nw www.​n8w.com

My wife once put a worm in her grandmother’s bed, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

“I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die…”

I know you no longer work for Microsoft Xbox as an Art Direc­tor, but I would like to know how you got that job and what jobs you had before that?

I was very into com­put­ers and art in college… that was around 1994 when the web was just start­ing to become know. I learned how to design/program web sites early on… and because I had pro­gram­ming skills mixed with art skills… it allowed me get to get my foot in the door at a well known adver­tis­ing agency… at the time not many people could do both… not many hybrids. The ad agency had some big clients… so I had the oppor­tu­nity to work on sites for Gate­way, Intel, Iomega, Netscape and some other high pro­file tech­nol­ogy clients.

I then decided to move to Seat­tle. When I applied at Microsoft Games… I had a lot of web expe­ri­ence for that time… and I was young and into art so I think that helped out because we were making video games and I was around the target market. Microsoft has a brutal inter­view process… you inter­view all day… for 8 hours with dif­fer­ent people and then I had to give an hour pre­sen­ta­tion about my work… anyway… I worked for Microsoft Games as a designer/programmer for a few years and when Microsoft decided to create Xbox… I was asked to be the Art Direc­tor for Xbox.com.

You have put your skills as pro­gram­mer and designer to one side although they have aided you in become and estab­lish­ing your­self as an illus­tra­tor; have you ever con­sid­ered putting illus­tra­tion to one side to become an Artist or do you see that as the same thing?

Yeah… you’re right. I used to use those skills to earn a living… and now they just help me pro­mote my illus­tra­tion career and market other ideas I have. I think… ide­ally I would to do many things at one time. I think I will always illustrate… it’s what I do in my free time… I really love it… so I think that will always be a part of my life… but I would also like to invent things… I don’t know how help­ful my illus­tra­tion style will be in that endeavour… but who knows.

Apart from illus­tra­tion what other things are you into?

Laugh­ing, exercise… Jui Jitsui, learn­ing about how things work… space, nature, ani­mals, etc, walk­ing, people watch­ing, body lan­guage, I want to learn how to read lips, play­ing with my dog, making jokes with my wife, trav­el­ling, eating, being in the ocean, DIS­COV­ER­ING NEW ENVI­RON­MENTS, taking sub­ways and buses, fig­ur­ing out patterns… or frame­works, read­ing quo­ta­tions, learn­ing odd facts, lis­ten­ing to his­tory and sci­en­tific pod­casts, music, watch­ing movies… Etc

Who are your favourite artists/illustrators alive today?

There are so many… it’s hard to narrow it down … but at this exact moment… MWM Graph­ics, Calef Brown, Jere­myville, Clay­ton Bros, Charles glaub­itz, Jordin Isip, Roman Klonek, Michael Slack, Dan May, Klaus haa­paniemi, Pier­luigi Longo, Modern dog, Christo­pher Nielsen, 3TTMan, Gary Base­man, Camille Rose Garcia, Chris­t­ian North­east .. Plus a zil­lion more

¿Qué harías si te besara ahora mismo?

Es común en argentina… entonces te lo devoleria

Are you involved in any col­lab­o­ra­tive projects at the moment and is there anyone you would like to work with?

No… not at the moment… but I would like to Peno­ple Cruz… can you arrange that?

What’s next in the pipeline for Nate Williams?

I don’t know what’s next… Just enjoy­ing the present.

Sponge­bob or Ren and Stimpy?

South Park… then Ren and Stimpy.

Watch­ing it or doing it?

Relax­ing It Drink­ing a Coffee it… then People watch­ing it.

You can see more of Nate Williams’s work at
www.​n8w.com

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