Interview No. 102

Interview By: @The-Great-One

Today's guest has gifted us with some beautiful scenes of cities and futuristic wonders. From Central Park, to River Bridge, and COTT: Tower. He has also shown his talents in animation with The Last Fight and The Last Fight: Final Ep. He is also responsible for the site's background that you are currently seeing at this time. He is @keepwalking.

Q: How did you find Newgrounds and why did you join?

A: Well, I can say I found Newgrounds by accident. I was watching one particular flash animation "Shoo Fly" on another website, but it didn't have any music so the author included a link to the full version hosted here at Newgrounds. Then my curiosity did the rest. The main reason I joined was because I found, and still find Newgrounds one of the few websites that is so much dedicated to animation and games(and now illustration). It's truly one of the best websites to showcase your work, even if you are a begginer, or a profesional.

So having that in mind I decided to share with the community some bits of my humble flash animations, and even if some of the comments were harsh at the beggining, others were very supportive. It is a great place to get good feedback, and learn from your mistakes.

Q: When did you become introduced to art and what inspired you to create art?

A: I remember I started drawing as a hobby when I was 12 years old and started making war ships such as frigates and galleons. I can say that many of the problems I had back in my childhood pushed me to draw almost every day so this way I could keep myself away from bad stuff. Year by year I seeked more and more for my own charachters, landscapes, and stories. Eventually I healed up those injures and found inspiration in better things.

Q: Your first steps into the Art Forum would be with a thread entitled My new comic. What was your story here and why did you just stop working on it?

A: I was really curious about how people would react to one of my drawings here at Newgrounds, so I picked 2 comic sheets that were already inked and edited. The response from the users was great so that gave me a little more support to continue it. I stopped working on it becuase I found out comic wasn't my strongest style.

Q: XeNt - Anger and Xent - Love would be your first two movies here on Newgrounds. What can you tell me about the inspiration for both of these and what it was like to work on them?

A: Oh god!, not those movies haha!. On the first place those were done the same week I broke up with my girlfriend so I decided to portray a mixture of feelings on different short movies, the result was terrible in my opinion haha!, but at that moment I was really enjoying making them. I'm still surprised by the score and the amount of views they have...

Q: We now come to another duo by you, The Last Fight and The Last Fight: Final Ep. This mini-series would begin with a thread. How did we go from there to here?

A: I was exited about making a fight animation, so I decided to spend some time studying some fight scenes from different sources, I also wanted to add a strong plot to the hole series, didnt want to throw some random punches here and there.

Those movies took many months of hard work and concentration, specially the first one, since it was drawn with pencil frame by frame and then each frame edited in flash. I ended up making a semi-animated comic instead of a full animated movie. I concentrated so much on the story and the edition that I forgot to animate properly. Still proud of both works.

Q: We now come to what I believe is your best work, Luminiscense. We have a love story, that is to be continued. You said a lot of work went into this and it shows. Where did the idea for this movie come from and when can we expect to see the next part?

A: Luminicesne is indeed one of my best works. My idea here was to show how fragile things are in this world, and how can some events change our lives in a matter of seconds. I wanted to focus more in the final result of this movie, and make something unique even if it took me 1 year to finish it.

It was a great project that gave me the chance to learn how to tell a story with suspense and drama at the same time. Even if I still discover some mistakes(wich some of them were pointed out 1000 times by you guys), I am really happy of the final result. Seting up the style of the drawings, the enviorments, and the general esthetic of the movie were some of the things I most enjoyed, aswell as working with Chris and Jessi for the charachter voices.

The story is to be continued but I have posponed indefinetly due to my new work, wich is consuming most the time I had for animation. Hopefully I will find a way to have more time and make the next chapter.

Q: We now come to your artwork. The first piece I want to talk about is Central Park. You have an interesting style of showing off different structures and cities. As if we are in a perpetual sunset. You seem to enjoy playing with lighting and lights more than anything else. Would you agree to this or can you define your style or expand on this?

A: Central park was the second of a series of speedpaintings I was creating back in 2009 when I bought my first wacom tablet. I was just experimenting with light values and perspective more than anything else, imagine using a pencil or a pen for your entire life, and then having to transit to this device wich shows the result on a screen, I had to test lots of things before making full illustrations, and those speedpaintings were the result.

I also choosed to make cities because I used to make lots of them when I was a little kid, so why not bring some good memories. You got me there with the "Sunset" thing hehe, I have a weakness for sunsets, and I tend to avoid them in my works but I end up using them most of the time. The final impression is something I really value when I work, you will notice this in most of my paintings...

Q: Looking at minerva and DRONE42 you have two different ways of drawing people. What can you tell us about drawing humans and these two different approaches?

A: Minerva was like a second chance I gave to my comic/manga style, I didn't make more of these for the same reason I stoped making comic drawings a couple of years ago, I wasn't satisfied with the final result.

On the other hand Drone 42 was the first charachter work I made with my strongest style, that look good in most of the aspects. I figured out that painting was working better than drawing, and that Drone 42 showed much more original results than Minerva. Maybe in the future I will give a third chance to my comic style again...

Q: When the Newgrounds redesign came, we got fancy wall backgrounds for the different pages. The original basic wall was Tank Girl by Egoraptor. It would soon be changed to a bustling orange city. How were you approached to do the wall for Newgrounds? Also why did you go with this look?

A: When Tom told me what he wanted for the main wall of the site he showed me a picture of a city shown from a birds eye point of view. I liked his idea of a futuristic city and the point of view of the reference picture was pretty accurate, but I decided to make the city from a lower perspective mainly because it was going resmble better the old banner of the website and keep the identity of the comunity at the same time.

The color scheme was also a decition of Tom, and I completly agreed with him. The city, if you take a closer look, has a mixture of old, modern, and industrial looking buildings, some of them even have a military look aswell.

Q: In your own opinion, what would you say is the definition of art?

A: Art is the language of your soul.

Q: What can we expect from keepwalking in the future?

A: Many many more artwork and publishing coming!

keepwalking is truly a wonderful artist who has given us beautiful paintings and told us wonderful stories over time. I can only hope that he will continue to do more in the future. His background wall does seem to reflect Newgrounds old slogan which is "The Problems of the Future - Today!" in which case that is certainly quite kick ass.