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Interview with Vovo Tzeng
Featured Artist for July 2004
Interviewed by Patrick Keith
Tell us about your yourself, where youıre from, and your background.
Iım from Taiwan, HsinChu City. Female 26 years old. I've worked mainly as a GUI/WEB designer for a software company after graduating from the fine art department in Hsinchu Teacher's College. My side job is creating "cover girls" for Taiwan publishers, as you've seen in my gallery. Publishers in Taiwan prefer this style as cover pages for fiction novels, and especially, romance novels. So, besides software GUI/WEB interfaces, "cover girls" have become my major sort of artwork.
Tell us about some of your favorite artists and influences.
Too many to note!
Your gallery at Epilogue showcases a variety of mediums from digital, to watercolor and acrylic. What do you like about working in these mediums and what are your favorites?
I like, and use, Photoshop as my main tool to create artwork. Sometimes I use watercolor or PaintBBS to do concept sketches. Before getting used to
creating computer graphics, I used comics pens (G-pen, D-pen, Comic Ink), watercolor, poster color and color pencil for painting. It is much easier
to use the computer to create artwork, though I still want to make them with less "CG-taste".
Can you describe your creative process, how you come up with your ideas?
1. Collect personal ornaments and jewelery (or their pictures), take and collect pictures of beautiful scenery and faces.
2. Digitize these materials.
3. Study them. (e.g. Why this jewelery is so delicate; which kinds of eyes can fascinate the reader's eyes...and entice them to buy it.)
4. The main idea comes up by discussing the prroject with my editors and by reading the fiction materials.
5. Begin painting. I try to draw girls that readers may love: beautiful eyes you want to stare at for a long time, soft hair you want to touch, delicate clothes and jewelery you want to wear and so on.
6. After finishing major factors, I start to "carve" the detail.
7. Fix, fix and fix...until the editors are satisfied.
Many of your pieces, regardless of the medium, clearly exhibit a distinct style with a romantic, dream-like quality. What are the methods and techniques for creating your pieces?
The style is pretty popular in Taiwan, especially for romance fiction and game posters. Eastern or Chinese art/painting concept focuses on feeling more than 'look', and tries to express its meaning and life by doing so. Therefore, we focus our efforts on the eyes and face rather than put them in the background or scenery. Also, for me, "concept" and "impression" are as important as art skill.
Has your art been published yet? If so, where can we see it?
Most of my art has been published and sold to publishers as fiction covers in Taiwan, Hong Kong or China. You can see them in fiction/comic book rental stores in Taiwan. Also, you can see them at my web site or Epilogue. I will try to work with other countries' publishers this year.
Have you exhibited at any shows or made personal appearances?
I exhibit my artwork via my personal web site Vovo's Workshop. Everyone is welcome to visit my site, but itıs mainly in traditional Chinese (BIG5) encoding.
What formal art education have you had and what role has it played in your artistic development?
I studied in the Fine Art class and department both in high school and college. I learned sketching, watercolor, oil painting, Chinese penmanship, sculpting, fine art design, eastern/western art history, fine art education, computer graphics, etc. This background enlarged my fine art skills and knowledge and turned me from a comic-only worshiper to an "artist".
What is the most important thing for an artist to learn, technically speaking?
To learn to enlarge one's vision and scope. Learn everything that you feel interested in and keep reading. Rich knowledge may bring one a lot of material for creating art.
What advice would you give to new and developing artists?
Make yourself adjustable to focus both on big and small phases of the art process.
What do you like to do when not creating art? Got any interesting hobbies?
1. Eye Damaging: doll houses, miniature modeling and PC games.
2. Housekeeping.
3. Enjoying delicacies and diet.
4. Dancing. (hmm...not hot at all!)
If you could work with absolutely anyone (artists, companies, writers--anyone at all) on a project, who would it be?
Blizzard, Black Isle or Google. I am a big fan of Baldurıs Gate and the Diablo series. As for Google, they seem to have pretty good working environment as displayed on their web site.
Is there anything in general youıd like to say to the good folks at Epilogue?
I've met a group of talented artists by sharing and communicating through Epilogue. I was impressed by those amazing artworks. I really appreciate participating!
And, it wouldn't be a proper Epilogue interview if we didnıt ask, what cartoons did you watch as a kid?
I'd like to share, but I don't know the English names of these cartoons since their names had been translated into traditional Chinese. I read a lot of comic books from Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the US because my dad ran a comic-rental store during my childhood. Reading so many comic books made my art style a mixed one.
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