3DTotal: Hi Yigit, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by 2DArtist. Tell us a little about your background and how you have come to be where you are today. How does someone who studied banking and finance end up as a digital illustrator?
Yigit: I’m an illustrator and concept artist from Turkey, where it’s a total mixture of Eastern and European cultures. I think living here has been the most important and dominant element in my life that led me to become an artist. When you stand at the point that I am now, and turn your face to the east, you see a vast land of ancient and mystic history going back to the Sumerians. Then, if you turn your face to the west, you’ll find yourself engulfed in a culture that has been the roots of everything in our lives since Zeus sat on his throne.

3DTotal: You say that you’ve been painting and drawing since childhood – what did you like to draw back then? And what would you say inspired you the most at this time?
Yigit: I remember I was sharpening my pencils two-three years before starting elementary school. The earliest memory I have is painting VHS covers for my personal Robotech video collection. Actually they were just four or five episodes recorded from TV. If those couple of awkward lines could be considered as robots.

The funniest story from my childhood about drawing is when I learned how cartoons were made. After watching a documentary about Walt Disney on TV, I grabbed my pencils and drew nearly 15 pages of robots and He-Man fighting each other. I even added word balloons to the pages to be filled by my father since I didn’t know how to write. As naive as I was, I thought those balloons would somehow mysteriously transform into sounds. I was desperately handing these drawings to my father everyday so that he could send them to the TV station to be shown on TV. Of course it didn’t take more than a couple of days before some older kid in the neighbourhood told me that mine was just an idiotic and useless goal, which ruined my dreams. Those were the days that I spent my time by watching He-Man, Robotech, Transformers and playing with Lego. Transformers is my favorite TV program of all times. I was, and still am, amazed by those shapeshifting mechs.

3DTotal: If you were to look back at the projects and pieces of art you have worked on, what would you say was your favorite and the most rewarding, and why?
Yigit: Of all pieces that I have made The Oath is my favorite. It let me be recognized by sci-fi art lovers and some magazines. But above all, that piece was selected for Digital Art Masters: V5, for which I also wrote a detailed step-by-step making of. I spent nearly one week painting it because of its huge size and resolution. I wanted it to be a cinematic-looking piece with a gloomy forest background and I tried to make a contrasting focal point by creating dramatic lighting. From the viewer’s positive feedback I think that I accomplished what I intended.

3DTotal: When looking at your gallery it appears that you are quite comfortable with both sci-fi and fantasy painting, which is fairly rare as artists seem to be drawn to one or the other. Which of these would you say is your favorite? And are there any other styles or approaches that you would like to try out?
Yigit: As I stated previously, when I decided to start digital painting my goal was to remove the boundaries of my imagination, which was limited by the solid shapes and materials that overwhelmed my work as an interior designer. I’m sure all kinds of designers reading this know what I am talking about; it’s hard having a unique design in your mind but being limited by current technologies and therefore knowing it will only stay on paper. At that point I told myself if those kinds of designs were having to stay on paper, why put restrictions on them?

For me it’s the same with the genres of art. I think there is a very thin line between science fiction and fantasy since one feeds the other. Who knows if the Uruk-Hai’s described by J.R.R Tolkien haven’t influenced some scientist experimenting on a hybrid race of frog and a bird? A flying frog can be considered a fantasy creature, but could also be the result of a sci-fi idea. There are very complex discussions about the boundaries of the two genres. As an artist, what I want to do is not restrict my artwork to pure fantasy or pure sci-fi since my job is to expand people’s imaginations as much as I can. So I try to mix these two at least in my personal paintings. I see artists as the sparks in the development of civilization. I think that our goal should be more than to paint something to decorate walls. I would like to try abstract painting since the results can turn out wonderfully and can show the artist his own sub-consciousness.

3DTotal: I tend to ask everyone I interview what their ideal job would be. If you could take any job in the world now what would it be and why?
Yigit: My ideal job is what I am doing now actually. As I have said, I chose this job after years of experimenting in other professions. To be more specific about it, I love creating unique concept designs that let people wonder about the rest of the story or the environment they are in. The best ground to implement this is either movies or video games. So I would like to take part in a big project where people would say “now that is definitely something we haven’t imagined before”. To me, hearing something like this would be worth much more than any amount of money.