I have 5 questions, Nik .

1) Do you have any visual artist (amateur and/or professional) who could be credited as a major influence in your style?

2) Which are your favorite "tools of trade" and, depending on the expressive goals of each piece, how do you choose to use one of them instead of another?

3) Do you think that your pieces share a common theme and, if they do, which do you think that theme could be?

4) Do you like to hear music while you're making your pieces (which artists, if that's the case?), or do you prefer to enjoy the silence instead while you're working on them?

5) Given that you like Science Fiction writers like Philip K. Dick, have you tried to emulate the "sensibility" of any of them in any of your visual works?

End of Line... And keep your talent alive =^_^=.

1) Right off the top of my head, people who take up 3x3 squares on that influence meme: Rene Magritte, Kazuma Kaneko. Surrealists like Sal Dali and Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, P. Craig Russell, Mike Mignola, Mesoamerican and Southeast Asian folk art get a few seats.

2) The common choices these days are either ink+pencil on smooth printing paper or gradient-based digital. I tote around this small pocket notebook and frequently write and sketch in it using a 0.38 gel pen. For most pieces, I obsessively rework an idea over and over as thumbnail sketches until it "clicks" and THEN I decide which media is apropos and what style works best. More often than not, however, they're at the mercy of my technique-flavour-of-the-season. XD I might even decide to stow away a picture for a few years and come back to it once having a method to try out. (This happened for the piece "Soulprint".)

Content/message and impact comes first, I'm not big on refining conventional techniques (partly why some ideas are commissioned by other artists, since they'd do it more justice). I know that sounds like a typical "amateur artist" excuse, meaning I will never be taken seriously. =P

This is not true for some pieces which just looked good enough the first time, or came out of some obsessive drawing spree, but these are getting rare.

3) I'd like to think I'm a Surrealist, but turns out most of the stuff is apparently non-random Symbolist. As for common themes, I don't think there is just one, other than being a Kahlo-ish documentation of my life and beliefs, or perhaps just being part of some half-assed avant garde of the furry fandom. Nearly all the pictures are bloody personal and I care about them very much, even when they're ugly or didn't come out right.

4) Definitely have to put music on, can't stand not having a sonic mood. Like my answer for question two, the song choice totally depends on what I'm making. I Enjoy The Silence when doing other stuff like reading in the evening, though.

5) I'm allergic to the concept of trying to emulate any aesthetic, unless it made a good joke, serves a subversive purpose or was being done for gifts. I do get boners on some of the more beige-boxes military-complex type of SF art (not the Golly Gee Raygun Gothic ones, blergh) but it's not something I can do well, so I just don't go there.

I always found it a bit funny that people have this idea of what SF should look like, yet this idea's mostly a loan from book cover illustrations or films of SF stories.


>> Well, it's nice at least one person gets to read these answers, I guess.

(I didn't know you were doing Q&A!)

1. Angles or curves, which do you prefer to use when distorting or hiding proportions?

2. Could you provide us with an example of this "beige-boxes military-complex type of SF art" you seem to be popping boners for?

3. Your gradient techniques, do you know I love them? :3

4. Final question, will we ever get to see the porcelain bird's rogues gallery?

I wasn't! This was a rant about how people stopped asking questions and having pic-related gallery conversations with me. XD

1) You'll have to clarify what you mean by distorting/hiding proportions.

2) The "beige-box" part is a careless mention, but right of the top of m'head: District 9, Masamune Shirow, Yoji Shinkawa (when he's not using slop-brush), some parts of Macross, Patlabor

In-fandom:  strype (when he's not wasting his powers on boobs and vanilla furry figures),  ipoke

3) Now I do! =) Don't you have a personal character yet?

4) Yes. The thumbnail drawings for half of them do exist, I've just been all here-and-there lately. ^_^;

1) Giant rigid triangles as outfits to sort of conceal the body while seeming to distort it. Limbs enclosed with multiple spheres to make them seem unreal. I don't know if I'm describing this right though, but something like Junpei's Hermes persona with the box limbs for angular.

3) I do! But the only good picture I have of him is on the old computer which will die if I turn it on now. ;_; I need to get on drawing him, or at least describing him or something.

4) Well it's okay if you're just distracted, lord knows that happens with me a lot. XD

1) I think I usually call it deforming a character's silhouette or something, but yeah, I get it. I like the look of angles, but I think I've used both in even measure.

3) Cool, take your time (or work up a single paragraph description, now that's a challenge).

4) I haven't abandoned it, and would really like to do one of them in comics form. Hope for the best. =3

Here's that shorttext link to those paragraphs of description. I'm gonna put the actual text up in a journal sometime soon: http://shorttext.com/lz18nau6sw

Clearly, I should be more nosy when it comes to your work in the future. I kinda kept my beak shut on some things because I didn't want to seem to out of the loop. And in retrospect, nobody wins when I try not to stay out of the loop by staying out of the loop.

That said, *cracks knuckles* I got a few questions. (Ouch)

Uno) I've always really liked the stories behind your pictures, but I've always wanted to read the *whole* story. Do you happen to have anything you're hiding from us?

Tew) The Gradient/(Cell shading?) work you do is coming along rather nicely. Do you do that all by freehand with just program tools? Kouzou and A Bloody Heartland show some nice perspective angles and complex shapes, while We're All Stars now shows some nice details on Mr. Fandey's fur. Whats your process like?

iii) What inspires you to make art? Or, what inspired you to take up artistry to begin with?

Fore) Not to long ago I saw picture of Adam cut into pieces... Is he filled with chocolate pudding?

Highfive) Barnaby Ruffalo. That name chimes in my mind, but i can't help stray towards Barney the Dinosaur. (I'd offer you a link, but i fear for (Further) damnation of my eternal soul by producing it) Whats the story behind the sexy lizard without the slacks?

6) Hey! Whats that over there?

Ichi) Yes. The iceberg metaphor is unbelievably appropriate here. I'm being very unfair having the script in my noggin and just not committing to expected "prosey" paragraphs. ^_^; If pushed, I could sort of pour everything out as punchy, bare-bones play-by-play, like a script/treatment, or one of those Japanese light novels.

Dos) That's right, basically careful blocking with a straightedge lasso (tedious) gradients (simple) and plenty of tweaking with Levels and Hue/Saturation. Here's a pic to illustrate the stages: http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e.....and_stages.jpg Since it's thinking in area/shapes rather than lines, I tend to have less problems than I would with, say, enlarging a thumbnail sketch.

iii) Words aren't fast enough. Really, it is that simple a reason. XD Okay, some things art can do that stories and poems can't (particularly with impact) and sometimes the artwork are stories themselves.

Foor) No, bird ganache. Whole other kind of sweet goo. (Gave the artist this as reference, and he also picked up style cues from Shintaro Kago.)

Lowfivebro) Haha, it's fun keeping an eye on how many people will manage to make that conclusion. A teensy bit on his post-TV life here.

He's on this fictional vacation island type story I'm trying out, where media characters from our childhood go when time's catching up and we've forgotten them. This island's name, Kenanga, is from the ylang-ylang flower, but is also one letter away from a word meaning "memories".

SEXT) HEY, MY VIRGINITY! COME BAAAAACK!