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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OhGodtheRats" data-source="post: 4993517" data-attributes="member: 71815">It's a tricky thing.  Participating in threads set out against you (again, I'm impressed by the discussion...it grew in a weird direction I wasn't expecting), doesn't always work.  Rarely, I've seen.  Either you come across as some sort of ego madman who Googles himself like a fiend (every online artist goes through that stage at some point) or you seem a bit of a e-penis by only posting "I don't care what you think" or some such nonsense.  For the sensitive artist types, it's not a game to play at all and it's hard to calm the nerves of someone who's decided they "hate you" based off of only a dozen of the thousands of works you have floating around.  So yeah, bad situation.Funnily enough, when I won the RYZ Goblinstompers competition, they interviewed me with all these questions but never ended up posting the damn thing.  The short answer is that I'm a fan of artists who can get away with bizarre/atypical character design, and well, I don't know if I'm self-aware to know all my influences.  I really need to bug RYZ and ask them if I have permission to post the D&D-Centric interview of theirs.Oh and Stupid Monsters are a huge influence.  Goofy article aside (<a href="http://www.headinjurytheater.com/article73.htm" target="_blank">CLICK HERE, but chances are you've read it already</a>)I wrote that years before I played D&D and only because I love Fantasy monsters, the more ridiculous the better.  You can't tell me a creature like "MonkeyBees" wasn't inspired by something a kid doodled in the margin of his notebook.  I like tapping into that spirit when I can.   It Varies a LOT.  Since I'm a Luddite, my photoshopping skills can't be relied on, so everything I do is typically a combination of acrylic, watercolor, & ink.  Typically I doodle something for a while until I either get a design I like or come up with something funny, and just go from there.  Depends on the project.  In this case, I was pretty much told "have fun" which means trying to balance being weird & artsy (a LOT of folks liked the Chain Devil from the 1st set) to being funny (a LOT of folks liked the Barghest from the next) and few of these fan groups overlap, I think.It's a little of both.  I was an apprentice for an Art Professor all through my teens, went to school for Experimental Film (trust me it's as pretentious as it sounds), and stumbled into cartooning with Fine Art materials when I found that I had too much free time here in Berlin.  My first round of doodles ended up getting snatched up by a bunch of Opera companies and I took it as a sign that I might want to work on my painting chops a bit.  So the answer is Classically Trained while Young but recently Self-Taught and Did his best to forget said Classical Training for the sake of fun and impatience.  I think.  I really don't think about these things too often.   I love to paint and I'm lucky that some people dig the voodoo that I do.As for your second question:  I don't do fantasy illustrations.  Well, I think I do now, technically, but I think of it as "Fine Art Cartooning", kind of what Phil Foglio did with his early MtG acrlyic pieces.  (Foglio is also the reason I started playing Magic years ago...to collect his awesome artwork.)  He's a good example:  Not everyone liked his stuff but some of us gushed over it and thought it was better than any of the more Hardcore "serious" illustrations you'd find on the cards.  I'm NOT saying I'm Foglio or anything, but the vibe of there being another option around besides "Serious/Realistic" art in the game does ring a similar, if distant, chord.  As WotC puts it:  There's a psychographic (Psychological Demographic, I may be mistyping it) that digs the goofy stuff.  Well, any reaction is a good one, but desired?  A smile?  Maybe.  I'm not too picky.  I actually was asking myself this question while I was at GenCon this year and folks asked to see my portfolio.  I've been a digital entity in Berlin for 6 years now and it was pretty much the first time of actually watching people look at my stuff in the meatworld.  So....yeah.  I don't know if I do it for a desired effect...I do what I do (and have done for years) and some folks find some joy in it.  I'm lucky to make a living doing it.  As for my intent: It's meant to balance somewhere between whimsical and experimental.  (And childish, I won't lie.)Honestly, the one I'm most proud of isn't the best painting in the set.  It hasn't been released yet, but the Deathrattler Snake painting features real discarded snakeskin from my pet.  I saved a few of them, glued them onto a canvas, and painted the whole thing.  It looks interesting (and is better if you know I used real snake) but really I only like it because it opens the gateway to trying even weirder stuff and techniques you only come up with if you have too much time on your hands.  When stuff like that works, I'm happy.  So yeah.  I don't know if that explains anything, but it's been a fun thing to attempt this Wednesday afternoon.-Jared"who would still like to say he sucks, but he does it with style"</blockquote>

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