Welcome Manu! Thanks for taking the time to be a part of our #DigitalMedia interview for the DM 3D Highlights news article! For those of us not familiar with your work and artistic style, we have composed some questions to help us get a better idea of what drives you to create the art that you make. First, we have included some of his personal choice picks of his artwork to give you an idea of what he does...




Now onto the questions!

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DM: You have a very unique style, how do you typically envision a piece of artwork before you start it? Do you first sketch, or do you dive right in?

Manu: I must say I use both methods. But I’m quite sure the diving-in-method is much more innovative.

It's funny to start making a picture and having no idea what it will look like when it's finished. Usually during the making of some part of the artwork you start to think of another part that would go very well with the part you're making. For example, this happened with my piece "Beach Café" ( [link] ). It was a school work, and the task was to create a beach café. I had nothing planned for it and I just started the whole thing by making a chair. While making the chair, I came up with the idea of a very weird little coffee-table that would have monstrous legs attached to the ground, but the table itself would be so small that it wouldn't hold even a small amount of cups and plates. And so the image kept evolving. During the making of the last objects for the image (small fishes that hang from the roof), I thought about slapping a fish onto the couch as well, and so I did. And suddenly I realized the fish on the sofa was actually the most important key element in the whole image – without it the image would be quite dull. So I’m quite sure I couldn’t have ever come up with the same ideas only in planning-stage.

However, nowadays I make a lot of large scale animations and even short films that you just can’t make without a good plan. Or maybe you could…. hmm. Maybe I’ll make one some day. But I just hope I could apply this diving-right-in-method at the planning stage rather than the production-phase in order to produce a lot of fresh ideas but still minimize the amount of useless work to be done. It just ain’t easy.



DM: How long does it usually take for you to complete a complex piece?

Manu: Weirdly I came up with three answers to this one.

1. Usually way too long. I mean, most of my works were supposed to be simple pieces when I begin to work on them, but somehow I just always push myself too hard and find myself polishing the images way too far to the level I never planned to go. However, it’s weird I every time succeed to finish the pieces, no matter how complex they turned to be. So in a way it’s very satisfying.

2. Until I meet the deadline. My school courses have introduced me to deadlines, and I like them for some reason. They make me concentrate only on the most important stuff on my piece and they also give me some kind of a challenge that adds to the desire to finish the piece. I also tend to work on my stuff as a whole from the start. I make test-renders that could qualify as a finished piece, but I just keep polishing the image or video until the deadline is met.

3. Every time a little less, but very long anyway. Yeah, practice and experience of course makes you faster and better in every way – but yes, making a complex piece takes time. A lot of hours. A gigantic amount of hours. If one hour I spent on a piece was a little light-green eraser and I would have to store it in my room after I’ve used it making some art, damn my room would be full of these little light-green erasers. So many erasers my closet-space wouldn’t be enough for them. There would be erasers on my floor and on the table and everywhere. I would have to use a shovel to get to my wardrobe. And if I put on a jacket I would find these erasers on my pockets and sleeves and stuck to the collar. That’s how many hours this damn hobby takes. But it sure is one nice hobby.



DM: What helps you along in your drive to work on your images?

Manu: You’re talking about inspiration and motivation, right? Yeah, major things in this profession. Without them, you get basically nothing done.

One thing that makes you want to finish the piece is naturally the desire to see the image finished. I certainly hate leaving something unfinished. Also the feeling of creating something never-seen and truly funny makes you want to work harder. And of course the bit of publishing the finished image for audience. As well as the urge to see how much better you can get when compared to your previous accomplishments.

But those things don’t eventually keep you going very long. You just really need something to awake your suppressed desire of creating. Most often looking at very inspirational material makes you want to grab that pen once again and truly enjoy the lines that come out of it.



DM: Do any (or most) of your pieces have a deep symbolic meaning to you? If so, which piece(s)?

Manu: Well, no. Of course I might associate some memories to my old works as I’m watching them, but usually I just think that “It could be better”.

Or actually, now that I think of it, some pieces of mine may indicate what type of life or in what places I would like to live. For example the Gaff-piece of mine ( [link] ) would be an example of this. (Of course without the filth ).

And the Handy-man ( [link] ) might look like I would like to say something with it, but it sure wasn’t my intention while making it. It just felt funny to draw that face and the big hands. And because the other hand was scraping the head, I decided to throw the text into it. But what I do want, is the viewer to think that I am saying something with it. That might encourage the viewer to discover some heavy meanings for the piece that I wasn’t even aware of, and so the picture would maybe have a meaning for the viewer.

Also the Hitchhiker ( [link] ) is wearing the type of a belt I would like to own

I think I tend to ponder these symbolic meanings a bit more during the production of the pieces. Not when I’m watching them when they’re finished. So in a way “the relaxing and meditative feeling that the work-process causes” could be added to the list in the previous question.



DM: Very noticeable in your artwork is the ability to mix styles of art, such as caricatured figures with realism or surrealism. Is it easy or difficult for you to incorporate this style?

Manu: Pretty easy, because that’s the stuff I like to make. It just comes out of my brain without more thinking. I always make the kind of stuff I would also like to see more made by others. And luckily, there are many people out there that like the similar style. And whenever I bump in them, they became my idols.

But what comes to the style of realism… naah, not a big fan. Yes, sometimes it’s nice to fool around with it, but usually I like to stick with imagination as much as possible, throughout the whole image.



DM: Of the styles you work in, what is your favorite style/method to use? 3D, Painting/Airbrushing, etc?

Manu: I must say painting, even though at present I mostly make 3D-stuff. I so try in any ways possible to make the 3D look more like a painting if I just can. I’m sure all the artists think the clear 3D-style is very unappealing at heart. For 3D-stills it’s easier because you can paint as much as you want on a still-frame. But for animation there’s pretty much only the filters and tricks in rendering-phase that you can use. However, in future we will surely see very weird types of animation. (As a side note, I just love the way Keith Lango’s test-renders from the short film ‘The Secret Joys of Myopia’ look like. Sadly, the film itself never finished due to a data loss. All that was left was this: [link] )

I also like to manipulate photos very much as long as the resource-material is good enough. Although I still have nothing worth releasing from that area. Hopefully in the future.



DM: Many of your pieces have been submissions in contests - With a competitive drive, what advice can you offer those new to 3D and drawings looking to excel in contests?

Manu: Yeah, I’ve competed quite a lot. I’ve been on either first, second or third places in art-related competitions for at least 6 times, two of which were in contests here in DA.

Usually the best piece of advice is to imagine yourself sitting in the jury or audience and thinking “am I truly enjoying this piece?”

Every now and then after I’ve finished a piece of my own, I have answered “no” to that question. Little by little I learn to make more enjoyable work, but there still is a long way ahead.

Although of course it’s important to make artwork in your own way no matter what others think about it, but I think you really should be honest of the fact that do you really like it yourself or is it just something you’ve settled for.

Plus, as it just is in competitions, there’s always the luck-factor. Sometimes it hits you, and sometimes not.



DM: In regards to your artwork in general, did you learn it through classes or was it self-taught?

Manu: Yeah I have had a couple of classes and they often offered a lot of interesting stuff about creating a better image (such as composition, colour and other rules), and I like to use that knowledge on my images as much as I can. But it’s hard to think the classes themselves have made me better. After all, it’s the amount of art you make that makes you better, and especially it’s the desire to create art that makes you want to get better. Then comes the need and ability to learn more. The desire of creating also gives you the massive amount of energy that is required in order to make the huge amount of art in the way of developing. It would be quite an interesting class that taught you more about this desire.

Most learning definitely came from watching other people’s truly appealing artwork. You just start to imitate them (sometimes more, sometimes just very slightly) and so the experience grows. I’m sure a lot of artists tend to learn like this, because it’s one of the most fun and inspiring ways to develop.

Yeah. And besides classes, more theory-based education definitely comes from internet. Threads like this [link] are incredible at producing better artists around the globe. Also the critique that other users give as you send your work to forums helps tremendously. It’s so awesome internet creates so much volunteer-work, everybody helping out each other, and for free. Only downside in this is, of course, that there starts to be way too much information. Your time can barely be enough for just to search up all the stuff that you find interesting, let alone read it through. In future, we’re going to need very well constructed books that simply just cut down all the not-so-useful art-related-links found on internet and list all the most glorious ones. Of course these books have to be electronically updateable, because links die fast.

Internet-tutorials and tutorial-DVDs are also an important source of education. There’s nothing nicer than watch how some other artist works.

And in the future, I think fellow workers are going to provide an awful lot of new information and tips on how to make better stuff.



DM: Who are your artistic influences?

Manu: Ahh, maybe my favourite question. If I was to list them all here, the list would go around the world and we would see the end of the list coming up there.

I try to expose myself to as much audiovisual production as any way possible. Mostly visual of course. The more work you see and hear (and why not also touch, taste and smell) the more you realize how much more ways in the world there is to express oneself. Thus, giving yourself more paths to create something original.

In practice, I try to collect extremely much inspirational material on my hard-drive. If there’s some very interesting stuff on books and magazines, into the scanner they go to end up in my inspiration-archives. If there’s some incredible music videos or scenes in DVDs I’ve bought -> instant rip. Not to mention the internet, that constantly manages to bring me more and more extremely enjoyable material. Lots and lots of paintings, drawings, 3D-images, cartoons, animations, games and photos. Also a huge amount of different videos and images of sculpture, design, architecture, clothes, fashion, carpentry, extreme-sports, dance, nature, people, science, slow-motion and many other aspects of life. Any single thing that has a great artistic effect on me must be captivated. Music is very important too, but most material comes from the visual field.

When all these archives are nicely organized and all the not-so-thrilling stuff is removed, it’s quite a journey to go through the material. Very often as you’ve lost your inspiration and motivation towards this profession, going through the pile will instantly awake the passion to create art again.

I very much hope that in future every artist would have this kind of collections of their most inspirational stuff. I can see myself trading these archives with some awesome artists and this way boosting each others inspirational euphoria.

Okay, and now I should perhaps answer to the actual question. Following is a list of a couple of my all-time favourite artists. If you even remotely like my style, you’ll LOVE the style of these people (some of the following links might be dead with time):

- Sebastian Krüger – Incredible German caricaturist, whose work is just phenomenal and incredibly funny. I’ve bought (and scanned) all the art-collection books that comes out from this guy. Here’s some of his works:
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]

- Jamie Hewlett – The style of the characters in the Gorillaz–music videos is just gold:
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]

- Christophe Desse and Aaron Steadman – Simply awesome caricatured 3D car-models:
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]

These are the first ones that comes to my mind right now, but of course there are zillions of others also. And many of them are located here on DA. After all, I watch 235 people at this moment in DA as you can see in my gallery stats.



DM: On topic with the last question, at what age did you realize you had artistic skills and first start to apply them in artwork, and are there any artists that you like to emulate?

Manu: My creating desires appeared first at the time of the first school years because of my classmates. You see, there were quite many skilled artists in my class, so of course it inspired me in copying them. Even at the level of handwriting. I got their drawings sometimes and I collected them in albums and used them as my reference and inspirational material back then, as well as comics too. We also had a habit of trading our drawings, which was nice.

However, the hobby got really interesting at the time of computers. Scanning my scribbles on it and colouring them in programs was something pretty new and exciting and not too messy. It was pretty nice. Not to mention the internet where you could find other artists at the same stage as you and seeing them developing. Later the traditional medium came back after I got tired of computers. Now it’s the both and they work very well together.

Artists I like to emulate? I must say all the artists mentioned in the previous question have that kind of style I like to incorporate in my artwork, simply because their art appeals to me so much. This goes to the zillions of my other idols also. I just hope I could put my own brain on my art more every day.



DM: You also have worked in animation, do you find animation more satisfying than stills?

Manu: That’s a very interesting question. And yes, I think I might bend more to the animation side. You just tend to get a lot deeper, body-sweeping “wow” effect out of a well-made animation, especially when there’s some good music involved.



DM: As one final question, do you have any favorite art-based quotes or sayings? If so, which one and who by?

Manu: Hmm… how about the very encouraging: ”you can always get better, but you can never get any worse - unless you die of course, and then it all starts over.”

Thank you very much for the interview and remember to back up often, folks.

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That about wraps it up! We would like to thank ~maxon for taking the time to answer our questions and we hope you enjoyed our interview, from all of us at #DigitalMedia and deviantART!