Back in 2012-14 I found myself with some time on my hands for the first time in... well, forever. So I started messing around with creating some artwork around my new passion - Eve Online. I'm a digital person, I love sitting at my computer and creating new things in ways that are often weird, unusual, or challenging to me. Goodness knows my real life jobs are often incredibly stressful, so when I have free time to create - I want to do something that challenges me. Something difficult.
I soon found Eve spaceships extremely challenging. At first I found them difficult to draw in a way that honored the artists that created them but also didn't look like I took a screenshot from the game. This "problem" would haunt me for years. Especially when Eve really started taking off graphically, the game was just getting better and better looking. And then skins came along! Good grief.
That's when I created a couple of weird posters. The first one was of the Rifter which I did back in 2012.
That is the first time I actually tried creating a Rifter from scratch. I did it in Photoshop and it took me forever to complete. If you look at it you can see how crude and simple it really is, but it did make me realize something about scale. When you look at certain styles of paintings up close you can see the brush work, the crudeness, the details, but when you stand away from it you don't see those things - you see the entirety of the painting. Of course, this is basic art stuff here. But digitally I hadn't made those connections. My work is usually graphical, or photoshop photography used in advertising. Or logo design. These are not forgiving mediums and every detail counts.
This realization helped me better understand what I was doing. So I set out to get really good at doing it. For me, when I set out to get good at something I really, really set out to get good at it. 15,000 hour rule is my entire career. So I started drawing spaceships and I started doing them in Illustrator instead of Photoshop. This might seem like an odd choice and it is, but I did it for a couple of good reasons. First, I didn't want to be limited to scale. At first I had no idea what, if anything, I would use these illustrations for. If I made them in Photoshop they'd be scale locked into whatever size I painted them in. In Illustrator it didn't matter. They could be the size of a building if they wanted to be. And secondly, I never painted in Illustrator before. At least, not like this. So that sounded harder.
This is the genesis of the Art Print Series. I had no intention of creating 164+ illustrations. But that's what happened, remember the 15k hour rule! The collection took off and The Inspiration Grid did a feature on them and suddenly non-Eve places started paying attention. That's when CCP approached me about collaborating. And then all of that happened.
That was 2015. Since then I've been busy on other things, but never stopped drawing more spaceships and trying new things. I created the Freaky Frigate Collection which is now on sale in the official Eve Store and many more pieces.
You can see the process in this video of me painting a Vexor which I used on a Steel City Eve poster and another art piece I gave away for free over on Reddit.
All of which is just a long story about my journey creating Eve related art pieces for the past 14 years. Of course I've left out a lot of stuff. Mostly because I just wanted to focus on this single thread. I still have a lot to learn and a lot of practice ahead of me. And while I understand that many of these pieces have been sold and are hanging on walls all over the world - for me I'm still struggling every day to find my way and produce something I can be proud of. I suspect that is an eternal struggle that I'll take with me to the grave eventually.
Until then, I'm going to keep working on it, practicing, and making art that hopefully other people can enjoy and appreciate. I have no idea where any of this is going, I don't have a clue what I'm doing, and that makes me extremely happy.
