Joe Packer is a communications academic and became interested in how pessimism is expressed in popular culture. He co-wrote a book on the subject and we discussed it.
0:56 – Joe talks about how he got into writing about pessimism in popular culture. He references Lovecraft.
2:14 – Joe talks about the book and philosophical pessimism. The book focuses on the idea that things would be better if humans didn’t even exist.
6:31 – Joe talks about why they incorporated True Detective, Rick and Morty, and Final Fantasy VII into the book’s ideas.
12:37 – Joe talked about other works they considered including such as drone metal.
16:08 – Joe talks about their backgrounds in communications studies.
17:09 – Joe talks about the short story “I have No Mouth and I Must Scream” and how it affected him.
22:53 – Joe talks about post-apocalyptic films.
27:38 – Joe talks about the philosophies of BioShock.
28:52 – Joe is on academia.edu and Google Scholar.
For more of “The Art and Design of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Mystery and Horror” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi
Guests: Joe Packer
Host: Cris Alvarez
Tags: science fiction, fantasy, art, artist, Rick and Morty, True Detective, Lovecraft, Final Fantasy VII, Inside Out, drone metal, Get Out, BioShock, video games
Amanda Schank is a digital artist. I interviewed her at Super Magfest 2018 about her art, inspirations and method of working.
1:26 – Her Demon Slayer picture on an alligator rug is one of her favorite works because it’s very much “her”. It’s a line art heavy piece of work. It has a pin-up style. She likes adding shadows to the work. She combines urban wear and medieval images.
4:49 – She’ll stare at a piece of 40 minutes to see anything that needs to be fixed before she declares something done. She’ll even paint over prints once they’re ready for sale at conventions.
9:39 – She grew up watching Inuyasha and got into the mood of painting those characters. It’s influenced her throughout her career. She does everything on computer. She likes using a Cintiq for digital drawing and sketching.
12:57 – Lately she’s been inspired by lots of sci-fi. She’s creating a space station universe art book. Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Cowboy Bebop are currently inspiring her. She watches a lot of sci-fi to finish the book. She loves both the visuals and the characters and their motivations too. Evangelion also inspires her but she isn’t drawing lots of mechs.
16:14 – Her tablet is her most important tool. It’s about a 16 inch screen and she feel comfortably working on it. Photoshop has a nice textured brush too.
18:11 – In 2012 she had done a large painting of Red Riding Hood in armor. Now she revisited the character for a new piece. Right now she most enjoys doing textured line art for pin-up style work. She likes creating tattoo friendly art.
21:30 – She started making art when she was one. When she was nine or so she started watching anime and it was so different from Western cartoons she was fascinated by it. She didn’t care about art museums on school field trips until she got into art. She started posting the art online and she’s had a big following since then.
23:20 – She was on a site called Guyana online where you had an avatar that you could buy clothes for. She started selling her art to buy avatar clothes and then she realized she could make real money for her art. She realized she could make a living from art. She’s been doing commissions for 14 years.
26:14 – Artists are behind the scenes in everything in business. Art directors and artists create media, billboards and so on. They’re crucial to anything visual.
29:20 – She loves the Fifth Element and she watched it all the time with her dad. Star Wars is an inspiration. She loves Child Thief by Brom. He’s a writer and illustrator. Cowboy Bebop has stuck with her throughout. Neverending Story is one of her loves. She’s been trying to do Fifth Element fan art for a long time but wants to make it perfect so hasn’t finished it.
32:41 – She loved the concept art for Valerian but she wasn’t happy with the movie at all. The visuals weren’t shown as much as advertised. The movie was too rushed to enjoy the art in the movie.
Jed Henry is a prolific artist who focuses on Japanese print style art. I was able to interview him at Super Magfest 2018. He’s worked on movie animation, video games, comic books and traditional and computer art.
0:37 – Artist Jed Henry talks about the work he is most proud of and he finds it to be the one that was most difficult. He points out his Final Fantasy 6 triptych.
1:42 – He says that he’ll work on something for 2 to 4 hours and then stay away for a half hour and then look at it again. He checks at each phase of production if it’s done. Sometimes he just throws a piece away.
2:40 – He sketches in photoshop and does inkwork in traditional Japanese paper. He scans this in and adds color digitally.
3:10 – He’s inspired by people who show talent and he likes tattoo artists who do Japanese style tattooing. He gets inspirations from dance music, cinema and he reads a lot of comics, novels, poetry and so on.
4:19 – He talks about his inspiration to do Japanese style Star Wars artwork. He likes the Buddhist and eastern mysticism elements of Star Wars.
5:24 – He says he’s addicted to working on his computer. He also needs real brushes and inks for his work. A digital brush won’t work for him.
6:00 – He most likes doing line work. It’s the foundation of his Japanese style work.
6:36 – He feels a compulsion to do art and he loves doing it. It’s like a sweet torture and he would be unhappy doing anything else.
7:33 – He’s been doing art since he was a little kid and just kept doing it. He was a serious student and didn’t do as much art while in school. He tried to get good grades and create art but around age 22 he focused on drawing while in college. He barely slept but wanted to create art.
9:10 – He got free copies of Adobe and he began using that to work on his scanned in work. He picked up digital media pretty quickly in college.
10:00 – He studied animation in college and since the 90s animation was done on computer software. He never questioned using computers for his art. It was the tool of choice for his goals.
11:23 – He balances skill and effort to achieve success. It’s almost a numbers game and has had to reinvent himself half a dozen times to have success. He had a movie internship in LA and didn’t like it. He went into children’s books, then Japanese printmaking, a video game, and is working on a comic book. An artist must explore and also think like a businessperson. His process always changes to match his career goals. He wants to channel his creativity in a way that people will want to support him. You can’t do too much of any one thing.
14:46 – He says that many talented artists didn’t have complete freedom.
15:20 – He says that many people approach being an artist in a different way. He doesn’t know if an artist should focus on survival or making it a better place.
16:13 – He loves the Shattered Sea series by Joe Abercrombie. The first book is Half a King and are great YA fantasy. He gets impatient with lots of YA fantasy. Many lack character and emotional connection. He loves character first and concept second.
17:50 – He loves David Mitchell. He writes great literature but also writes great crazy science fiction. He also recommends the sci-fi novel Stories of Your Life and Others. He says it’s great people science fiction. He loves Mitchell’s latest book titled Bone Clocks. It’s an insane vampire novel.
21:25 – There are many pieces he’d like to create. He likes doing the fan art and enjoys going to conventions. He also wants to make more video games and continues with the comic book.
22:35 – People can find him on google under “Jed Henry.” He’s not the male model or the Jed who brings service member remains back from overseas.
