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You've worked for Lucasfilm and Topps, among several other companies that might appeal to most people's childhood interests. As such, have you ever had a moment where you've stepped back and thought, "Wow. I'm really doing this!"? Yeah, of course! That is the whole point of doing licensed art. But honestly, I think the "Wow" moment doesn't come until after you have the thing done and you can see it. Okay, getting to go to the Lucasfilm offices in San Francisco and Skywalker Ranch was really impressive -- definitely a "Wow!" moment -- and the response to my work since doing Star Wars Celebration IV in Los Angeles a couple years ago has really been overwhelming. But in the end that is what thrills me, hopefully getting a good response from other people. How familiar are you with most of the franchises (Doctor Who, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, et al) you've done work on? Do you feel familiarity with a given franchise's world, characters, and aesthetic is necessary to succeed in illustration? Half of illustration or concept design is research. The more research you do, the more familiar you become with your subject. You can do illustrations with no prior knowledge of your subject, but people can always tell. Attention to detail has been part of my artwork my whole life and will probably never stop being part of it--I am lucky that most of the things I get to work on are things that I would be interested in irregardless of whether or not I am working on them. What are you currently working on? Hmmmm...what can I say that won't break Non-Disclosure Agreements? I can tell you some of my recent projects that have been released. A lot of role-playing game art. I can't go into too many specifics until they come out. There is always Wizard of the Coast's Star Wars Miniatures Game and the Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Game that I do designs for. The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game from Paizo. I was one of four artists doing web comics to tie into the first season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Cartoon Network. Each comic ties directly into an episode of the show, and Tom Hodges, Grant Gould, Katie Cook and Myself all took turns handling artistic duties. Hopefully we'll be getting started on Season 2 very shortly. I have been doing sketch cards for Topps, including the Star Wars Galaxy series, the Indiana Jones Masterpieces series, and the Lord of the Rings Masterpieces II series. I have also been doing some fun illustration projects like helping the amazing Felicia Day (Penny from Joss Whedon's "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" that was so popular) with original art for her web show The Guild. I also designed her company logo which is at the end of the Season 2 episodes. Other than that, I have a few other projects, but they are not at a point where I can talk about them. What creative areas would you like to grow into? Are there other genres/avenues you would like to work on? I am interested in anything that is story-based. But it has to allow my brain to create something new. I would love to do children's books, book covers, movie posters, fine art, product design, design interior spaces. I have come close to working in film design a number of times now, but it just hasn't worked out yet. I think that when you're an illustrator or designer, you should be interested in everything, since you might get to do anything. I'd love to be a theoretical physicist or philosopher, but you have to know your limitations. Plus unless you are a professor somewhere, it is kind of hard to pay your mortgage. If you weren't an illustrator, what other line of work might you be interested in doing? I would be a storyteller of some sort. If not acting, performing bad stand-up somewhere, or reading books to kids. My life is all about telling stories. See more of Jeff Carlisle's artwork at www.jeffcarlisle.com , MySpace, or follow him on Twitter. |
You went to the well-respected Columbus College of Art and Design. What did you learn there that you continue to use now? CCAD is a great school that let me develop into the person I am today. And I think that what it taught me was that you have to give yourself the freedom to fail before you can get any better at what you love, that you have to love what you do to improve. It also taught me that you should really be nice to everyone you know. You never know who will be the person who will save your life or your career. |
Also, I learned this the hard way: You will not get good at what you do unless you get hungry for it. I had an illustration teacher, Liz Sieferd, who was the toughest teacher I ever had. Now, at CCAD you averaged about 10 classes a week with a finished art assignment every week. You find this balance between getting the projects done and making them good -- and most of the time, you just make them "Good Enough". Well, with her, Good Enough was never good enough. And she was right. I hated her guts for it, but even then I knew she was right. Well one day, Sieferd is chewing me out for being a B-average student, for handing in work that was "Good Enough," and she said to me the words that would haunt me for years: "Jeff, you're pretty good … but you aren't going to get really good or great until you get hungry." Now, at the time I had no idea what she meant. I wasn't competitive; I wasn't ambitious. But I had talent. And it wasn't until I had graduated and had been in the real world for a few years, had a few missed opportunities, a couple failures and the closest I was getting to doing illustration was painting commissions of Dog Portraits. And finally I felt this burning in my chest. I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to do something else--something that I wanted to do, or I felt like I would die. I could feel the hunger to be better, to do better, deep inside me. And Sieferd's words echoed in my ears. I really hated that she was right. But I thank her for being my instructor every single day of my career. |
As a side note, speaking of advice, Tony Diterlizzi
told me once that in order to be a working artist you
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