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3DTotal: OK, so you are obviously into your comics and action films. Would you say that you gain more -
or an equal amount of - inspiration from comics and films for your own artwork, than you do from other artists in the same, or similar, field to your own? What and/or who are your biggest sources of inspiration right now?
John: Definitely film and comics, but comics’ stories more so than the artwork itself. Stories inspire me to create worlds, and in those worlds I create characters and so on. When I was a kid I looked to different artists for inspiration like Frank Frazetta or Norman Rockwell. But right now I look to people like Brian Bendis or Quentin Tarantino.
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3DTotal: Did you ever create any characters as a kid that you think would be worth resurrecting now? Or do you think they would lack the attitude and worldly quality that your characters today have, due to the innocence of youth?
John: There are a lot of those old characters that I want to bring back to life, but they would really need some updating; more in the story than in their appearance. My outlook on the world is totally different now to what it was back then, and so the stories would be drastically different.
3DTotal: You appear to work using both traditional and digital mediums when creating your artworks, but which medium do you find is the most expressive of your personal ideas and the characters that you create? What advantages does one have over the other, for you?
John: I’m better with a pencil, so I think I get my
point across better traditionally rather than digitally. But it’s more fun for me to play around in Photoshop knowing I can just “undo” if I need to. There’s not a lot you can undo traditionally, which is why my trash can is filled with torn-up paper |
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3DTotal: Do you feel that the full trash can symbolises a better sense of time spent, as it is hard evidence of your attempts, than when compared with the “undo” tool on a computer? Do you find that, when you don’t have an overflowing trash can to bounce paper off that the computer can absorb your time without a real sense of it passing?
John: I’m always shocked at how fast time passes! If I’m in my sketchbook or on the computer, time just speeds by. I start drawing and I get in a zone, and before I know it, its 3 am.
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3DTotal: So, you’re still young at just 25, but what do you imagine you will achieve in the next 25 years? Where do you think you will be; what would you love to be doing; what one thing in particular would you have liked to have accomplished, by this moment in 25 years time?
John: I plan to do everything from comics to movies and all things in between. There’s a lot I want to learn and experience. There’s a lot I want to say through my art. Hopefully by that time I’ll have gotten a lot of that off my chest. I would love to be living in France or Italy, creating art for the world to see and be affected by. If there was one thing I would like to have accomplished by that time, it would be to have created something that moved people; moved to laughter, to tears, or whatever. To create something that made somebody somewhere feel something is a gift, so hopefully I can do that.
3DTotal: You talk about artwork in terms of it moving people as if you have experienced this first hand. What one single artwork has moved you most recently, and for what reasons?
John: The most recent piece that moved me was a couple years ago actually. I picked up the graphic novel “Superman: Birthright”. I’ve never really been a Superman fan, but the images in the book were so powerful; so dynamic... they spoke to me. You really got the sense that this was a “super” man. A man whose sole purpose was to do good, no matter what, and to do that you have to be as strong as possible; physically, emotionally, and beyond.
Those images, and what I saw in them, inspired me
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to be a better artist, a better father, a better husband a better man all-round. Art has that power. It’s truly amazing |
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