Tomb - A rare landscape done for Magic: the Gathering. I always enjoy doing this kind of thing, and this piece is among my favorite things I've painted for the brand.

Izzet Chronarch - A recent image done for Magic: the Gathering where I was asked to create a new version of a classic Magic image. This kind of thing is always difficult when I'm familiar with the original art because I find it hard to get the old image out of my mind. Hopefully I did the original image justice.

Nightveil Specter - This piece took a long time to paint. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but it's gotten a really positive reaction from fans. I think if I had more time, I might have made the city below more detailed.

Surrender - The bottom half of this was used for a Magic card, and this remains the sole image I've ever done for that game that I will never sell.

Valentine - One of the few comic-related projects I've ever done. It's the cover for a printed version of an online comic. It was a lot of fun to work on and the client was really easy to work with. I wish every client were like this!

The Battle of Badass -  The most recent in the Badass book series. This time the book focused on amazing historical battles. It was an interesting job because it had to feel consistent with the other two covers. I ended up making subtle changes to the piece for myself after I handed it in. I'm happy I went back into it.

Badass - The cover for the first in a series of books about amazing characters throughout history. A ton of fun to work on and my first job for a non-gaming client.

The Legend of Badass - The cover for the second book in the Badass series. This one was about fictional and mythological characters. The cover turned out to be quite a challenge as I had to repaint half of it due to a last-minute change in the characters they wanted me to depict.

First Born - This was done during a week-long intensive class. It was a great opportunity to focus on a piece for myself and to do some science fiction imagery for a change. It was also the largest piece I'd done professionally until quite recently.

Grizzly - This is an old personal piece that was completely inspired by the stuffed bear. My wife has had that bear since she was very young. She dragged the bear everywhere she went and as a result its color faded and it became very worn. I don't know why, but I became fascinated by the idea of a man who was a worn out as the bear, and so I painted this.

Teutoberg Forest - Of the interior pieces I've done for the book series, this is my favorite. It's simple, moody, and says exactly what it needed to. It's also the first piece I've ever done fully digitally.

The War of Arauco - Another rare all digital illustration done for the historical book series. I was inspired by comics more than anything on this one. It was a chance to do some fun, over-the-top action imagery and it was a blast!

Kono Michiari - Another of the small interior black and white paintings for a book series. One of the best parts of these illustrations is that the work was not mired in strict historical accuracy. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of really amazing and excellent historical paintings that are thoroughly researched and truly accurate, but I'd probably go mad if I had to do one, myself. Instead, I get to just go for these really dramatic contrasty images like this where the detail becomes mostly obscured.

Art/Creative: A Comic is Born

Cityscape by Joseph Tai

Last week's visit to Spectrum inspired me to write a bit about my own struggle as an artist or rather my misadventures to create a comic book series without the possession of any artistic abilities. The story starts in September 2004 with an idea. Being a fairly experienced storyteller at the time (running about 12 concurrent D&D games, writing 2 to 3 short stories a week) and almost a college freshman with a legal handwriting disability, I sat down and scrawled out an illegible spider-web of words that all connected to a central word in the middle of the page: "Twitch." This was the name of the character I had in mind. The other words were connecting points about the world I had in mind for the character, other characters, or ideas like: "post apocalyptic", "streets", "skorpion + baseball bat mix", "Grimm", "gangs", and "nocturnal." This was written midst the notes of a macroeconomics class and, like any good student, I promptly lost the paper and with it the idea.

My Original Sketch

A few months later during the Christma- er, Yuletide (I'm reading Krampus: Yule Lord at present) break I came across the page, which had almost entirely faded (Pro Tip: erasable ink erases on its own after awhile). I wrote more of my spider-web diagrams, expanding on various elements, making lists, and I finally drew a little sketch of the character with a map of the city in my head. I spent most of the winter break brainstorming parts of the setting but once school picked back up I lost track of what I'd worked on and couldn't find the pages because it was (again) all done between calculus or financial accounting notes. This pattern of discovery, expansion, loss, discovery, expansion, and loss continued every break from college I had, returning to me more vividly and dear to my heart each time I rediscovered it. I slowly added more characters, depth, and started to create a context for it all. Before getting distracted by college projects, by starting a band, by summer jobs, and by beloved video games I got a little bit further in developing the world until a story started to form. It started off as "betrayed gangers seek revenge" but quickly evolved into an extremely lengthy handwritten novel, mixed in with the occasional note from Advanced Statistics or Principles of Business Ethics.

"Sit down and write an outline, dammit!" -Yuri
Unused Issue 2, Page 13 - by Joseph Tai...

In 2007 I ran a few pen and paper games in the setting to try and see what other people thought of it and got generally positive feedback. Because (at the time) I had commitment issues in completing any writing project longer than 50 pages I recruited my friend Yuri to help me form a coherent outline. Though we weren't always on the same page, Yuri added much needed structure to my life and motivated me to sit down and complete a full outline of the story, which had previously been envisioned without a clear end in sight (sort of like a D&D game). Yuri also pushed the main character i'd designed the series around (Twitch) into more of a back-seat role. The story now focused on a witty male protagonist named Justice, whom Twitch followed like a silent guardian angel of death. As a feminist I was sad to make the change but since Twitch was a character that didn't talk much, and I was pretty uncompromising about her nature as a character, it was hard to argue her as the main character from a storytelling perspective.

Crushing Defeat...
Early Sketch by Adam

After graduating college I'd saved up just enough money to avoid joining the work force for three solid months and secluded myself from music, friends (except my trusty kitten, Evanrude), video games, and entertainment to write. I was a ghost. The only time I was seen in public was at a local Burger King, mapping out the dimensions so I could re-create a space of similar size in which to map out fight choreography. Since I was now looking to make the story into a film (I had some experience in the film industry so it seemed like a logical step), I wrote the first draft in a few weeks, revised it, put together a solid prospectus (a brochure to get investors), and spent the rest of the time seeking backers for the film (which needed about $3.4M if done to low-budget Hollywood standards). To my credit, I was able to sign backers for $1.27M (you read that right) of the budget through a process just shy of selling my soul to a few well-dressed businessmen in LA, but because I ultimately couldn't secure the other (huge) chunk of money I wasn't able to get the project off the ground. Defeated, I wallowed in self-pity for awhile and started a lawn care company. Luckily for my mental state, rumors for The Dark Knight were friendly distractions from my failure, because it's never advisable to do lawn care without good things to think about. That sort of what I envision as being the inner circle of hell. A giant push mower that doesn't start easily.

The Conway Brothers by Ryan W.

When business started to slow down in the winter of '07/'08 I found myself with a lot of down time and kept thinking about what had gone wrong. All else aside I concluded that the story was solid, so, since I had a fairly steady income I thought it might be an interesting idea to just try and convert the script into a comic book. I'd already done the work on the writing end so what was the harm in giving the script to a talented artist? I quickly discovered just how difficult finding an artist I could afford was, and it took me a few months of searching until I finally discovered the art of Ryan W., a notoriously short-tempered but talented artist hailing from Canada I'd met through an internet forum. What harm could possibly come of sending someone on the internet money in exchange for services that would be rendered after payment?

A "Scan" of Twitch by Ryan W.

A few weeks after sending him a down payment, Ryan informed me that after many attempts he discovered that he couldn't draw women unless they were wearing gas masks, a problem I hadn't really expected after looking through his Deviantart page. He also told me that after drawing the first two sketches he found that he wasn't interested in the characters I'd written, that he changed the entire script, drawn the first 7 pages of his version of the script, and that he had already spent my down payment. The "PS" included that I was able to use "these scans" of the images he sent me in any way I chose, as consolation, so here they are... Six months after not hearing anything from him, he eventually sent me a message from a public library apologizing and informing me that he'd lost everything after acquiring a hard drug addiction.

2nd Revised Concept by Yuri's Friend

Around the same time Yuri had suggested a friend of his (also in the lawn care industry, but who's name I can't remember) who went to art school. I gave him a clear description of the character I'd wanted him to draw (Twitch) along with a large (for me) sum of money, and about three weeks later I got a concept that had no resemblance to what I'd asked for. After a few weeks of revisions (going from sexy native american to less-sexy biker) he finally agreed creating something that loosely resembled what I was looking for, though significantly more sexualized. The whole experience left me feeling quite sour because even after he finished the art (and took payment) he would never formally sign anything to allow me to use the images to promote the comic. Shortly before giving up altogether I randomly met an extremely talented young artist named Joseph Tai who was both interest in the project and within my limited price range. It turns out that my "limited price range" was on the high end of the going professional rate at the time but, oblivious to the fact, I was just happy to support someone local who would create the images that matched my descriptions. Joe's art had style, he had an honest work ethic, and that's all I really cared about.

Issue "0", Page 16 - Joseph Tai

The first issue of the fifteen part comic book series had taken Joe the better part of a year to complete (from start to finish), and while he was genuinely working his hardest I didn't think that any publishing company would accept a 16 page, yearly release comic. So, with the idea of working towards a quarterly release I limited his workload from "everything" to "sketch/ink/text/formatting" and hired the fantastically talented Ean Moody to color a page a day. Joseph and I worked together on the comic in this way for two years (on and off with Ean as we still worked significantly slower than he did), completing roughly four comics in under two years with sketches for another issue well in progress. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly in the Florida winter of 2010 Joe left the gulf coast to seek gainful employment and ceased all involvement on the project.

Early Sketch by Adam

Once again up the proverbial creek, I was done with artists, done with the story, and more emotionally exhausted than I'd been from all of the other setbacks combined. The worst part of it was that I could actually see the story progressing, had introduced the characters, and was well on my way through the series when it happened... So, mid 2011 I was completely surprised that while talking about my "failed project" during downtime at a recording session, my drummer-friend Adam volunteered to sketch and ink the entire series. Adam had but one key condition in working with me: "that the series has to be awesome." That meant no plot holes, no references to modern culture, no comic sans, and no cutting corners. I'd admittedly cut a few corners earlier, compromised in places, but from this point onward I'd have to approach the project with my full professional effort. As the comic now signified a lot more than just something I'd written over seven years, I shook hands and committed to those terms. This was going to be my best work and my level of approach went from "work of passion/side-project" to "professional-grade".

Elevator Sketch by Adam

We spent the next year simply developing the new art style, the world, the culture, and the characters. We didn't even work on comic pages, just experimented, going from pointillism to cross-hatching. We also gave the setting a lot of thought, developed a language, society, weapons, clothing, government, etc. Eventually, once he'd redrawn the first issue of the comic it was clear that I'd have to completely rewrite the script to fit the new darker setting. It also became apparent that because Adam had not taken formal art classes he could benefit strongly from having reference photos, so we hired talent and hosted a weekend-long photo shoot. The shoot immediately affected Adam's work, making things less stiff and shifting the style from slightly toonish to gritty.

Punk Concept #3 by Adam

Over the last year, we upped our commitment to the series, by putting in part time hours on the project (no less than 20 hours a week) and haven't looked back since. To date we've completed story boards (we call them "Thumbs") for 10 issues, sketches for 6, and show no sign of slowing down. Because the "thumbs" aren't particularly pretty (basically pre-sketch lighting/character/location guides) I don't regularly post them or mention the comic much but it's what Adam and I have been up to for the last two years and will be up to for the foreseeable future.

Issue 10, Page 6 "Thumb" by Adam