Interview with Kondrikthus - Winner of DoInk's Thanksgiving'08 Contest
Congrats to Kondrikthus, winner of the DoInk Thanksgiving ‘08 Contest! His winning submission was Kung-Pow Turki.
How did you get started in art?
I’ve been drawing and writing from a very young age. I’ve always had an obsession with writing and illustrating books, comics, anything really. My main motivation is most always to tell a story; I would consider myself more a storyteller than anything else. I draw, write, act, sing, and do puppetry, and I’ve spent the majority of my time trying to better myself in all of these arts so that I can better convey my stories in each.
Do you have any experience in traditional art?
I was homeschooled, and my mother took great care to tell me about different styles in art and periods in art history. She never really instructed me, per se. She really just gave me the tools and set me loose (look out, world!). I did have an art teacher once: she taught me how to mix colors and use paints, which I find invaluable, but I don’t use these skills the way she intended… I now paint the sets and do texturing at our local community theatre.
Any formal art education?
Nothing really formal, aside from the one art teacher. She taught me from when I was 7 until I was 11, and again probably the best things I learned from her were mixing paints and motor control (I’m very good a detail work now. At least, with a real pencil/paint brush).
Typical day?
I’m a college kid, so I’m in classes for most of the day (Paid for on scholarship! Free college!). I generally wake up around 9:00am (yeah, lucky me…) and write or animate until class starts (depending on the quarter, anywhere from 10:00am to 2:00pm. Again, lucky me…). During the in-between class hours you might find me working daycare (my kids like puppets) or doing some sort of project (I’ve taken up woodcarving recently. My mother is sick of all of the chess sets she finds strewn about the house). Classes will generally go until around 7:00pm (I’m actually typing this out in the middle of Biology class), and then I will generally go to the theatre to work on whatever show is currently playing (Currently the show is It’s a Wonderful Life, for which I helped design the set). After a grueling (yet enjoyable) rehearsal I will generally go home and watch a British Comedy (BlackAdder and/or Red Dwarf), or perhaps House on Wednesdays. Sleep generally creeps up on me around midnight.
How do you get creative juices flowing?
I become inspired in one of three ways: Sometimes I’ll just have a dream, and it’s so weird and cool that I just have to get it down somewhere (Green Leaf is the result of a dream I had). Other times I will be inspired by the work of others (as in the Cookies Saga). The usual method though is that I am researching something, or I’ll see an article (I keep abreast of several history and science publications), or observe an event (Medieval Faires. I am always bombarded with ideas after those), and I’ll see something that catches my eye, which I can stretch into something I think is cool.
What has inspired you lately?
I’ve been making up games recently, just because I noticed that there are no real transitional games between the Norse Tafle games and Renaissance Chess. I know they had different origins and all, but I thought it would be cool to create some “precursor” games that could conceivably have infiltrated the Scandinavian scene before Chess came into its own (if you actually know what I’m talking about, give yourself a cookie). I also have other games which I’ve drawn from everyday objects: spinning pencils and spinning rolls of masking tape (I like spinning things) mysteriously sprout random symbols and a piece of paper with rules saying what the symbols mean and what happens if they appear after the objects stop spinning. I like games. I don’t want to grow up.
Favorite Color:
Black. It is both the presence and absence of all colors, with the added bonus that it’s the coolest color in existence, period.
Do you get creative slumps? How do you get out of them?
I don’t have problems coming up with ideas as much as I have problems continuing them. For me ideas are everywhere; be they neat and streamlined or crazy and stupid-sounding, there is always potential to turn these ideas into something you can use. My problem isn’t taking the first step, it’s more the second and third. And I wouldn’t recommend replicating how I get out of creative slumps: If I run out of ideas for a project, I generally drop it and move on to something else. Unfortunately this always leads to a huge pile of unfinished beginnings with little hope of advancement for any of them. The exceptions to this are usually under thirty seconds long, and are posted here on DoInk.
However, for the sake of giving some actual advice, there are some things I do get past (though it takes me forever and a day). If I get writer’s block, or artist’s block, or whatever, the first thing I do is to try and pinpoint my purpose in the scene: what I’m trying to convey, what this reveals about my characters, how it advances the plot of the story. Look at the character motivations and try to predict what they would actually do in that situation. If I know how I want the scene to end and I have a problem getting there, it sometimes helps to write how it ends and then backtrack through the reactions and actions which led to that point. If not, then I usually start to get into arguments with myself over how I want it to end, and then my musings will actually become part of the dialogue I wind up writing. If nothing of that sort works, then I try my very hardest to scrap any preconceptions I have about the scene. No rules apply any longer, anything can happen. I try to look at it analytically and gain some sort of objective perspective independent of any one character or camera angle. Once I think I’ve gotten some sort of a handle on it, I introduce a random variable and see what it adds to the scene.
Example: I’m writing an interrogation sequence, and I want to reveal that the character being questioned is lying about his past. I don’t know what direction to go in, so I scrap everything and start from scratch. I add a variable. For the sake of examples let’s use the Tafle games I was rambling about earlier. Suddenly I have a new dynamic: the interrogator has a game set up when the prisoner comes in. He asks him if he knows how to play. Lying, the prisoner denies knowledge. The interrogator begins to teach, and the prisoner, confused about the purpose of the interrogation, joins him in a match. During the match they have a distracted dialogue, during which the prisoner is strained to answer a seemingly random string of questions while still keeping his head in the game. In the following minutes, he reveals in an absent-minded move unaddressed in the interrogator’s brief instruction that he actually knows the intricacies of gameplay. Bingo.
Now naturally something like this won’t always work: I’m pretty sure that if I had added a magical dancing gopher into the scene it wouldn’t have gone off quite so well. But, a major part of creativity is experimentation, so just go with what works.
Describe your work setting:
Wherever me and my laptop are. Oftentimes a change in setting will bring a different set of ideas, so I find it helpful to have, if not my laptop, then at least a notebook full of paper at my disposal.
How do you maintain a balance between work and play?
I draw a line between work and labor: labor is any task where you are rewarded for doing something, whereas work is something that you enjoy intrinsically and have such passion for that it is not a task to perform in order to receive reward, but a reward to do in and of itself. In this sense I believe that there is no difference between work and play, and God willing I plan to spend my entire life playing.
Favorite cartoon/anime character:
I can’t say that I have one. There are so many creative and lovable choices out there. I have to say though, Jafar is up there. You know, from Alladin? He had an awesome cape, and magical powers to boot!
Favorite Food:
A good medium-rare steak and a soup. Or chili. Either/or.
Favorite Television Show:
I don’t have a television, but I like House (I watch it on Hulu. Great site for us people without TVs), and I have all seasons of BlackAdder and most of Red Dwarf (I really enjoy a good British comedy). Much more time for good reading, being without a TV. Garth Nix is probably my favorite author. But that wasn’t really part of the question. Oh well. Moving on… Almost done…
What made you join DoInk and what has been your experience thusfar?
I saw an ad on Facebook for a free animation program, and I jumped. I’ve been looking for something free and simple for a long time, and DoInk looked perfect. It has been an amazing ride ever since. I love the community, the admins, and the fascinating and eternally unique array of talents showcased daily on the site. The program itself is a dream to work with: once I got the hang of it, it seemed totally intuitive. I’m glad I could be a part of its developing process.
Any advice for other DoInk users?
Read the interview questions before you start answering them, or else you might accidentally answer a question before it’s even asked. But seriously, as far as advice goes, always remain persistent no matter how boring, or hopeless, or pointless it may seem. You’ll never win a race you don’t finish.
Final Notes?
Thanks again to the DoInk team and community! This site is a Godsend! I look forward to seeing it grow exponentially in the future, and wish everyone in the community a happy belated Thanksgiving, a merry Christmas, and a joyous New Year! Keep animating
