[projectaon] Fwd: <>--- Interview Questions : Answer No.5 ---<>
- From: "Jonathan Blake" <blake.jon@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Project Aon List" <projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2008 13:36:07 -0700
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <paj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, May 31, 2008 at 1:52 PM
Subject: <>--- Interview Questions : Answer No.5 ---<>
To: Jonathan Blake <blake.jon@xxxxxxxxx>
_____________ S P R I N G - 2 0 0 8
_____________ PETER ANDREW JONES PUBLISHING
---- ORIGINAL PAINTINGS : LIMITED EDITION PRINTS & BOOKS : ART GREETINGS CARDS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AFFETTI : CRUX MILLENNIUM : HEROES & VILLAINS : RURAL DREAMS : SOLAR
WIND : URBAN DREAMS : WINGS OF FIRE
PAINTINGS of CHURCH STRETTON of LUDLOW of SOUTH SHROPSHIRE of
SHREWSBURY & PAINTINGS of LONDON
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______ MEMO
Hi Jonathan,
Herewith answer to Q5
5) Are you aware of any up-and-coming young fantasy artists whose
works we gamebook fans should check out?
I have taken a very long time to respond to this because I felt I should
aim to contribute something a bit more meaningful than just "yes" or "no".
I think, truthfully, I cannot answer this easily because my history
with the genre is,
as almost everyone knows by now, an unusual one.
I can not know what gamebook fans currently are wanting to see nor did I ever
and, equally, I do not know what gamebook artists expect or want to do?
The only thing I know is how I think, what I do, or have done, and
that was not to
illustrate gamebooks the way they were being illustrated at that time,
but to respond, as a
professional illustrator, to a client's request, which was, as
everyone must also know by now,
to visualise a certain brief - It's not my place to say whether Doreen
Scott's (the art editor
at Puffin Books at the time of Firetop Mountain) art direction to "go
away and come back
with something revolutionary" was what I achieved, but I certainly
went away with a
clear direction, which is what is required if anyone wants to make a
difference -
a clear aim of what's to be achieved IF one's aim is to move the genre forward.
I can't, truthfully, say I want to recommend any one Artist or even a
few, because whilst
I am not saying that "being endorsed by Peter Andrew Jones" is any
special accolade
there is evidence to show that if I've commented about someone's work,
say on a forum,
that it gets focused on, and that's not fair to other Artists who
works I also like but haven't
mentioned, or those who are "hot" but I am unaware of.
What I can say, is that rpg published material, if we are talking
print material and not
online gaming, seems very derivative. I can't say it does much for me.
It seems to
relate to itself and not much else and that's just fine, if that's
what people want. You
have to remember my role was to take rpg paperbacks and mainstream them, so I
was never starting from the point of being a "fan artist' but from a
position where
the visual influences I brought to the genre were from sources, say
fine art, even
other Art (James Bama, Andrew Wyeth even Salvador Dali etc) and not from
rpg, as I was in the SF genre mainly at that point. So it was "all fresh to me".
For whatever reason, reasons I've never really understood, I was very driven.
Good or bad, legendary or not, I tried to bring a new flavour to the
genre. What I
see these days doesn't seem to do that, at least for me (but hey,
maybe that's just
me, right?) and though I am aware of many young artist's works, it doesn't mean
I've seen everybody's. So I've really no idea if there's some young
hotshot whose
going to go dynamic even as we speak, but my take is entrenched in what I do,
and so I can't see it, nor do I desire to, any other way, which is
that if I couldn't
believe I could move a project forward in an new way, I wouldn't want to do it.
Whatever anybody else thinks I achieved, I'm quite satisfied that I made Kult
look different from Lone Wolf and Lone Wolf different from Fighting Fantasy
and if asked to create any new rpg project I'd do that again.
So I guess the answer might be that if as rpg fans you are happy with what you
see then then no artist has to be concerned about getting the request I did!
If on the other hand rpg fans would like a bit of a jolt and see "something come
out of the blue" and become "a thing" (as I always put it) be it FF, LW, Kult or
whatever, then apart from the love affair with digital media, where the medium
can be mistaken for the message itself, I don't see anything on my radar that,
as Debbie would say, "isn't really going anywhere that PAJ hasn't already been"
so to me, I can only apply the rules I had to work by when I did what
I did, for the
client's that I did, and that's the time-honored art director's comment >
"When I see it (him/her) I'll know it".
In other words, whoever is "hot on the radar" will, inevitably, reach
their target,
and when they do that I won't have to ponder who's on the way up, I'll see it
coming into my peripheral vision at the very least.
However, having said all this, I could just as easily debunk that by commenting
(which would be monotonous to many and far too long in a questionnaire
like this)
on what I call "the multiple fracture of a cohesive marketplace" and the effect
that digital media and the corporate financing/credit boom of the last 20 years
has had and will have on the ability of any artist to "be a household name" and
even then for just a moment or two (or 15 minutes if you prefer the
Warhol version)
or even what I think of "the implications of social networking on young artists"
which is a topic all of it's own . . . . . .
Look, at the time of writing this, I've been making "commercial art"
for 35 years!
I feel like the last moments of Bladerunner, "the things I've seen,
the places I've
been" and it gets harder every week to explain to anyone "what an
artist should do"
because there's so much information, knowledge, experience etc. crammed into
my brain that what can I really say to an upstart young hotshot like I was when
I did my first covers? I have a young friend who wants to be a
portrait artist. He's
always asking my view, as though I have some magic serum of success. I always
disappoint him because I say "you'll have to work it out for yourself
because what
was relevant to me, in my head, at the time, is not your time, your
art, your views
or even your medium, so I'll answer whatever you ask me, but it won't do you
any good unless you are the sort of personality that can take it, use
it, bend it,
run with it, take it for your own."
To quote the late great Art Director, Steve Abis, of Panther Books fame
"talent is a prerequisite, Peter, it's what you do with it that counts".
I think it would be a fool, who'd almost certainly end up eating their
words, who'd
want to risk making an "incontrovertible statement" about what digital media
really means to the future of rpg artists, so even I, known risk-taker
that I am, is
not going to adopt "guru status" and even Spock would have to admit now that he
may very well have said "I know what I know (Captain)" back then but even he
would have to admit now that what my niece calls "Styrofoam rocks" doesn't
quite cut it now except from a nostalgia point of view.
So I wouldn't give advice unless some young artist really, really felt
whatever I
might know might be of help, but I can give encouragement at least. What I'd
say is that every generation hears the same old trotting out of "it's far harder
now than in my day" (and I probably said that above!) but it doesn't really
work like that, does it? (there, see, contradictory, certainly the
result of 35 years
of "accumulated baggage" . . . . .)
The way it works is that an artist, for whatever reason, even reasons he may not
know himself, says to himself "I'll be the one to make a difference"
and he'll do
that in whatever way is right for him, slowly, dynamically, quietly,
loudly, whatever
comes out naturally from "who he is" and that artist will be the one
you won't have
to watch out for, he'll pop up in your line of sight, without any
hunting him down.
And to that artist, whoever he or she is out there right now, I say
"go for it" and
enjoy every moment of it, even the iffy parts. One day, if you do that, you'll
pop-up in my sight and I'll think "hmnnnn . . . . ." and it'll not
only be great fun
to see, it'll stop any risk I'd ever become complacent about my own
work . . . . . .
Footnote:
Finally - my deepest and respectful thanks to the Project Aon participants
who created this interview. I don't find these things easy to do because I
am always so anxious about being a "visually oriented person trying to
explain in a non-visual way" but I've enjoyed the experience, which has
been educational (for me) and very thought-provoking.
As you probably know by now, Debbie and I are in fact going to publish 3
volumes of rpg works of mine because (don't laugh, right?) I really had no
idea just how many pictures I had created until we started editing them
for the HEROES & VILLAINS book (gosh, I was a busy boy, wasn't I!)
so we felt that in view of the sheer extent of works it was only fair we
gave the fans an opportunity to have an involvement and once we
discussed it, it seemed more and more a nice idea.
So, thanks for taking the time to put the questions together, and what
is most likely going to happen, is that the Aon material and the LW
Forum material from Italy and a few other inputs we're working with
right now, will be spread across the volumes: we should be done
with editing by the end of June (ish) as we put back the April deadline
because of some fresh rpg input from another from/project.
PAJ May 2008
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PETER ANDREW JONES PUBLISHING - "Decidedly Different"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~~~~~~
Manage your subscription at //www.freelists.org/list/projectaon
Other related posts:
- » [projectaon] Fwd: <>--- Interview Questions : Answer No.5 ---<>
