Alex Konstad was broke. The illustrator had been living in San Diego where rent was relatively cheap. To get by, he had to make around $1,000 a month – though, at a push, $800 would do it. But then he moved to Santa Monica – the beach city west of downtown Los Angeles – and his bills almost tripled.
Alex was living with his friend and fellow artist Dan LuVisi. They were both at the beginning of their careers. Literally and metaphorically, they were hungry (their combined weekly grocery budget was $10). The pair rented an office together where they would work from 8am right through to 3am, cycle home, sleep a few hours, then get up and do it all over again.
“I had a lot of help from my parents while I figured my life out” the American artist says, “and, also, lots of credit card debt. I had many smalltime freelance jobs during this period, but it was quite hard to pay any bills with the income. The industry rates were abysmally low for the jobs I took on. I did whatever I could to keep my head above water.”
Santa Monica was a grind. But even while struggling for money, he and Dan made sure to stick at personal projects. And this would be the blueprint for the rest of Alex’s career, balancing commercial and personal work, making sure the skills from one fed into the other, and vice versa.
Alex got his first “real” job in 2015. An art director from the cinematic department at Blizzard Entertainment spotted his work on Instagram and offered Alex a position in-house: “I was ecstatic,” the artist says. “I’d always imagined myself just painting Magic: The Gathering cards and maybe working on some video games in the future. Now it was my chance to get my foot in the door.”
AN UNLIKELY COMBINATION
Esta historia es de la edición December 2019 de ImagineFX.
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Esta historia es de la edición December 2019 de ImagineFX.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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Jan Wessbecher
Dominic Carter talks to the visual artist about creating his own comic and why sketchbooks are great for creative experiments
Kyounghwan Kim
The Korean character concept artist speaks to Dominic Carter about staying open to ideas and the value of drawing regularly
Slawek Fedorczuk
Dominic Carter talks to the concept artist about what keeps him motivated and the advantages of using physical sketchbooks.
Raquel M. Varela
Raquel is inspired by magic, fantasy and fairy tales. She loves designing female characters from distant worlds. \"My greatest reference is Loish's art, thanks to her I learned to draw the movement and fluidity I like to convey.\"
Estrela Lourenço
Estrela is a children's book author and illustrator. Her work is influenced by her background in character animation and storyboards for clients such as Cartoon Network, and she channels comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes.
Daria Widermanska
Daria, also known as Anako, has been drawing for as long as she can remember. Inspired by Disney and classic anime, she loves creating new characters and often finds that a single sketch can spark a unique story.
Allen Douglas
Allen has been painting professionally since 1994 for the publishing and gaming industries. Inspired by folklore, he distorts the size, relationships and environments of animals, and calls his paintings 'unusual wildlife'.
Thaddeus Robeck
Thaddeus has been drawing from the moment he could hold a pencil, but it was the 2020 lockdowns that gave him the time to focus on honing his skills.
DRAW FASCINATING SYMBOLIC ARTWORK
Learn how JULIÁN DE LA MOTA creates a composition from his imagination with a focus on crafting figures, volumetric modelling, and light and shadow
First Impressions
The artist talks about his journey into the mythological world
