Saturday 1 October 2016

Who's Who? - My chosen artist.

I want to start by talking directly to the Tutor: I apologize if this is not what I am supposed to do in regards to writing a short essay on my chosen artist, from what I have been told by fellow students I am to pick a favored artist and write about them, the information I could gather was vague however and apparently a lot of my fellow classmates have not got around to doing this write up so i'm a little in the dark, if this is incorrect then please let me know and i will correct it or start again, if it is correct then i will delete this first section.

This is a small write up on my chosen artist and biggest source of inspiration to all my work:
Eric.W.Schartz.Schwartz was born November 27, 1971, in Dayton, Ohio, USA.
Schwartz doesn't talk about himself so not much is known about him or his life, he instead prefers to talk about his art which conveys enough about himself and his personality.
In 1993 while on an art course in college Schwartz made a comic strip for the college newsletter named "Above Ground" which starred a "Skunkette" (Female Skunk) who was at art college, most likely conveying his own personal experiences while at college, these strips would not become publicly available however until his book Sabrina Online A Decade in Black and White (2012) was released. (See Fig.1)
(Figure 1) 

On September 15, 1996  Sabrina Online was first released to the public, an online comic that quickly gained a following form the furry community, Schwartz was then asked to be the guest of honor for the 1996 ConFurence Furry convention.

Before Sabrina Online or even the college newsletter Schwartz studied animation, he created many cartoon shorts including fan favourites A Day At The Beach (1992) and Plight Of The Artist (1995), His first recorded animation was At The Movies (1990). All of the animation Schwartz created were done using an Amiga (Various models) with a mouse (See fig.2), by today's standards this was incredibly difficult, very, very few animators use a mouse post 2010 to draw and animate.
(Figure 2)

From a very young age I came into contact with Schwartz' animations as my brother owned an Amiga 4000 which was connected to the internet, before Loony Toons or Mickey Mouse I was watching the creations of Eric.W.Schwartz which would explain why I became affiliated with the furry community and why whenever I need inspiration or when i'm feeling low, I simply open up my copy of Sabrina Online A Decade in Black and White (2012) and look at where my biggest hero in the artistic community got his roots from.

In 2014 I was fortunate enough to interview Eric.W.Schwartz, the man still had the drive to create work and takes personal commissions from fans to help financially, refusing to leave his Amiga he still works on it to this day, creating work with the same love and passion as he has done in the last 20 years.
Though some have called him stupid for sticking with Amiga and it could have had negative affects on his career as an artist and animator he still regrets nothing and event released an animation as a love letter to the Amiga in 2008 simply titled Animated Amiga Tribute.

There is controversy surrounding Mr Schwartz however as a certain pornographic image turned up from a private source that was in Schwartz art style, (as well as many more since then) this however has never been proven and since then many have tried to imitate his art style nobody truly knows but the man himself.

Sabrina online finally finished on September 15th 2016, the last panel was called "835 strips in 20 years? i guess it'll have to do" (See fig.3) ending on the same day of the same month as when it started on September 15th 1996.

 (Figure 3)

Ok that's all the formal stuff out of the way... can i gush?... i'm gonna gush so skip this if you don't want to read it.

The guy is phenomenal! The amount of times i've come close to spending rent or food money to get a picture done from him is scary... i still really want one but they are not cheap, i've owned his book and read it religiously back to back, cover to cover... it's a great book! i love seeing how his art evolved over time, and how his animation career started and where it is today... Sad to see he's finished with Sabrina Online but he stated the characters will return in future comics just not as main characters so the world still turns and the focus is simply shifted to another character... amazing to think he's worked on this for 20 years.
I was so happy to be able to talk to him as well, it was like meeting a childhood hero... hell i WAS meeting my childhood hero! It was so hard to be professional i simply wanted to fan-boy like crazy hahahaha.

Does this need a bibliography? It wasn't a review of him or anything like that, i considered it more of a "Smart-Casual" write up... once again i'll delete this bottom part after receiving reactions.

2 comments:

  1. Hey David... It's your chosen 'Concept artist'... because logically, in context of the 'concept art' project you're currently doing, learning a bit more about the careers/influences/influence of other concept artists is going to prove useful...

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    Replies
    1. Ah so a different artist then... right ok back to the drawing board

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