3DTotal: Hi Marek, Now it’s become a bit of a tradition for us to kick off interviews by asking the artist to introduce themselves, so can you start by telling us about who you are, how you broke into the world of 2D art and what you get up to on a daily basis?
Marek: Hi there! My name is Marek Okon, I’m 28 years old, I was born in beautiful Poland and it’s where I live to date. I treated drawing like a hobby for most of my life, until a few years ago when I started to think about it more seriously. It began when I was working as a web designer and flash animator. Yeah I know, not much related to drawing, but during that time I got to know Photoshop very well and I learnt how to work with demanding clients.

 My first commercial painting job was a book cover for a local publisher. They liked what I did and ordered more covers. After showing those images in my portfolio, more clients showed up and things started snowballing.

Right now most of my job is doing illustrations and concepts for books and games. I’m also struggling to develop some more advanced 3D skills. I think it’s important to keep trying new things - to keep your brain open to new ideas.

 
    3DTotal: Yeah, I noticed a lot of book covers in your gallery – particularly for fantasy books – and I guess that explains why! How did you fall into this kind of work and how does the whole thing work? Are you given a strict brief, or do you have the artistic license to do pretty much what you want, within reason of course! ?
Marek: My first client, the local book publisher Fabryka Slow, is famous for its fantasy-oriented novels, so that’s why most of my work is from that area. But right now I’m really doing pretty much every topic there is, from Victorian dress designs to zombies, cyber marines and huge robots. As I said I like doing new things every time I get the chance.

As for briefs it really depends on the client. Some of them just giving me rough guidelines, giving me freedom with the details, others on the other hand have really clear visions about what they want from me, down to character design, poses, props placement and so on.

For some reason, I’ve got an image of a zombie in a Victorian dress in my head now … [Laughs]. It must be amazing to be able to walk into a bookshop and see something that you’ve created on the shelf. Of the two different client approaches that you mentioned, which way do you prefer to work? Being given the freedom to experiment or being guided by a brief? And which do you think produces the best art?

That really depends on the clients! [Laughs]. At first glance, one giving you complete freedom sounds better, but if you cooperate with a client that knows what he wants you can end up with ideas that you couldn’t think of by yourself. And that’s how you grow

as an artist; you learn from others, gain new experiences and try to use them while working on your next image.

3DTotal: Now strangely enough, yours was actually one of the very first pieces of artwork that I stumbled across when I started working for 3DTotal. I was poking around in the free wallpaper section on our site and I discovered “Rain”. The piece was so powerful that I immediately thought: “This has got to have a great story behind it”, which seems to be a recurring theme in your work. So is there a story behind “Rain”, or is that just my overactive imagination? And what about “Hide and Seek”, which seems to be the ultimate story-based piece. How did that come about?
Marek:“Rain” definitely has a story behind it. As you may know, it’s a piece that was done for a book cover and it’s a loose interpretation of a scene from that book. Immediately after reading that passage I thought, “Now that’s a great scene - people are gonna wonder what drove this girl to this point in her life, when she’s ready to risk it all to avoid being captured”. And that’s what I like about doing covers; you have to find that one scene that will intrigue people without revealing too much
 
“Hide and Seek” was my first commission for ImagineFX magazine and since I have a tremendous amount of respect for them and the amount of education they put into the community, I really wanted to do something special. And since people like this storytelling aspect in my images, I wanted to do a little puzzle, which if solved, will give the full story behind the image.

    
 
It’s really not that easy to put so many small details into an image, which contribute to some greater message, without forcing them upon viewer - but it’s really worth the effort, even if only a few people will get all the clues.

3DTotal: Well you certainly achieved what you set out to do with “Rain”, because that’s exactly what I thought when I looked at it! I really like the idea of telling a story through an image; making images something more than just beautiful pictures to be admired for artistic technique alone. Do you ever ask for feedback on the pictures that you’ve built a story into, to see if people’s interpretations match your own intentions for the piece?
Marek: I don’t have to ask! People are always commenting on what they see in my pictures, sometimes asking me if they are right or what the meaning of a certain object in the image is. In my opinion, if you have to explain to people what the image is all about then the image fails, as it should speak for itself. That’s why I never describe my images, nor answer any story-related questions. What you see is what you get and if you don’t see what I wanted to show you, then it’s my fault as my visual messages obviously weren’t clear enough.

On the funny side, from time to time people’s imaginations run wilder then mine, creating stories about my pictures that are way more complex and crazy than anything I could ever come up with … [Laughs]. It’s really satisfying to spark someone’s imagination like that!
    
     
 
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Chunkymunky (Forums) on Wed, 02 June 2010 2:14pm

Gosh they are some outstanding illustrations! I cannot fault a single on of them, they have beautiful colourings, tone, lighting and attention to detailing. Marek you are a superb artist, thanks for sharing :)
Hulahuga (Forums) on Wed, 02 June 2010 7:16pm

Interesting interview :). I like the fact that he is quite storydriven, and I think the part about the music as well as films (inspiration overall) was a particularly good section :). Feel quite similar about the stories and such, guessing that was why I enjoyed it.Great paintings as well.Btw you guys missed one thing "Now your gallery makes for particularly interesting viewing, as there’s a clear transition between your earlier manga work and the fantastic digital art that you’ve been producing recently. Was it a conscious decision to move away from the manga style, or was it just the natural evolution of your art?" is supposed to be white since it is a question, it isn't right now..Edit: a shame that you couldn't see the pic I guess is "Hide and seek" in the same size as the others...edit2: Just checked out his site and some of his manga/anime background really shows in his design work in the vid there. Style very similar to Animatrix actually :D
Chunkymunky (Forums) on Thu, 03 June 2010 2:11pm

Thanks for pointing that out hulahuga, I agree superb anime/manga style work :)
Aby Arty (Forums) on Thu, 03 June 2010 9:28pm

who was the 3dtotal interviewer this time?
Jo-3DT (Forums) on Thu, 10 June 2010 11:35am

It was me :)
Chunkymunky (Forums) on Thu, 10 June 2010 12:42pm

Well done Jo, it was a nicely put together interview :)
Hulahuga (Forums) on Thu, 10 June 2010 4:07pm

Originaly posted by Jo-3DT;796609]It was me :)"Good questions man :)

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