Colors Gallery, meet SmallPoly
@SmallPoly is a professional artist with over 20 years experience working in their field! They have experience working on games, being a creative director, and on many other projects! Now it's time to learn from them!
What is the story of Small poly? Who're you exactly?
"In some ways my artist origin story starts when I was a kid, doing stick figure comics in elementary school. I'd fold paper in quarters both ways to get quick panels. I wish I'd kept them."
"Later on, high school is when the desire to pursue art as a career really started to solidify for me."
"Sometime around age 15 I decided I wanted to make a website, so I taught myself HTML and made one. The first attempt was about a game I liked, Banjo Kazooie on the N64, but I soon realized that there would never be anything new to say about it so no one would have a reason to visit. Thinking about it further I realized the sites I visited the most were webcomics, so maybe I could try my hand at that."
"Working in pencil on notebook paper, I started into an adventure story about an undead skeleton knight and his shapeshifting cat sidekick. I only got about 30 pages in before stopping and none of it actually made it online, but they key thing was that the later pages looked a lot better than the early pages and that made it click for me that art was a skill I could work to improve on."
"In addition to that I had a lot of encouragement from other artists in my family and from my high school art teacher, John Ratajkowski, a large-format portrait artist who had half of his classroom as his personal studio space. We still keep in contact on occasion."
"The VR part came later. I've always had a passion for software and games, so when I saw a flier on a notice board by the art building looking for 3D artists to volunteer for school credit at ReCVEB, UC Santa Barbara's "Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior," I grabbed a trial of 3ds Max, quickly taught myself the basics, and applied."
"Tangent: These days I'd recommend aspiring 3D artists learn Blender instead. It's free and open source, has come a long way since early versions, is as capable of professional work as paid 3d software, and has a variety of unique features that paid software has failed to innovate themselves."
"After being accepted I spent about a year there, then one day mentioned my interest in pursuing art as a career. One of the team members was also working with a local VR company that needed an artist and recommended me to them, and soon after graduating I was working there full time."
What are the most impactful moments of your life and what inspired you to get on the path you're currently on? What are your motivations and influences? What inspired your art style?
"A lot of it is just the love of making marks and seeing them turn into things. I think it’s hard to become an artist if you don’t love the process."
"For influences I’d have to point to concept art veterans like Craig Mullins, Syd Mead, Ian McQue, Sparth and Feng Zhu. Also a variety of comic and manga artists like Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes), Posuka Demizu (The Promised Neverland, but especially her illustration work)."
"Then there’s the work of game devs like Rand and Robyn Miller (Cyan, Myst series) and Tim Schafer (Lucasarts, Doublefine, Psychonauts series) and studios like Supergiant (Hades, Bastion), Team Cherry (Hollow Knight), and Moebius Digital (Outer Wilds)."
"The full list could easily be 10x as long but I’ll cut it off here."
You mentioned that you're an indie gamedev, calisthenics athletic, futurist, and a Creative Director in a VR company! What an incredible resume! That sounds like a lot to jungle all at once so how do you manage it all? What can you tell us?
"I suppose you can say I've optimized my life around being about to do as much art and things that feed into my art as possible. Even when I'm playing video games I'm making mental notes of interesting mechanics and stopping to sort of reverse engineer their art techniques. It's nice to see how other people have solved the problems I run into."
"Generally I try to focus on timeboxing and plan out what I’ll be working on in my personal time at least a couple weeks ahead. It doesn’t always work out quite like that, but it works well enough to keep trying."
"Fitness isn’t too tough to plan for. You can do a lot in an hour per day, and you can get away with a lot less if you’re consistent about it."
You're a futurist? I'm something of a nerd myself! So you keep up with the latest technology and scientific breakthroughs? Something tells me you really did sci-fi!
"Yes, especially with VR and AI. Right now things are getting kind of scary in the art world and a lot of artists are feeling threatened by AI because penny pinching companies are overly eager to cut costs instead of using it to multiply their output. There are also some pretty dodgy copyright issues involved with how AI is trained."
"I feel less threatened in the short term because we've seen this sort of thing before like the change from paper to digital, digital photography, high level programming languages, and anything else that changes what one person can accomplish in a day."
"At the moment, AI is mostly a better version of working with stock photos and other stock assets. The endgame for generated media is the sci-fi depiction of how a holodeck improvises content. If that ever happens then maybe that's the end of the entire entertainment industry as we know it."
You're a indie gamedev! That's incredible! Can you tell us about the game(s) and anything that you've worked on? What does it take to be an indie for those aspiring to be one?
"Nearly everything I've done in the last couple decades for my day job has been for "serious business" purposes, such as training and architecture pre-viz, or for university associations doing social psychology research. That's left me with an in-depth understanding of VR and making the most of tight budgets."
"For the indie project, at the moment we’re just a two-person team, currently focusing on prototyping the gameplay mechanics we want to involve in our larger project. In the meantime I’m also working on story, art and putting together design docs."
"The project isn't announced just yet, but what I can tell you is that it's VR-based and aims to be a fun story-driven game with a strong sense of humor and an illustrative art style."
"To get started as an indie, just make games. There are tons of game jams, Blender is free, most common game engines are free for small teams, and if professional tools are too intimidating start with modding or making projects in games like LittleBigPlanet, Dreams, RecRoom, and Roblox. Later on when thing get serious you’ll need dedication, good time management skills, and a working knowledge of intellectual property law."
VR is something I've heard a lot about that I have yet to try myself. What's it like being a Creative Director for that sort of company? Any important lessons about being a director you can share?
"It’s a bit complicated, as these things tend to be. Directing isn’t about being the “idea guy” (no such thing) or getting everything you want just because you want it. It’s about fighting for and making the most of limited resources, handling office politics, bringing people over to better ways of doing things, supporting your team, managing client expectations, and so on."
"There are going to be people that don’t take you seriously, and to get past them you’ll need to be someone who takes yourself seriously and doesn’t let that kind of disrespect fly even if they’re the ones paying your bills. That goes both for bosses and clients. While you should excel in you work, do it for yourself. It’s also not about being a yes-man or being a people pleaser, while people seem to “like” blind compliance, you’ll never gain real respect that way or be seen as a peer or an expert. Clients are often wrong about what will best fit their goals, and you need to be able to tell them that even if their ego gets bruised in the moment. It’s impossible to trust someone who only tells you what they think you want to hear."
"If you’re working on extremely tight budgets your output will suffer and you may find that people acquire a skewed understanding of your abilities. Back in the day this was a huge problem for me, and what it took to solve that perception it was literally putting my personal art up on a cork board hung above my desk. Companies are risk-adverse entities with lot at stake, so you can’t rely on them simply trusting your ability to do something if you can’t demonstrate you already have the ability to already do it."
"It feels like it's one of those "you need the experience to get the experience" things, but there are other ways to get that experience. Have other irons in the fire. If you need experience with organizing events and managing people, start a drawing club. If you need experience gaining and handling clients, post on social media and take commissions."
How did you discover Colors Live? Seems like you've been here quite a long time so what keeps you coming back? What do you like most about the community?
"I think I originally came in something like a year after the initial homebrew version on the original DS after finding posts about it on the now defunct ConceptArt[dot]Org forum, which is now gone and points to an ad site. Already spending a lot of time doing digital painting, primarily in Photoshop, I’d been longing for a way to do digital art on the go that didn’t involve carrying around a laptop and drawing tablet. This would have been a little bit after the first iPhone came out."
"I liked that the DS fit in my pocket, had a pressure sensitive stylus that slotted into the device, and that Colors! took advantage of both screens, and had a playback feature of everything you draw. The minimalist toolset is nice both in the way that it stays focused on just what’s important while also making it a great way for new artists to break into digital."
"These days for me it’s still about seeing what I can pull off with just the round brush, painting on the go, and getting a better understanding of the art process by reviewing my own playbacks and the playbacks of other artists I admire."
"This community is a great place to see the work of budding artists that will no doubt go on to have interesting careers. You see similar things to that with some of the VR games developed in Rec Room - even when the polish isn’t always there, it’s evident in the work who has passion and wanted to make something good even if they didn’t quite have the skills to do it at a professional level just yet."
Dome by Smallpoly
Are there any Colors Live features you would like to see in the future?
"I strongly feel that Colors Live is best kept focused on a minimal toolset."
"With that in mind, the main things I’d like to see are a pressure-size version of the eraser for working with hard edged linework, a straight line tool, a blend/smudge tool, a return of the dual view feature as a split screen, a square size option, and a way to organize local content such as sorting things into folders by hitting checkboxes on multiple works (since mine number in the dozens)."
Do you have any top 3 favorite Colors artworks from other artists?
As a long time user I don’t think I could go without mentioning Munin, who during their time with the app focused on realism and landscapes and was painting with a Nintendo DS as far as 2020. I think Maenofferen is a good representation of their work, but their page is full of great paintings.
It’s similarly hard to pick one from Acchan. He regularly does solid work and I’m sure he needs no introduction. One I think is really great is Daisy, which adopts the aesthetic of watercolor on a sketchbook.
For a third one, Recycle by Atarute. I love the strange mechanical features of the fish, the limited palette, and the variety of details they achieved there.
Colors art of yours that you're most proud of?
Of the early ones, I’d say Colossus, or Creature.
Of the new ones, probably Sportshoarder:
Favorite artist on and off Colors? What do you like about them?
"Other than the ones I’ve already mentioned, I’d put @Linkanoodlesoup up there as well. They have a strong eye for composition and illustration."
PHOO ACTION :P by Linkanoodlesoup
"Off colors, probably Posuka Demizu. I love the way she stylizes her illustrations. The simplicity of the individual objects gives way to the density and clutter of the overall compositions, giving every individual item a clear read despite the chaos."
"For a second one, Alariko. A young environment illustrator with a similarly lively line art style to Pozuka that’s also very much his own and brought to live by his beautiful color work."
Being a professional artist what is the most important advice you can give to beginners and artists if all skill levels?
"In short, get out of your comfort zone by attempting difficult things. Even after starting into art full time there was a very long period where my work just wasn’t getting any better because I was drawing what felt safe and wasn’t actually challenging myself."
"While it can be stressful, these days I try to seek out challenging subject matter that feels like the same sort of struggle you get when facing a tough Dark Souls boss. You’re just bashing against that wall, and fail maybe a dozen or more times in a row, but little by little you figure it out until you finally break through that wall and suddenly it isn’t so tough anymore and it’s time to move onto the next challenge."
"It's just like working out - to get stronger you need to give your body something it can't fully handle yet."
If you have a project you could do over now that you're pretty experienced what would it be and why?
"Probably any of the ones that I started working on then stopped because I didn’t feel like I was good enough to do the concept justice. You know how you get the skills to do your projects justice? By doing projects. Haha."
"Like, imagine trying to learn to ride a bike by just doing supplementary exercises like squats, jogging and balancing on poles and watching a bunch of youtube tutorials on bike riding. Sure that’ll help a bit but you also have to actually get on the bike and try to ride it, not get on, fail a couple of times, then say “nope still can’t ride, I’ll keep working on the fundamentals” and returning to do more side stuff. Doesn’t work that way."
"There's an Adventure Time quote about that - "Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something."
Nature vs Nurture?
"I think art is mostly nurture, but there’s also things you’re born with that feed into it like the people that have an exceptional memory for objects or being able to learn some kinds of things much quicker than another person."
"In my case I don’t think all of my traits are exceptionally suited for art, I just loving drawing enough that I want to do it all the time. I do pick up new software programs fairly effortlessly, which is pretty useful thing to be able to do in an industry that changes all the time.
Being a professional artist in the industry I'm sure you've seen a lot of rapid changes over the years! How do you keep up with it all? How do you remember flexible and adaptable?
"A variety of ways. I interact on internet forums, subreddits and other social groups where professionals hang out and discuss new techniques and technology. I watch Youtube channels, making-of documentary work (check out NoClip and 2 Player Productions) and conference talks (GDC talks are amazing). One I strongly recommend is Double Fine PsychOdyssey, about the making of Psychonauts 2. It’s about 20 hours long and split over 32 episodes."
"I also really like learning new programs so I’ll experiment with just about any art tool I can get my hands on. The core skills transfer pretty well so it’s mainly a matter of learning the controls and what things happen to be called this time around. It’s the same way that getting in a new car doesn’t make you forget how to drive even if things look a bit different and are in different locations."
Do you have any goals or ambitions for the future?
"In the short term, I'm trying to get better at being able draw a room full of varied objects without having to rely so much on reference and to improve on my environment work in general. I’d like to be able to reach or surpass the caliber of detail and composition of the artists I admire."
"In the long term I’d really like to see the game my indie team is developing reach the finish line and be something that people will enjoy, and to be successful enough to be able to fund more projects in the future."
Discord question from @razrdraws:As previously mentioned to me how you build on your creativity, I just had one question that I was saving. Do you ever make any decisions while painting about how it should look or change your previous mental image of the piece? If so, how often?
"On occasion. A lot of my painting process is improv, where I get some big ideas established early on so for the rest I can just focus on reinforcing the core idea and "making it look more like itself."
"If it's for something important I'll also do a handful of smaller studies before starting into the final. The more problems you can solve before getting into details the less work has to be redone later on. That's as true for painting as it is for working on 3D projects."
"Sometimes I will find that I need something different at the macro level after I've already started into detail, so I'll add a new layer, rough it in, and judge whether it's better or worse than before. If it's better, I keep it and flesh it out, and if it's not I discard the change."
Anyone you want to shout out? Also do you have any final words?
"Sure, shout out to my boyfriend for providing great emotional support during my recovery from depression."
"You don’t have to be the best artist in the world to get a job as an artist. There are tons of people out there better than I am at a variety of things. If you’re passionate about what you do, that will be readable to the kinds of people you’d want to be working with anyways. Keep on drawing."
That wraps up our interview with @SmallPoly ! We at The Colors Team would like to thank you for your time! Everyone keep checking them out and also keep an eye on their Spooktober challenge too! It's ongoing until October 31st, 2023!
Check out our interview with our previous artist of the week @chid0 here
http://colorslive.com/page/Meet-chid0
For those who may need a reminder
The Artist of the week will be posted every Friday so be sure to tune in! Prior to that, the artist may be contacted via email or other means at least a week or more in advance so be sure to check your emails( and spam) so you don't miss out on a chance to be featured. If you don't reply within 48 hours another artist may be chosen to be featured for that week instead and you will be in a future artist of the week update.
The announcement of who is the upcoming featured artist will be announced at least 2-3 days in advance or eariler so look out for that too! If you would like for any of your questions or comments to be featured in an upcoming interview please check out colorslive.com/discord and visit the official artist of the week channel to submit questions/commentary for a chance for those to be answered before Friday.
Suggest a new artist for artist of the week on the forum post on my gallery or by posting with the #heyzyik tag.
Join the creepy #wc524 remix challenge and show us some "Spooky Residents"! The deadline is Sunday October 15th, 2023!
Stay creative!
Zyik & The Colors Team
