Artist Inspiration: Zac Gorman and Louie Zong

As an artist and an animator, I'm constantly drawn to other artists' work. It's only natural I draw inspiration from the pieces I like, and experiment with my own work using the techniques used in those pieces I enjoy the most.

I feel like many times, animators forget about where we started as a medium- animation was, in the beginning, moving illustration. The first animators were illustrators. In my own work, I want to create living illustrations, treating each frame as it's own piece.  My goal as an artist is to tell stories, and Illustration, the original visual storyteller, influences me greatly.

Recently, there have been two illustrators (of the many that I follow) that I've been watching and drawing inspiration from, and I want to spend this post talking about what it is about each that I react to.

Zac Gorman

Zac Gorman freelances mostly, but has recently received commercial success on the internet for illustrations that play off the nostalgia of people in my generation growing up with video games. Often, his personal work reflects both his adult problems and his child-like memories of playing games that affected him personally.

What draws me to Gorman as an illustrator is two things: 

1.) I strongly relate to the subject matter. This is a feeling I want to evoke in my audience- sure, they might not necessarily relate to a wizard who can create hot dogs, but if I can suffuse that character with human emotion and place him in a situation where we can relate to him, I'll draw my audience in.

2.) The line quality in his pieces is very calculated, yet loose, creating a texture to his pieces without falling into chaos. That, coupled with an incredible sense of color and composition, he creates work that feels alive. As an artist, I want to create work like this- if even my stills feel alive, then I can rest assured that when the piece eventually moves it will a pleasure to watch, aesthetically.

Plus, he's a cool dude.

Louie Zong

I'm attracted to Louie Zong's personal work mainly because of how it's made- every day he creates a new image, while constantly experimenting with textures and line quality. The looseness of those pieces, like Gorman, helps bring the pieces to life. Also, like Gorman, Zong has a wonderful understanding of color and composition, and many of the works he creates are very creative and interesting. He's a great artist to look at whenever  the creative juices are running low because he's a great example about how to force yourself into creativity.