Artist: Brad Rigney
Website: https://www.artstation.com/cryptcrawler
Location: Necropolis, United States
❓Who or what influenced your artworks and art style the most at your early steps? Tell us about your journey.
🗣 1st of all, thank you very much for having me.
🗣 Richard Corben and Frank Frazetta had the biggest impact on me in my formative years as a human being, aside from just drawing. I would just sit there - for hours- looking at the pages of those graphic novels and art books I had. They were my escape. They were more than just art books to me; they were worlds I wanted to exist in. When I started drawing, the books were my guide, as well as things like Creepy Magazine, Heavy Metal Magazine, and, believe it or not, Mad Magazine.
🗣 I wanted to know what made Frazetta's compositions, and characters so heroic and dramatic, or what made Corben's women so sensual and his monsters so grotesque. I wanted to know why. It was beyond the nakedness and voluptuousness of the women or the viciousness of the creatures, it was something invisible, and I wanted to capture that. Later I learned that that "something" is charisma.
🗣 Charisma is what decides why one perfectly executed image can fall flat and why another image, riddled with "mistakes", can be great. Charisma is something I strive for in image-making.
❓How did you start your professional career and how did you come to that?
🗣 Not easily, that's for damn sure.
🗣 That is a long story. Too long for this format, really. Unless of course you want to sit through walls and walls of text, and ain't nobody got time for dat.
🗣 Basically, I was living in poverty, an alcoholic, and homeless up in Boston. I sobered up at 25, moved to a new state, and then got a job working at a coffee shop, and spent all of my free time drawing or playing table-top roleplaying games with new friends I had made. My goal was to do art for the roleplaying games I loved playing.
🗣 I spent a few years slinging coffee, drawing about 6-10 hours a day and then sending work into game companies, most of whom rejected me over and over until I finally was good enough to do interior art for game books. The pay was terrible. Something like 75 dollars a drawing, you would wait over half a year to get paid. This was back in the late 90's - early 2000.
🗣 After only making 9k one year, working 12 hours a day 7 days a week, I said to hell with this, and took a break to do color work, so I could land better paying commissions. That was around 2002. From there I worked my ass off, taking whatever job I could get; bouncer, waiter, warehouse work, it didn't matter. I spent all of my free time skill building until about 2004. Some good friends of mine invited me to live with them, and work on my portfolio full-time until I got some work. That lasted about a year until I moved in with my future wife, grinding on my skills for about 2 years until I began - finally - getting freelance jobs that paid well enough to eke out a living.
🗣 A lot has changed since then, except the part about spending most of my time drawing and staying sober.
❓What hardware and software tools are you using at your workspace and why?
🗣 I work on a 2009 Dell XPS, use a 6X9 Wacom Intuos 2, and Photoshop 7. It's been that way since 2001, and it'll most likely stay that way. I'm not adverse to trying new things; I've just found that I seldom like the new things when I try them.
🗣 There is also the reality that it takes time and dedication to learn new things well enough to use them in image-making. I've been too busy juggling work and children to try the things I'd like to try, like Unreal 5, which looks absolutely mind-blowing.
🗣 I'm very content using what I've used for the past 20 years, especially now that I'm transitioning out of the concept art space and into the graphic novel/ comics space. I don't want to have the modern concept art look. While so much of it is beautiful and incredible, it's also beginning to be hard to differentiate between concept artists who use photos, Blender and Marvelous Designer. I'm not hating on it by any means, in fact, I love stuff like that, but I'm glad I don't use those things and admire it from afar.
❓What do you think is the best way to work for you: full-time, freelance or part-time?
🗣 Full-time freelance, without question. I need flexibility. My wife and I home-school our 2 kids and have done so for the past 12 years. I also have kidney failure, which means I have many doctor appointments and peripheral bullshit I have to do, like dialysis treatments 10 hours out of every day, just to survive. A machine does it while I sleep, thank God, but I still have to deal with the maintenance and cleaning of the machine, the supplies, and a lot of other boring shit no one wants to read about. I also have an extremely low tolerance for bullshit and office politics. I'd never last in a corporate environment. Especially now that everything has been politicized.
❓What was your most challenging project so far and why?
🗣 It's Very hard to answer this question. There are so many different types of challenges. There is the challenge of executing a difficult concept, the challenges we make for ourselves through ignorance, or arrogance. The challenge of delivering a quality product in a short amount of time. I'd say it was doing an illustration for a magazine cover in 3 days for a company I'll choose not to mention.
🗣 I took the job offer with the explicit term of not having a super-fast turnaround because the last job this company gave me was a 3 day turnaround that they decided to tell me about... after I took it.
🗣 So I ran into a snag and asked for a little extra time, not knowing they needed it in 3 days... again. The AD began screaming at me, like I was a child, demanding to know when it would be done, saying they needed it in 3 days. I decided I had enough of being talked to like a turd, and said I specifically took this job because you said it wasn't a fast turnaround, and yet here we are with you screaming at me because you need it in 3 days. She hangs up on me after that. Then a few minutes later, I get a call from the project manager wanting to work it out, but that "I hung up on his AD". At that point, I was like "Dude, your AD hung up on *my* ass, after she screamed at me like I was her fucking kid, for needing extra time for a 3-day turnaround that I SPECIFICALLY said in my terms to please not give me. We can talk about a kill fee now, and this is bullshit." We worked it out, I did it on time, and they paid me well for it.
🗣 The takeaway from spending your precious time reading all that?
Be careful about working with companies who think their shit doesn't stink and who make their lack of preparation your emergency.
❓What do you think are some portfolio "must-haves" as a freelance artist/2D artist/3D artist?
🗣 Must-haves are pieces of art that reflect exactly what you want to do, and be known for because whatever is in your portfolio is what you'll be hired for. So choose wisely.
❓What do you think is the most important thing artists need to develop to succeed?
🗣 Grit. You can have all the talent, speed, and style in the world, but if you don't have the grit to work hard, sacrifice time, and tough out the hard and unfair things life can throw at you, then it doesn't mean shit - you won't last.
🗣 Another thing: I personally found out that I needed to make what *I was working for*, more important than just "working in the industry". I'm not talking about money or fame, either. Most of us make this career the well-spring of meaning, purpose, and self-worth in their lives. How could we not? We spend years skill building for our dreams, usually to the detriment of our personal lives.
🗣 The reality that no one tells you about is that this industry is just one big rat-race, with lots of different tiers. Building portfolios, reputations, social media presences, and skills to get better and better jobs, for bigger and bigger companies, for more and more money, for higher and higher stakes, against competition that gets better, and better, and better.
It never ends. There literally is no end-game to this. What chasing all that does is make you self-obsessed and self-centered, constantly having to have your head in the game, competing, and staying relevant. Which makes you miserable. There will never be enough money, or fame, or influence, or clicks, or likes, or follows to satisfy you.
🗣 time and time again, I've heard from other artists, for years now, say:
"I've "made it". Why am I so miserable? Why does this feel so empty? Why is it so hard to work on my personal stuff?" Trust me. I spent a few years climbing out of that trap, and I didn't know it was happening.
🗣 I made the mistake of turning my career - and everything that goes with it - into God. After I restored the importance of God, my sobriety, family, and friends back to their rightful places in my life, is when the joy, and happiness came back into my life. Which made art-making a helluva lot less stressful, and demoralizing when things didn't go my way...and if you know anything about this business, then you know shit won't go your way more often than it does go your way.
🗣 You can still find a lot of joy in working in this business despite all that. In fact, it's so much better when you don't make it the source of self-worth, meaning, and purpose in your life. But it requires letting go of it, which is simple to say, but very hard to do.
🗣 Letting go of it, but still giving it your all, and caring about it. It's a super-hard balancing act. I call it freedom from the bondage of self, and God makes it possible. I'm not talking about religion, either. I'm talking about an honest, one-on-one appeal to God. If you ever find yourself in a place, where you get to the end of yourself, and are miserable: reach out to God.
🗣 You don't have to be perfect, live an "acceptable" life, or go to church, or anything like that, because it's not based on what you do, it's based on the grace and mercy of something far more powerful than you, or anything else.
🗣 Most people in this business scoff at God, and people who believe. I get it, I was the same way. I thought it was cringe, and the people who bought into that stuff were simpletons who needed to be led.
The thing was those people were happy, content, at peace, and had rich, fulfilling social lives. I had none of those things, as I smugly sat on my high horse, thinking myself smarter and better than those people.
I wanted what they had but didn't want to do what they did. Finally, I tried it, and then felt like a fool for not trying it sooner. The peace, contentment, and freedom came in ways I still don't fully understand. Freedom from worry, anxiety, and fear. It's hard to believe, really. But it's a gift, and a free one at that.
🗣 I found out that it not only helped me with any problem I had, it really helped me with my art career, as well! When I've talked to a few people about it they sometimes ask "How do you have a relationship with God?" It's simple. You already know how to do it, because you were made to do it. Everyone was made for it. All you do is reach out honestly, from within. You don't have to speak, but you can. What really pushes the whole thing into orbit is to ask for a relationship "In Jesus' name".
🗣 Some of you will naturally have a problem with that. That's ok. I'm just telling you what works for me and has worked for me for decades.
At first, you feel silly doing it. Then comes the growing awareness, then comes the peace. It's something you have to practice for a while to really understand.
❓What is your dream project or art direction that you're starving to try?
🗣 Honestly, I'm working on my dream project right now. I have a Patreon. It's called "Brad Rigney Art Patreon", or as we lovingly refer to it as BRAP.
Because of the support of that Patreon, I'm able to create my graphic novel entitled "Rexx Starborn: The Radical Chronicles Of Awesome". It's basically my love letter to Heavy Metal Magazine, which I grew up on in the '80s. It's a tongue-in-cheek homage to the 80's musclebound action hero. It's a series of stories that follow the exploits of 3 smugglers for hire on an alien world, who get themselves into big trouble and become heroes despite themselves.
🗣 Rexx Starborn is the main protagonist, but it's really all about the relationship between the 3 of them: Rexx Starborn, the musclebound hero, Yin Volo, the edgy sorceress, and Glum, a toad-like alien who loves guns and tools.
🗣 I'm working on panels for the first story right now, which I'm live-streaming and recording. It's a huge source of joy in my life. But beyond that, the Patreon is so much more than that. Through it we run a Discord channel, and on the Discord, I offer mentorship services for people at the $10 and above tiers.
🗣 The mentorship is a long-term, one-on-one, on-demand feedback service. We work together to help bring you closer to the art goals you have for yourself. Each mentorship is 100% unique, because it's based on the specific needs of the artist. You aren't stuck in some group with a bunch of other people and fed a bunch of dumb-ass things you "should do" as a concept artist or taught "how to do my style".
🗣 We focus on unpacking, and focusing on you, and your specific weaknesses, and struggles in image-making, and also we get into tools on how to deal with all the peripheral stuff that comes with pursuing a career in art: stress and anxiety management, how to positively self-critique, all that stuff. We have a ball, and I've made some really deep friendships there. We do a lot of Q and A stuff on the live streams too. It's an amazing bunch of people and real talk.
❓Is there anything you learned in the industry that you didn't expect?
🗣 Yes. I've recently learned just how much of a hunger there is out there for real fellowship in this industry, real connections and real friendships. The scene is much, much different now than when I was new to digital art, back in the early-mid 2000s. Before that time, there was no "scene". In the early-mid 2000s there was a real spirit of encouragement, excitement, and wanting to push the genre - and each other - to new heights.
🗣 That is something that I'm trying to build with my Discord channel, that people have access to through the Brad Rigney Art Patreon. We get into so many great discussions about the business during the livestreams. I say "the business", but so much of it is really about how to successfully process things that so many artists - new and old - are dealing with behind the facade they present on social media.
🗣 We cover topics like: positively comparing your art to others, fear and anxiety over competing, or not "stacking up" to "the industry standard", or your peers, or having one's art style be panned on social media, or companies after submitting a portfolio. Things like "Imposter Syndrome", lack of motivation, or burn-out, or advancing too slowly with skills, and working with art directors. We also get into the usual suspects: composition, lighting, rendering, design, reference selection, preparing, and research - all kinds of fun shit.
🗣 We put it all out on the table, de-mystify it, and talk about real solutions, not theory-craft, or "positive-vibes only, bro" solutions, but real ones, based on real experiences. There is a real spirit of having other's interests at heart, and I work with many of these people in private with my mentorship service. It's been incredibly eye opening. Working with other artists on their private struggles that they have generously trusted me with has been the most rewarding experience I've had so far in this industry.
🗣 Fear dominates many of the issues that most artists face, and how to unpack it. Fear of how they will be received in the concept art space, fear of failure, fear of what others on social media think, fear of not getting work, fear of not "stacking up", fear of not finding one's unique "voice" or style, and the fear of pursuing that style instead of "the standard" of modern concept art.
🗣 More importantly, we get into solutions for those things. One of those solutions, or tools, is acceptance. Accepting where you are skillswise, reputation-wise, career-wise. Really accepting, and acknowledging, and appraising where you are - without judgement - is a huge boon. Acceptance is the key to getting realistic expectations, and when you have those, you can create real, tangible goals.
I've met many artists who's lofty expectations have become demands, and are living with the fallout of not getting those expectations. Then what?
🗣 What we are really dealing with is more than just art. It's the life that goes with that choice and how to process it when things don't go as planned. Doing it right and taking victory laps is easy, but failure is hard. The thing is, there is enormous value to be gained from failure. You just have to get past how it feels.
🗣 Failure is temporary.
❓What are you passionate about and do you have any hobbies besides art?
🗣 In addition to the work on Patreon, I'm passionate about recovery addiction and using my experience to help others to recover from alcoholism. I've been sober for 24 years. It is a great great source of joy in my life. To watch others recover from addiction, get their life, family, and in some cases, their sanity back. God comes into their life, and it's never the same and so much better than anything they could have planned. I came into AA the same way; a broken man with no home, and mentally, morally, and spiritually bankrupt on the inside.
🗣 I feel like it's my duty to be there for others like they were there for me. There is no money in it, no fame, no clicks, or likes, or follows.
It gives something infinitely more valuable than all of that combined.
🗣 I also play D&D with some old friends. The same ones I mentioned before. Meeting those dudes changed my life. We just got to level 19, and the campaign is coming up on a year and a half old. We've been friends for about 25 years now and have been playing roleplaying games together all those years. It's so damn fun. We cut it up, and constantly try to crack each other up. Many sessions, several of us are doubled over in a heap, crying from laughter. I love it.
❓If you had just one question about anything that you could ask and get an answer to, what would it be?
🗣 Will we ever get more than 24 hours in a day? There ain't enough time!