vg www.​von​ster.com

Have you always been and wanted to be an illustrator?

When I went to school the main thing was being a ‘Graphic Designer’ and at that time they had every­one take ‘Illustration’ class. I’ve always drawn so that was always a cre­ative ben­tIeasily grav­i­tated towards. When I grad­u­ated I didn’t think of myself as an ‘Illustrator’. As I con­tin­ued to work I’d come across projects need­ing an illus­tra­tive approach and I’d just do it myself. So over the years my approach to design is such that I not call myself an ‘Illustrative Designer’. When I illus­trate I am making design deci­sions and when I design I am using an illus­tra­tive approach. The two are so fused together for me it’s hard to sep­a­rate them in terms of my cre­ative process.

I’ve always known I’d be doing some­thing artis­tic when I grew up though. Any­thing artis­tic was a touch point of curios­ity for me as a kid. Being able to sit down and create some­thing was a form of escape for me. Many days I’d stay in my room and just create stuff from house hold items like boxes, foil, tape, an old motor from a dis­carded toy and then when I was done I’d have a cool look­ing robot. Pop cul­ture had a huge influ­ence on me too, draw­ing what I saw in Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toons, MAD Mag­a­zine and the art on my par­ents RCA LP’s which were done by Jim Flora really rooted my desire to be an artist. It would how­ever take me about 20 years to figure out how much those var­i­ous sources of inspi­ra­tion really shaped who I am now.

How did www.​illus​tra​tionclass.com come about?

I teach dig­i­tal illus­tra­tion at the local col­lege visual com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­gram here in Salem Oregon. It’s one day a week but it’s a whole lot of fun. It lead me to create an illus­tra­tion tuto­r­ial site at: www.​illus​tra​tionclass.com where I post easy step by step cre­ative processes through var­i­ous projects or meth­ods I use. Also on the site is shared cre­ative processes by many other illus­tra­tors in our indus­try. Since launch­ing it 5 months ago we’ve had over 75,000 unique vis­i­tors and many teach­ers across the nation are using the down­loads in their class envi­ron­ment so that is very cool.

Apart from illus­tra­tion what other things are you into?

I really enjoy pho­tog­ra­phy. Specif­i­cally cap­tur­ing tex­tures. I pitched a design book to HOW Books in 2006 and it got selected to be pub­lished. So in June of 2007 my first authored book called ‘Crumble, Crackle & Burn – 60 Stun­ning Tex­tures for Design and Illustration’ will be released. Each of the ‘60′ spreads in the book fea­ture the raw tex­ture then a piece of art­work uti­liz­ing that tex­ture. I worked with ‘55′ artists to create the art­work for the book and assigned each a spe­cific tex­ture to use. The book comes with a DVD and each tex­ture is pro­vided as a hi-​res bitmap tiff and lay­ered PSD file. It’ll be a good source of inspi­ra­tion and resource for cre­atives whether illus­tra­tive or design.

I also love to doodle. I save all my doo­dles and then archive them in binders. I like to com­bine my pho­tog­ra­phy with my doo­dles too and create low-​tech ani­ma­tion such as this:Click here

Who are your favourite artists/illustrators alive today?

Pretty much every­one at Drawger

My tastes are in con­stant flux and I enjoy brows­ing new work all the time but these five I really enjoy on a reg­u­lar basis.

www.​paul​howalt.com
www.​natewil​liams.com
www.​twofishillus​tra​tion.com
www.​tom​mykane.com
www.​ether​brian.com

Have you ever con­sid­ered moving into Fine Art?

I enjoy paint­ing and have done a few over the years but noth­ing for a com­mer­cial use it’s purely for per­sonal enjoy­ment. I have a style I like to work in called my ‘Doodle Style’ which tends to be more art driven rather then com­mer­cially driven. I’ve had these ran out in large format on a canvas sub­strate and framed and have them hang­ing in my studio. Every­one who sees them com­ments on them and asks about how they’d get some but until the stigma of ‘Digital’ is reduced in the minds of gallery owners it’ll be hard to sell them on a show in this format? I may be wrong but that is the atti­tude here locally. I think in NY and else­where it’s far more accept­able though so I might pur­suit more at some point but now I am con­tent in just enter­tain­ing myself.

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

I enjoy col­lab­o­rat­ing in online art projects. A few recent ones are:

www.​star​tas​tory.com
www.​star​tas​tory.com
www.​iwan​ty​ourskull.com (My sub­mis­sion)
www.​vor​ma​tor.com (My submission)

Out side of these type of col­lab­o­ra­tive projects I’ve always wanted to illus­trate a children’s book so I’d love to team up with a writer. I have had a story idea for years but have never done any­thing with it. I am always open to col­lab­o­rate though.

Another busi­ness rela­tion­ship I have which I would also con­sider a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort is with a printer I use. I run ideas by them and get them on board and we both ben­e­fit. I create and come up with the ideas they pro­duces them at a dis­counted rate and we both ben­e­fit from the expo­sure. Most artists I find are bad at mar­ket­ing and all though I loathe most mar­ket­ing people I’ve worked with enough to know its very impor­tant so I spent the time it takes to market my work well so it has the best chance of sur­viv­ing in a very com­pet­i­tive marketplace.

I am also very for­tu­nate to be serv­ing as a board member for ICON5 (The Illus­tra­tion Con­fer­ence) so I am excited to be help­ing to shape the next national con­fer­ence for illus­tra­tors. Can’t announce where the next con­fer­ence will be yet but if you book mark http://​www.​theil​lus​tra​tioncon​fer​ence.org you’ll be able to find out where the 2008 con­fer­ence will be in January.

What’s next in the pipeline for Von Glitschka?

Well the biggest thing for me now is my own self-​published and man­u­fac­tured prod­uct called ‘Keyboard Characters’. By the time this inter­view is posted the site should be launched. www.​key​board-​char​ac​ters.com Unique lim­ited edi­tion art for the work envi­ron­ment. I’ve been work­ing on this for a year now so I am excited to see it finally launch and I think people will enjoy them. I am already brain storm­ing other sets and themes to do and will be offer­ing it as a cus­tomized ser­vice too.

At some point I’d love to design some vinyl toys but I haven’t been able to make any con­tacts yet. I may just end up pro­duc­ing them on my own because I do have con­tacts with man­u­fac­tures in China I’ve used on other things who could hand it. Another idea I’ve been work­ing on is skip­ping the whole vinyl craze and focus­ing on lower-​tech col­lectible toys but that is all I’ll say about that at this time.

Another thing I can talk about is art prints. Once again team­ing up with a printer and pro­duc­ing my own set of themed art prints will be one goal for the coming year.

OK, heres one idea that is a little out there but would be a kick. I’ve been want­ing to design my own fabric pat­terns, have the fabric printed then get some custom lounge style shirts made from it. Not to sell just for myself. Do some really crazy designs on it too.

Shouts?

Bob Staake: The guy is a machine and his work is just fun to look at very pro­lific too. Mat­tias Adolf­s­son: Just a whole lot of fun. – Keith Bowman: His work is just a great exam­ple of not only good art but also good humor.

Shag or Coop?

I’ll prob­a­bly catch major flack for saying this but I’ll have to pick Coop because it just take more raw skill to pull off his art. I love Shag but it’s time to move on from Tiki’s, Martini’s and Retro-​Hip already. But to be fair I think Coop could expand his offer­ing instead of doing another dev­il­ishly good look­ing chick. Maybe try some angelic hot­ties? Great now I’ll prob­a­bly piss off every­one. LOL

The Addams Family or The Munsters?

The Mun­sters. Mainly because of their car. I am a huge fan of Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth so those type of cars will always play a factor.

You can see more of Von Glitschka’s work at
www.​von​ster.com

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Cats: Animation, Recent News
Tags: Bob Staake, China, http://www.theillustrationconference.org, illustration tutorial site, Interviews, Jim Flora, local college visual communications, MAD Magazine, New York, online art projects, RCA LP, self-published and manufactured product, www.illustrationclass.com, www.keyboard-characters.com, www.paulhowalt.com www.natewilliams.com www.twofishillustration.com www.tommykane.com www.etherbrian.com, www.startastory.com www.startastory.com www.iwantyourskull.com, www.vonster.com, www.vormator.com