3DTotal: Welcome to 2DArtist, Alex! It’s great to have you here. Now I’ve been having a poke around your website and in amongst the amazing images I’ve found that there’s actually very little information about you (I guess you let your art do the talking!) But just to fill in the gaps a bit, could you tell us a little about your background in art and what you’re up to nowadays?
Alex: Hi Jo, thanks for having me here. Ok... what can I tell you about my background? Somewhere
around 1990 I was in school and was totally fascinated by airbrushing techniques. So I bought an airbrush and a compressor and, well, was very bad at what I did [Laughs]! Besides that, airbrushing
was expensive (I broke my equipment all the time) so I stopped, but missed it a lot.

One day I was introduced to the world of 3D by a friend. I was totally fascinated because the images shared similarities with the typical airbrush painting I liked so much. So I saved some money, got a
used Amiga 4000 and taught myself 3D!

To shorten this: for the next 12 years I worked as
a 3D artist, specializing in building and lighting environments. In the end I was working on some nice big projects, but the work also got very boring because of all the technical constraints and problems which had to be solved every day.
It was more like 95% solving problems and 5% being creative. I missed being creative a lot.

It was in 2003, when I was working in London at the Moving Picture Company, I made friends with John Wallin Liberto, an awesome concept artist and matte painter who was working with me on the same movie at that time. I had the workstation next to his, so I was able to watch him paint all day long. I was so fascinated by his work and started to envy his job a lot because it seemed to be the complete opposite of my situation: 5% technical problems and 95% creativity!

John and I stayed friends and in 2008 I was so tired of doing 3D (and solving problems) that I decided I needed a change. I think John was making fun when he said that I should become a digital painter, but I took him seriously. I took one year off, lived off my savings and taught myself how to paint in Photoshop. John was a great help; he provided serious help and shared his experience with me.
It´s because of him that I’m giving interviews two years later - thank you so much John!

3DTotal: Sounds like you owe John a lot! I think that’s the best thing about working in the artistic industry: how inspirational those around us can be. Anyway, how are you finding life as a digital painter? Was it a difficult transition to make, from 3D environment/lighting artist to digital painter? And what kind of projects are you working on at the moment?
Alex: Yes I do! Actually, I think being a 3D environment artist was a great help. Many things you have to know are the same; I already knew how important it is to lead the viewer’s eye through your image, about the quality of contrasts and the importance of edges and details to keep the eye moving. This was all stuff I learned during my years as a lighting TD, so it was a big advantage to have this know-how in my bank.

Of course, I learned a lot more when I started to paint. As a 3D artist the render engine takes a lot of work from you. You just need a good sense of the end product and to keep changing parameters until you get the look you want it to have. As a painter you are the render engine, so you have to learn that too; how colors behave when they mix and stuff like that.

I am currently working a lot on commercial illustrations for advertising, while doing production art for some known game studios on a freelance basis.  And that´s exactly what I like about the job – you never get bored. The topics are always changing.