Episode 20: Battle of the artist (Milivoj Ćeran)

And without further ado, why don't we get started? First question that we wanted to ask you was when you're asked to invent a creature that doesn't exist, where does your brain go first? Like with anatomy, personality, movement, or something else?

When I read the art brief, then already I have some basic ideas.

It's same like when you read the book, an example, when you read the Tolkien, before Peter Jackson trilogy, when you read the book, you have your own vision of what's happening in the book.

It's the same in artist's head, only this like more improved version, when I already have it in my head, I can't catch it.

So visuals on the paper.

In that first stage, I don't think too much about anatomy or this kind of details.

I only think about composition and how the character should look like and what some gesture, body movement or something.

Even without clothes, armor, weapon, details, you have some basic pose of character.

So, you know, if he is like some epic pose, is his dynamic pose striking something? Or in creature, if he's sneaking or trying to attack or just, you know, laying, that kind of basic stuff.

Kind of like with Halvar, where it's like holding up the sword behind it, kind of like that was the first sort of insight.

Yeah, that's

right.

Yeah, there was a lot of sketches for Raph, for Halvar, but the most important thing was to make him dynamic, powerful, and like he's just about to give us some deadly strike or something with his sword.

Is the dynamic, like the pose, is something like that given in the art brief or is that purely up to your discretion?

It depends,

you

know, because storytelling is a very important part of making not just magic illustration, but any illustration.

And that's something that as an artist, you develop it through years and years of practicing.

I also remember my beginnings when I still work in the children book industry.

And it was more connected to, you know, classical fairy tales or some tales and classic painting art.

And it was less connected to dynamic gestures like you have in comics, in high fantasy, in anime, manga or anything like this.

So when I started doing this, those old artworks were a bit stiff and at that time I didn't know what was the problem, because it was just unexperienced.

I didn't know what was the problem, because they looked fine, but they were just like standing or just standing with sword and give some gaze or I don't know, watching something, but there was no real action.

Then I talked with some of my older friend artist colleagues who have more experience with me.

And the main point was getting out of the box, getting out of the comfort zone.