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3DTotal: Hi Cole, thanks for taking time to talk with us. What a wonderful online gallery you have at www.eastburnart.com. How long has it taken you to build this portfolio, and what stages of your education/professional career does it represent?
Cole: Hey Tom, thanks for having me, and thank you for the kind words. This portfolio has taken the past year to create, and represents pretty much just my self education. My professional work is a lot less creative and boring, and doesn’t really teach me anything. I might as well have been digging ditches for a living; I probably would have made more money too!
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3DTotal: You’re the first person I have interviewed to say this about their professional work. Why is this so? And what sort of projects do you get at work?
Cole: Well, the company I used to work for had this motto, which was “cheap and fast”. We usually had three months per title, and there were only two 2D artists at the company - I was one of them. All of our games were heavy in the 2D department. The only things that weren’t 2D were usually characters. It was very frustrating at the time, because I didn’t even know how to paint when I first started working there two years ago, and I wanted to learn and no one could teach me. So I had to learn at the same time as working, through online magazines, like yours, and various books. Some of the projects that I got to work on, just so you can have an insight into what I got to ”create”, were Cabbage Patch Babies and Ponies (and that’s an actual title, your eyes don’t deceive you), and Bratz Babies - another amazing title which teaches little girls to be sluts.
3DTotal: A lot of your images seem to contain a human and a creature. Why do you like painting this combination/interaction?
Cole: I really don’t know. I think it’s because I really want to do concept art for games, and the two biggest things in games nowadays are people, and the creatures that they have to kill. |
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3DTotal: And visa versa of course. So, let’s just say, if some cool company was reading this and you got an email today with the offer of a concept art freelance gig, or better, would you jump at the chance?
Cole: Tom, I would LEAP at the chance, tackle the chance, and then proceed to make sweet, sweet love to the chance. Any place where I can be with other artists, and where we can create something inspiring for other people, and learn from one another, is where I want to be. I don’t care what industry it’s in, just as long as I’m creating something.
3DTotal: Can you quickly outline your typical techniques with regards to software and methods?
Cole: Well, usually for character designs, I start out with Prismacolor thumbnails, scan them, and then do a tonal painting in Photoshop. I then add colours and take it into Painter to finish off. Sometimes I just like to make random strokes in Painter or Photoshop and see what comes out of it, which is how I started “Zug Zug”, so it works every once in a while, too.
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Can we see some of the “Prismacolor thumbnails”?
Sure thing. I will try to get you some things out of my sketchbooks too so that you have something to dress this article up with.
3DTotal: If you could have a special super power what would it be?
Hmmm, that’s a thinker... The obvious thing is flight, or super-strength, which is cool, but let’s go for some originality here. I’m going to have to go with the ability to make people fart at will. I would just stand in front of elevators and, just as the door’s about to close, I’d make one person totally rip one. Probably a lot of women, because they try so hard to hide the fact that they fart... |
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