{"id":337,"date":"2013-02-23T15:08:36","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T15:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.darkharvest-legacyoffrankenstein.com\/?page_id=337"},"modified":"2013-02-23T15:16:59","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T15:16:59","slug":"interview-with-jan-pospisil-cover-artist","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.darkharvest-legacyoffrankenstein.com\/interviews\/tales-of-promethea-interviews-excerpts\/interview-with-jan-pospisil-cover-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Jan Pospisil, cover artist"},"content":{"rendered":"
Hi Jan. Many thanks for taking time out to answer these questions. What are you working on at the moment?<\/i><\/p>\n
– Hello! Glad to be answering them. At the very moment I’m drawing the last sketch from a batch of illustrations I need to get done this year. It’s for a rather exciting project, but I can’t say more than that now.<\/p>\n
Although many folks have seen your work, we should do some introductions – who are you, what do you do, and where do you do it?<\/i><\/p>\n
– I am a full time freelance illustrator. This January It’s going to be 6 months since I started doing it for a living. I mainly paint illustrations for RPG books, but I’ve also done a few novel covers and PC game concept art just as a hobby. I do all this in my tiny bedroom in the city of Brno, CzechRepublic.<\/p>\n
What sort of preparation did you do for the DH:LoF anthology cover? What material were you provided with?<\/i><\/p>\n
– I was given all the material I could possibly need. The previous books in PDF, their cover illustrations, image reference for elements in the cover’s description etc. I’ve seen some of the work Scott Purdy’s done in the past, but that was the extent of my familiarity with the setting. The brief contained a narrative which I had to think quite hard about, not very simply put into an illustration. But it gave me lots of freedom in the way characters and objects were to be depicted, so I had it easy there.<\/p>\n
When you’re working on a piece, do you prefer a detailed brief, describing every little thing, or a less defined brief, leaving the majority of it up to your imagination?<\/i><\/p>\n
– For me it’s not a divide between detailed and sparse, rather a matter of “Does the client mean it?” and “Is it the kind of information I need to paint it?”. If the brief is short and vague and the client knows he’s asking me to do my thing, great! If the brief is simply vague, because the client can’t be bothered to write it properly, or if they simply don’t know what they want, that can be a real problem.<\/p>\n
Sometimes a brief contains too much information not relevant to the illustration, or information I can’t ever possibly hope to depict. On the other hand, a long and detailed brief can be really good as well, if it’s not overly excessive and if I know it’s safe to follow it.<\/p>\n
One of the most fun types is a brief that’s very detailed, but most of the details are not set in stone “it has to look like this” ones, but rather stylistic suggestions. Or reference of objects with a function, or an interesting look I could draw inspiration from. I’m free to invent, to do my thing, but it should stay within the style boundaries implied by the brief. And I get a ton of reference to base my “thing” on, to get me started. That’s very helpful.<\/p>\n
Talk us through the work process on creating a piece like the anthology cover? <\/i><\/p>\n
– The process is usually pretty straightforward. I get the brief, I think it over and if I don’t have any questions for the art director, I start drawing sketches. Sometimes these questions arise only when I’m in the middle of drawing though. At this stage it’s good to be clear on certain issues – which characters are the most important? Is it absolutely necessary that we see all of this object, or can it be partially covered by something? Sometimes I think of a way to incorporate a theme significant for the book, which was not mentioned in the brief.<\/p>\n