Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Fredrik Dahl Tyskerud (aka dCepT), a concept artist for Desimal in Norway and contributor to the Desimal blog. We had a great chat about traditional art, concept art, and inspiration. Get ready for a long post, though! The original transcript was nearly eight pages long; the following content was cut down to just four. Hope you enjoy!
| Name: Fredrik Dahl Tyskerud | |
| Company: Desimal | |
| Title Concept Artist | |
| Contact Info: dCepT_Art on Twitter | |
| Website: www.dcept.com |
What kind of work do you do with Desimal? What is your typical client?
Our clients vary a lot, but we do everything from visual profiling to images used for marketing purposes. I work as a concept artist, so I do pre-production work. I visualize the ideas. I do everything from mood boards through to character designs and costume designs, whatever is needed basically.
I’m not a “costume designer,” but I do a lot of variations when I start out – a lot of thumbnailing to get my head straight, to get into the right venue or the right lane for whatever I’m doing. So if I’m doing clothes, I’ve done that as well. I just do a lot of variations. I look up a lot of reference to see what other designers are doing since I haven’t got a clue, really, how clothing works. But I try to make it cool, basically, and then we’ll probably hire some costume designer, or a seamstress or someone who knows how to put it together, to come in and tell me that probably won’t work.
It would be interesting to be the one to come up with the ideas and then test it in the real world.
That’s the big payoff for me, to see what I’ve designed in the world.
What inspires you? Of all the things you do, what do you enjoy the most?
I think I like character design the most, definitely, because it’s like the whole package. We try to tell stories with our images a lot of the time. So, I believe a character has to tell a story all its own, outside of the picture, as well. So I usually design [the character] without a background. Or as you’ve probably seen if you’ve been by my website, you’ve seen a lot of character designs on there that don’t have an environment, and still it just shows out the character. I try to tell that character’s story through how that character rooks, the body language, facial expressions, and what kind of gear they’re wearing, what kind of clothes they’re wearing, to show what kind of function they have.
Your characters do stand very well on their own. They tell a story just by themselves. A lot of artwork today seems to go the opposite route, and to me the sense of story is not as strong.
Yeah, you know, all the old masters – Velasquez, Jean-Léon Gérôme– and all those very naturalistic painters are the guys I look up to. And Rembrandt is like, huge. So I’m not into, but I have every respect for a modern artist or an abstract artist, but that’s not my cup of tea.
What’s your favorite tool or medium? Do you prefer a digital format, or do you prefer working with paint and pencil and a sketchpad, or do you do both?
I do both. I usually carry a backpack, and I have at least two sketchbooks and a big pencil case in there, just in case inspiration hits me. Professionally, I like digital work a lot, because it gives me a lot of options for editing, and it’s very forgiving in that you can just Ctrl-Z back your way in a picture.
Also, of course, all the layers. I’m very much into Photoshop when I do my professional stuff, as well as I’ve recently fallen in love with Art Rage from Ambient Design. Art Rage is more of a traditional simulator. You can paint with oils, and it actually really looks like oils. It looks like juicy brush strokes put on there. And I love that, because I started out doing only doing traditional. I was schooled in oils and pencils and all of that. So it’s nice to get that traditional flare to my digital work because it’s often times very easy to go overboard and make it super-smooth. It looks very digital, and I try to avoid that.
I can see that authenticity in your work. I’ve seen your tutorials on Art Rage, but I haven’t tried it out myself.
I’ve got an easel and some canvas standing around constantly at my apartment, and when I get home, I do oils, and I sketch a lot. The digital medium gives you a really, really fast production rate. I don’t have to wait for a layer to dry out before I move on.
The combination of Art Rage and Photoshop is what I use mostly these days. But I touch on Google Sketchup for some stuff. If do an environment, and I need to get the perspective down really fast, it’s so much easier to block it in with Google Sketchup, seeing as how it’s a really easy program to do a fast mockup. So yeah, I’ll use that, and put in some perspective lines, and paint over it.
So I use that, and I’ve tried an experimental little program called Alchemy. It’s sort of a sketching application. You can have it randomize your strokes in the way you put down a line, so you can’t have that complete control that you usually do.
When I’m into the ID process, I’m fond of sort of letting go of a bit of my control so that I don’t end up with only the presumptions that I have when I walk into it. If I have a brief that says, you know, a character or an environment that is such and such, I get a lot of preconceptions right away.
So I try to both include those and break out of them at the same time by adding more random stuff. I’ll use Alchemy that randomizes my strokes. It even has this function that uses sound input to randomize your strokes. So if you do a clicking sound, it will throw your line off every time it clicks. It’s weird because you can’t erase, or Ctrl-Z or anything with that thing. But it’s fun to, you know, get out of the box, right?
Also, I have a cursory knowledge of Alias Wavefront’s Maya. That’s also a 3-D program. I’m not a 3-D modeler by far. Photoshop feels less technical, once you get over that point where it functions more as a tool and not as an obstacle between your thought and what is down on canvas. Maya is much more technical – you’re pushing and pulling points.
Where did you receive your training?
A lot of it is self-taught or just talking to and sketching with peers. But I started out at an art school where I was trained in traditional media, life drawing, charcoal, oils, acrylics, all that. But, that being said, though, the teachers there were probably more into modern art, like abstract stuff. So, I sort of fought a different battle on the side to become a good draftsperson and to just become good at realistic painting at first.
And then I found a forum called ConceptArt.org. I’ve been there since 2004, I think. So after I found that place, I discovered this awesome thing called concept art, right, and what that encompasses. And I sort of had an epiphany where you go, Wow, that’s what I’m supposed to do.
In Sweden, our neighboring country, there are a lot of concept artists that meet up regularly, so I started gong over there and hanging out with those people, and just paint and sketch and talk art. And learn, from the people that are in the field, that are actually doing what I wanted to do.
That, and I’ve attending workshops with the guys that own CoceptArt.org, Massive Black, they’re an outsourcing company based in San Francisco, I think. So I’ve attended workshops with them. I’m attending a new one in August in either Germany or Italy.
So I’ve learned a lot from those guys. And the online forums are great, once you find the ones that are into giving people construction criticisims, instead of just going, “Dude, that’s awesome!” or you know, flaming people.
But ConceptArt.org is very, very good in that respect because it’s built on constructive critiques in order to help people get better.
It’s interesting that you went to art school and found the emphasis to be less on traditional art. Modern art is still a main emphasis, and I can see how it would be difficult to find training that doesn’t emphasize modern art.
Yeah, I know. I wanted to attend art school in Italy, you know, go to Florence Academy of Art, because that’s like purely traditional. You get everything from board drawings through to life drawings and long poses where you paint for several days. I wanted that, but I guess I didn’t have the financial means back then. But it worked out, though.
So do you travel much, then?
The last couple years I’ve traveled a bit. I love traveling, and I want to do more of it.
So, my last question is, how do you stay inspired? You mentioned workshops, and those seem to help.
Yeah, they do definitely. After the last workshop I attended in Europe, I was like, floating on a cloud of inspiration for you know, half a year after.
But I try to expose myself to art all the time, everything from bothering my girlfriend with what I do, to just surfing the forums looking at art, trying to go to shows to see traditional art. It’s definitely a big help working with other visual, creative people.
Constantly, I do side-projects to keep fresh, because if there’s a project that lasts a long time at work, you tend to get, really, you know, you stare yourself blind.
When I get home, I try to sketch and paint a lot, and I try to do other stuff. Do just stuff I enjoy, and you know, keep my mind fresh about painting. I love discovering new stuff, like about how to process, or color theory. I don’t know, like I said, big art nerd.
I work with a 3-D modeler. We’re doing a short little 3-D film where we’re imagining a whole world from the bottom up, everything from characters and props that go into the film and environments and storyboarding and all that. I touch on all those different things, and I don’t know, I think it’s a big help to be involved a lot, I guess. I try to not feel like it’s work, ever.
Yeah, it can be, literally, anything. I try to walk around with my eyes wide open to anything that might inspire anything. It can be something as mundane as a leaf with a nice color lying on the ground; it pops, or something. It can be a shape I see or something I see in a window, I don’t know. Everything, anything.
I try to keep all that. I take a lot of pictures with my phone. It’s a good reference as well. I try to collect everything I find interesting. If I feel uninspired some day, I’ll rummage through my folders and see if I find something. Or I’ll start doing random shapes to see what comes out of it, and the combination, I think, if I keep a big mental library of stuff I’ve seen, and if I start doing random shapes, I’ll start to see something in it. And then I’ll be able to do a speed paint or a sketch or something to exercise the brain.
*All images in this post with the exception of the bio graphic are copyright Fredrik Dahl Tyskerud.
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[...] have finally gotten in the groove of podcasting and have my interview with concept artist Fredrik Tyskerud ready for listening. You can download the transcript here: Transcript_Interview with Fredrik Dahl [...]