EvokeOne - v5

Ted Yavuzkurt: {1} So who is Aaron Campbell? Where are you from, how old are you, etc?

Aaron Campbell: Well, I'm 16, born and raised in metro Vancouver, and I've been doing art since forever. Been working in Photoshop for about 2 and a half years now, and I'm expanding a bit, as I've been practicing with illustrator, and layout work in Indesign etc. I always like to try new stuff with my art, but what I've really latched onto so far has been character/cartoon design.

Ted Yavuzkurt: {2} So you've been working on art since you were a kid. What impetus moved you to start experimenting with Photoshop? Do you think going digital has changed your style, or merely extended your reach creating the same type of pieces?

Aaron Campbell: I first started with Photoshop like many other designers on the internet nowadays - on forums doing signatures. Then I really got into the community, and seeing some of the great large works had inspired me to move to a larger canvas.

I've been doing simple pencil to paper drawings since I was a little kid. I did a lot of characters and such, mainly in video game concepts that I actually took pretty far, considering I was only 9 or 10 years old. I made trading cards and everything haha. But digital art definitely changed my style. There are still remnants of my old style, and love for character design as a kid but with so many new possibilities that really build upon my original ways of doing art.

Ted Yavuzkurt: {3}: A lot of people seem to change their style when they discover the online art scene. Do you think online art groups help designers develop their personal styles or hinder their development?

We all see tons of artists forming styles that get closer and closer together the farther they move in the online scene. Do you think groups are just creating one homogenous style for online art, or do you think they foster individual creativity

Aaron Campbell: Possibly a bit of both. It can be very easy to imitate something you see, even if you don't notice it at first. I've done it before. I'd do something on a piece, but then realize that in the back of my mind, it was a lot like some other thing I saw before. That can be pretty annoying. But I just erase it and try something else. Art groups, in my opinion do help people develop their skills by giving feedback on each-other’s work.

But when you find yourself in one of those situations where you have a hard time being new or original, I just let a piece sit there in Photoshop for a while then come back with a fresh mind. But I do notice a lot of pieces where I can hardly tell which artist has done it, even though they are exceptionally well executed.

But we have other people in the group to point those kinds of things out I guess.

Ted Yavuzkurt: {4} You're 16, making you one of the younger Evokers. How do you think your style has personally changed in your time here? Looking at your pieces over the course of your time here, it seems that at first they were not very character centric, becoming gradually more so, and back down now where two of your submissions have characters in them and the others are photomanipulations.

What do you think is the next step for your development?

Aaron Campbell: Since I have joined, I have focused a lot more on my concepts. I don't see a lot of works in the artgroup community with very literal concepts, so that's what I've decided to focus on. I like working with oxymorons, paradoxes, or just things that might give you a chuckle. And with my characters, that makes these kinds of concepts easy to execute.

I also like doing many other styles, since my characters might get a bit boring to my viewers, I like to give them something else as wel…maybe a more realistic looking vexel, a photomanipulation, or a mixed media piece. The next thing I'll do is more design oriented stuff. More shapes, logos, more graphic design-ish kinds of things. Maybe even photography, I’ll just see how things go.

Ted Yavuzkurt: {5} So you like to use concrete, literal concepts. Walk me through the rest of your creative process. Where do you begin? Do you like to plan out these concepts beforehand or do you just sit down and see what happens? Do you like to work on a piece in one go or do you work an hour here, wait a few days, then work again? When is something "done" to you?

Aaron Campbell: Usually, concepts just come to me randomly, and really quickly. Throughout the day, I'll be at school or something and bam, the idea hits me. I let the idea develop a bit then maybe the next day I'll start on it. I do a little bit of it (maybe do a pencil sketch then scan it in), and do the rough outline. Then I usually let it sit there for a long time. I do small amounts of time maybe 20 minutes there, an hour the next day, and then leave it for 3 days.

I work on it when I'm really feeling the artistic mood, that's how I really get the most out of my art, since I see flaws I never saw before the next day. That's why I can never really give a straight answer when someone asks me how long a piece takes. But the piece is usually done in my eyes when I leave it and nothing new comes to my mind to add. Then I'll do a few final touches and then I post it up for the world to see.